1st PRIZE

Premio SPRINT (Sports – Risk- Innovation – Technology)
Challenge FISU 2025

The project aims to preserve the bluefin tuna ecology, by creating artificial islands by planting kelp forests, which form their habitat. Kelp forests have decreased in the last half century due to marine exploitation and excessive extraction, in a Mediterranean territory that resembles a factory. The project studies the bluefin tunas as a species, understanding them as a part of a whole ecology and questions the dynamic relation that gazes upon them as solely a product to profit from. Bluefins are a top predator in the ocean and play a fundamental role in the marine life ecosystem, so their possible extinction will have detrimental effects on the ecological balance. Through territorial and global scale mapping, the project traces a research path unravelling the term overfishing, through environmental, geopolitical, social or economic dimensions focusing on the strait of Gibraltar which is the entry and exit point of Bluefins in the Mediterranean. Further the project focuses on the excessive industrialisation of fishing practices against the struggle of local fishing communities to survive. Through the research it is observed that the limits between land and sea are blurred, and the data shapes a Terraqueous Mediterranean Factory that pollutes, litters, intensely extracts and therefore destroys underwater life. Therefore, the initiative aims to enhance and protect their habitat by implementing artificial kelp forests, their vital ecosystem. The project Bluefin Tuna Ecology at Risk composed by the team Salvatore Tartaglia (Italy), Alma Eliza Shiamtani (Cyprus), Diego Hernandez (Mexico) and Chen Zhenhao (China) participated and achieved the first position in the SPRINT Challenge part of FISU 2025, taking place at Cavallerizza Reale in Torino. Reaching the 10 finalists in the poster session, the team has presented the project in front of the jury. The team has decided to work on the research project combining personal experiences in the local fishing community of Messina, Sicily and knowledge gained from the atelier Architecture Society Territory B (Master degree Architecture for Sustainability, lead by Prof. Camillo Boano, Daniela Ciaffi and Michele Cerutti But), researching landscape-scale design, developing critical reasoning on the Anthropocene.