“Arctic stronghold of world’s seeds flooded after permafrost melts”
This was the alarmist headline from The Guardian on the 19th of May 2017. This defect has stayed with me for three reasons;
1) The motive of the sensationalist that authored the headline; 2) The slightly comic thought of a lonely scientist arriving to work under grey arctic skies, slowly walking up to the vault door, swiping a key card that buzzes green and BANG! Door bursts open due to the pressure from all of the world’s seed bank blooming; 3) A deeper concern, we appear to have an inherent ability to fall over on things that we place importance on.
Svalbard Global Seed Vault was designed to host and preserve planetary species of plant life predominantly from the effects of global climate change. In 2017 the facility suffered the most ironic fault in the form of water breaching the initial primary seal owing to rains and subsequent permafrost melt.
The location had been strategically selected owing to several factors such as, geological stability, low mean relative humidity, sparce local biodiversity and low temperatures, essentially a very sterile and inert platform for storing organic matter.
Despite the headline, the actual seed vault is situated over 100m from the entrance into the Earth’s crust, so the Guardian’s either poor research or deliberate hysterical caption is unfair to those involved. That said, it’s difficult to empathise with the error at face value. You’re tasked with an objective to protect the investment of millions of global plant species from the planet’s increasing temperatures, therefore heat being the adversary… You decided to locate the assets beneath ice, a substance which changes to the life providing liquid, water, as it warms.
I will condition this article with the admission of my own failures in my career which I openly documented in 2015 in the hope of helping others. This involved my younger self and three failed façade weather performance tests. This still haunts me at least twice a year but does serve to keep me sharp. This is not an armchair attack on those involved with the World Seed Bank defect. On the contrary, the topic of accepting failure and recording is fundamental as it dictates where we could get to if we take stock of what has happened, or where we will remain if we lack ability to understand spheres of competency or identify those that can positively contribute.
The importance of reviewing historical context in relation to the objective should always come first. We rarely see this in façade reports covered to any significant detail, at best pictures and bullet points of precedence examples shown in a section prior to project specific detailing are what we find.
The most concerning error at Svalbard is not in relation to system design nor engineering but more so with our collective shortcomings in critical thinking and continued unacceptance that we do not have control of Earth’s climatic systems. So, it’s unreasonable to attribute blame or causation to any one party’s design in this instance as likely the competency sphere would have been relatively small given the task. This is based on the assumption that the disciplines gathered would have been our typical format of; architect, main contractor, structural engineers, building physics teams etc. However, all united with the one absolute iron fact that no one has constructed a facility of this scale nor has had experience of designing for such climatic uncertainty.
So, what could have been done differently? The task and objectives could have been mapped through detailed hazard and risk systems but creating logic default overlays or outputs. This encourages diligence before the event as natural horizon scanning can be completed with logic gate or statistical analysis in relation to potential error type. This type of thinking is not necessarily practiced day-to-day as the need has been low through the last 30-40 years, so finding these figures would have been challenging but relying on decision makers to recognise the need from inception an even smaller probability that authored and contributed to the systemic failure. What was likely needed, were those more accustomed to designing for erratic and hostile climatic regions. This could have seen a number of skill sets that may have been able to offer historical and academic context, but to list a few for some sideways thinking; Naval Architect, Marine Environmental Engineers, NASA Meteorologist and Space Environment Engineer and so on, though the budget would likely have restricted this diverse assembly. Like most problems that need solving, the right skill sets must be present if you want to increase the probability of success. Similar to a recipe book in your kitchen, in order to create different dishes, the instructions and ingredients require permutation. We must adapt and learn to accept that specialist teams cannot be prescribed, they need the relevant ingredients and conductors to orchestrate the order.
As anti-extinction devices go, The World Seed Bank is remarkable in the truest sense of the word. We as a collective got together and created an environment with the goal of preservation. This is one of the world’s most positive structures ever created and whilst perhaps is forgotten as an example of good design, it’s silent message of hope is one of the strongest.
We still create facades with so much redundant mass or articulation that can only be argued as moving with ‘architectural trends’ as opposed to what is really needed. The importance we place on elaborate form still spearheads some practices when all this really delivers are additional idle passengers clinging to structures. We will not make it if we do not temper our thirst for exotic or unnecessary attachments which add little value to the next generations. If we are to evidence accountability of the way in which we choose to extract and refine materials for construction, culture may have to take a back seat or, a new vision of culture be accepted as the next phase of our occupancy on Earth.
Lastly, like all good narrative arcs, the issues experienced at Svalbard have long been resolved and additional monitoring measures implemented. Here’s to those that keep us moving onwards.
Author: David Kelly
