BLDGBLOG - The Botanical Arctic Ark-Archive and the Coming of the Space Seed Garden

[Arq.to]

The Botanical Arctic Ark-Archive and the Coming of the Space Seed Garden - Sat, 10 Feb 2007 00:44:00 +0000


[image: A rendering of the "doomsday vault" by Statsbygg; via the BBC].

Last year, New Scientist reported that "a large concrete room, hewn out of a mountain on a freezing-cold island just 1000 kilometres from the North Pole," might represent "the future of humanity."
That "large concrete room" is the now somewhat infamous "doomsday vault" in which seeds from all of the world's known crops and plantlife will be stored.
The vault – described as "the ultimate safety net for the world’s most important natural resource" – will be constructed "deep inside a sandstone mountain lined with permafrost on the Norwegian Arctic island of Spitsbergen. The vault will have metre-thick walls of reinforced concrete and will be protected behind two airlocks and high-security blast-proof doors. It will not be permanently manned, but 'the mountains are patrolled by polar bears'," we read.
In choosing a location and determining other key physical parameters for the project, its designers "ran drastic climate change modelling scenarios, projecting 200 years into the future and factoring in potential increases in water levels due to melting ice from pole to pole."
Well, as the BBC reported yesterday, the final design for the vault has been unveiled.

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