Deepwater Horizon — Camille McGriff

Part I: Architectural Drawings

With the understanding that the paradigm of the computer age and BIM allow for a completely mechanized process of design, the class “Architectural Drawings and Representations” seeks to use architectural drawing technologies and conventions to subvert and present alternate narratives about buildings.

In a series of exploded section drawings, perspectives, and collages, I analyzed the building life of the Deepwater Horizon, an oil rig that exploded in the Gulf of Mexico on April 20, 2010, causing the largest marine oil spill in history.

Exploded axonometric drawing

In order to learn 3D modeling in Rhino, Grasshopper, and AutoCAD as well as post-processing techniques in Adobe Illustrator, I analyzed the narrative trajectory of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig as a travel brochure. I exploded each element along the oil pipeline and called out each part as it was involved in the 2010 explosion.

Perspective Drawing

This perspective was modeled, processed, and then printed onto translucent mylar paper to be layered over three collages than signified the stages of life through which the Deepwater Horizon progressed: its involvement in the network of global fossil fuel commerce as a crucial node in the Gulf of Mexico drilling, its departure from that system upon its explosion, and its current life as it decays on the Gulf seafloor.

The first collage demonstrates the Deepwater Horizon’s crucial role in the global fossil fuel industry and all the processes of contemporary daily life that it enabled.

The second collage depicts the moment of explosion on April 20, 2010, which triggered a months-long oil spill into the Gulf of Mexico and claimed the lives of 11 men.

The final collage depicts the Deepwater Horizon’s current life phase as it decays on the ocean floor.

Part II: Model Making

Conceiving of architectural models as instruments and tools for sites of experimentation and learning, I wrote and designed a pop-up book about the life of the Deepwater Horizon. This allowed me to experiment with paper as a medium for making three-dimensional forms, and was also an opportunity to explore a deeper, multivalent understanding of the architectural rhetoric of this building.

Cover image of the pop-up book, *The Deepwater Horizon: Tour of the Uncanny Anthropocene*.

Spread from the book about the Deepwater Horizon’s construction in Ulsan, Korea.

Spread from the book depicting the night of the explosion, including the fire on deck and the lifesaving ships and helicopters.

Back cover of the book. The provocative question, “What would you do for $60 billion dollars?” references the amount of money BP paid in criminal and civil penalties, natural resource damages, economic claims, and cleanup costs. This amount, in addition to the priceless 11 lives lost in the explosion, was the true cost of cost-cutting and excessive risk-taking that caused the spill.

Part III: Animation

The final iteration of the project was an animation that combined live footage and two-dimensional animation in Adobe AfterEffects, a layering of storytelling techniques that examined the life stages of the building as well as the regional cultural and ecological effects over time.

Process

Below are photos taken on location at the end of Fort Morgan, AL, the juncture of Mobile Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, where scores of natural gas rigs light up the sky at sunset.