GOVAN MARITIME MUSEUM

In the spirit of instilling empowerment and resilience in a community, Govan Maritime Museum is a proposal seeks to do so and to story the shipbuilding industry on River Clyde back in the 1800s and 1900s. Located next to the city central of Glasgow, Scotland, the Govan neighbourhood was once the beating heartland to a blooming industrial era before it was collapsed after World War II. The post-industrial Govan is now rifled with unemployment, land dereliction, and risks the loss of historical identity and their shipbuilding heritage due to the ongoing gentrification of the Clyde riverbank with mass housing development. Leveraging on its industrial past, the project sees the potential of bringing back the ship business to rebuild Govan’s economy and identity. But instead of building, the project taps onto the important conversation of circular economy and urban mining, introduces ship recycling and decommissioning as an alternative green business. It is visioned to be a slow but collective and sensible building process, where salvaged broken boats from open sea or shipyard are brought in for breaking, repairing, archiving, or retrieving of parts for recycling. The retrieved metal ship frames and metal plating are retrofitted to become the museum space. Acting as a living testimony to Govan, the museum’s constantly developing facade, built by the remnant, organs of the salvaged ships, calls to mind the nature of the Govan’s community. Crude, unprocessed, honest and stoic in the ever-changing environment.