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Dalhousie Architecture students Adrienne Gerrits and Tyler Reynolds’ entry “Lantern Hive” is an Editor’s Choice Award selection of the Matterbetter’s Concordia Lighthouse Competition. Six projects were selected which research the future of the lighthouse typology and metaphor, as well as the way how it should be integrated in the sensitive context of the Costa Concordia disaster. These works were close enough to the overall winners to catch the jury’s attention.

Matterbetter invited young architects, designers, artists and students from around the world to participate in the international open-ideas Concordia Lighthouse Competition. The competition’s goal was to investigate the contemporary typology of the lighthouse architecture, its metaphoric and symbolic components based around the Costa Concordia disaster, when one of the largest cruise ships in the world has ran aground on the coast of the Giglio Island in Italy resulting in the loss of 32 lives.

The future lighthouse vision integrates a systematic navigational network and a public pavilion to form the Lantern Hive. It establishes a position of both transparency and accessibility between the technology it utilizes and the people it serves. It expands the contextual nature of a lighthouse by providing a place for people to gather and experience the orchestrated activities of aerial Lantern Drones. The Lantern Hive deploys drones to trace and illuminate changing coastal environments. Many Hives together form a greater regional network of recharging stations, providing aid to both nautical and terrestrial travellers.