Matching and Mismatching Times in the Fisheries of South Brittany. Crises in marine ecosystems as seen through the lens of architecture, 1887–1927

In this paper, we set out to trace a socioecological history of South Brittany sardines in relation to architecture, elucidating the inherited relationships that exist between marine environments and terrestrial landscapes and assessing the ecological impact of fishing constructions and the natural resources they depend upon. Throughout time, the human relationship with water has engendered social crises, while the response to such crises have impacted marine ecosystems. Fishing provides a livelihood and promotes economic development, yet it also requires specific architectural structures. Following the fish leads us to consider their impact on onshore construction, ranging from the development of large industrial canneries to the often unexpected reshaping of entire marine ecosystems. Starting with the sardine crises of the late nineteenth century, we observe the production context of an 1887 survey focused on trawling fisheries, which sparked the idea of building a dedicated fishing harbor to tackle the sardine crises. Ultimately, the dynamics triggered by the nineteenth-century canneries in South Brittany led to the establishment of novel architectural typologies, such as the experimental cold storage and fishing harbor of Lorient built between 1918 and 1927. From the sardine crises to the launch of Lorient’s harbor, we observe a progressive erasure of the continuity between human communities and ecosystems, with the temporal dimensions of fish and architecture seldom matching one another. In this paper, we experiment with a view of architectural history seen through a biological lensand seek to connect the complex ecology of the sea with the no less complex transformation of the built environment on land.