One gusty evening in late October 2022, a group of design students and teachers from ECAL, the University of Art and Design Lausanne, reached Fogo Island. Like many before them, they were glad to arrive after a long journey – in this case, one that had started in Switzerland the day before. Now, they had a week ahead of them, dedicated to exploring and immersing themselves in the local community and landscape. The group’s task? To conceptualize ways to harvest the famed local winds for green energy without negatively impacting the island’s raw natural beauty. Thus, they would rethink the design of wind turbines. Context was crucial.

Fogo Island, off the coast of Newfoundland, is a remote community historically sustained by fishing. Settlers from England and Ireland arrived in the 1700s (the surrounding area had long been home to Mi’kmaq and Beothuk peoples), relying on the sea for their livelihood. However, the local fishing industry declined drastically in the 1960s due to overfishing by overseas armadas, threatening the community’s survival. A fishing co-op was formed, which is a mainstay of the local economy to this day.

The next sea change came some 15 years ago, when Zita Cobb established Shorefast, a registered charity aimed at building a sustainable, renewable economy for Fogo Island’s roughly 2,500 inhabitants. Shorefast projects include environmental initiatives, an artist-in-residence programme (Fogo Island Arts), and a series of innovative social businesses, including Fogo Island Workshops and the award-winning, 29-room Fogo Island Inn.

It being an island, Fogo is the perfect place for experimental and forward-thinking ventures – a microcosm that can project onto a grander scale. Described locally as “this rock in the battering Northern Sea”, Fogo is blessed with natural beauty and an abundance of wind. Its climate and geography make it perfect for wind turbines.

For the ECAL contingent, the starting point of wind turbines was clear. The International Energy Agency, among other renowned environmental organizations, has clearly stated that wind power offers a promising means of tackling the current global energy crisis. Communities around the globe have been urged to transition to renewable energy supplies. Nevertheless, concerns over the technology’s social and environmental impact remain – for many, the visual intrusion of wind turbines in natural landscapes is still prohibitive.

The key question on Fogo Island became: How could wind turbines fit into natural landscapes and existing cultures not only sensitively, but beautifully?

The 16 students, accompanied by teaching staff, spent a week exploring the local microcosm, with the goal of creating new wind-turbine designs. Each proposed turbine was created for a specific location on the island, to meet the area’s social, environmental and economic needs. Closely working with the local community, the visitors opened up debates on topics like the logistics of the construction of wind turbines, as well as how these eco-interventions could be integrated into their environmental and social contexts.

Back in Switzerland, the group continued their work, finally generating eight different speculative models for wind turbines. The project is called U.F.O.G.O.

The results are diverse. Some wind turbines respond to existing problems or current needs. EVIND is designed to enable the charging of electric cars. PNEUM, whose structure is actually a greenhouse, supports food production and self-sufficiency. PYRE offers an alternative to expensive imported building materials through 3D printing. WINDSEED is an offshore wind turbine with a structure for seaweed farming – potentially a future source of income on the island. Other wind turbine designs include references to the island’s unique architecture or its long history of fishing.

As RR REUSE is imagined, it would be built on top of one of the island’s abandoned fish processing factories, imbuing dismissed architecture with a new use. CLIFFHANGER seeks to approximate the architecture of the island’s traditional stilt houses. FOGO FLAGS, decorated with flags and located on the edge of the coastline, positions itself as a symbol of Fogo, providing a first impression for visitors upon their arrival. Finally, FLO: For air safety reasons, wind turbines can only be a striking white, but this proposal bypasses the restriction by appearing white from above, while projecting a palette of colours when viewed from the ground.

All of the proposals – now part of the Transform! Designing the Future of Energy exhibition at the Vitra Design Museum – push wind turbines in new design directions, all of which could be further explored in the future. Each tackles different ideas that may aid the technology’s wider adoption. All respond to technical demands, and the dual restrictions of engineering feasibility and government legislation.

U.F.O.G.O. is a sustainability project that remains grounded in reality, but is not limited by what already exists. Through context-specific design development, the eight turbines deal with a key question for wind-power technology: how can turbines gain greater social acceptance through design?

Anniina Koivu is the design strategist for Fogo Island Workshops and Head of Theory at Masters ECAL