Sealand and the Architecture of the Sea: From Counter-Space to Counter-Culture

Abstract

Focusing on the small state of Sealand, a platform built off the English Essex coast to carry anti-aircraft guns during the Second World War, this article posits the North Sea as a particular geopolitical condition based on its status as a "state of exception." The article formulates its reading by considering the architectural legacy of the pirates, privateers and hackers who have been the principle rulers of the terrain. Their spatial strategies are understood not only in terms of physical constructions that accommodate exceptional functions, but also as a conceptual apparatus that facilitates extraterritorial juridical practices. The spatio-juridical characteristics of the "architecture of the sea" are seen to offer new possibilities for ordering the distribution of goods, capital and information, and for alternative forms of living. 1 The Sea as the Space of Exception The axiom freedom of the sea meant something very simple, that the sea was a zone free for booty. [ … ] On the open sea, there were no limits, no boundaries, no consecrated sites, no sacred orientations, no law, and no property. 2