Future Battery-metals Plant, and Underwater Robots Designed by Bjarke Ingels for The Metals Company

Architect BIG has designed a factory and a number of waterborne craft for The Metals Company, which aims to reduce the environmental impact of battery production by extracting metals from the seafloor.

The proposed designs will facilitate an alternative to land-based mining of nickel, cobalt, copper and manganese.

These metals are essential for batteries such as those used in electric vehicles, but their mining can have a devastating impact on humans and the environment.

The Metals Company is developing a process to instead extract the necessary metals from fist-sized rocks that lie loose on the seafloor, which it claims will have a much lower impact than traditional mining.

Architecture firm Bjarke Ingels Group's designs for the company include a metals processing and recycling plant, carbon-neutral water vessels and underwater robots to collect minerals.

"The global energy system needs to undergo its most profound change in centuries to realise a world run exclusively on renewable sources," said BIG founder Bjarke Ingels.

"If the ongoing research and studies conclude that harvesting minerals from the seabed can be done in an environmentally and socially responsible way, we will not only be able to accelerate the green transition but give form to an entirely new industry that will create a sustainable circular metals economy for future generations."

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