yves béhar designs PROTEUS, an underwater scientific research station

yves béhar and his firm fuseproject has collaborated with aquanaut, ocean explorer, and environmentalist fabien cousteau to design an underwater scientific research station and habitat. fabien cousteau’s PROTEUS™ seeks to address ocean awareness and humanity’s most critical concerns: medicinal discoveries, food sustainability, and the impacts of climate change. the design has been conceived as the underwater version of the international space station, serving as a platform for global collaboration among the world’s leading researchers, academics, government agencies, and corporations.

all images by yves béhar and fuseproject

despite the ocean representing over 99% of our world’s living space, only 5% has been explored to date. ‘as our life support system, the ocean is indispensable to solving the planet’s biggest problems,’ states fabien cousteau, who is the grandson of jacques cousteau. ‘challenges created by climate change, rising sea levels, extreme storms and viruses represent a multi-trillion-dollar risk to the global economy. PROTEUS™, contemplated as the first in a network of underwater habitats, is essential to driving meaningful solutions that protect the future of our planet. the knowledge that will be uncovered underwater will forever change the way generations of humans live up above.’

a project of the fabien cousteau ocean learning center (FCOLC), the research station is more than four times the size of any previously known underwater habitat, and will feature state-of-the-art labs, sleeping quarters, and a moon pool. the project will also include the first underwater greenhouse, allowing inhabitants to grow fresh plant life for food. the habitat will be sustainably powered by hybrid sources including wind, solar, and ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC). it will include a full-scale video production facility to provide continuous live streaming for educational programming, and delivery of augmented and virtual reality to collaborators world-wide.

the station will grant scientists and aquanauts the time to conduct continuous night and day diving and data collection, enabling the discovery of new species of marine life and a better understanding of how climate change affects the ocean. the on-site labs will facilitate processing of organic samples that can be studied in real time, rather than the specimens rapidly degrading or dying during the journey to the surface and on-land laboratories. the station will be located off the island of curaçao, at a depth of 60 feet (3 atmospheres) in the caribbean sea.

‘PROTEUS™’s design intent is to offer an effective, comfortable and attractive facility for researchers, and an exciting underwater structure that garners the same passion for ocean exploration as we have for space exploration,’ explains yves béhar. ‘the PROTEUS™ spiral architecture houses social and work spaces as well as a communication studio and a submersible moonpool. PROTEUS™ is both practical and an icon that will change the way we experience ocean research.’

footage from fabien cousteau’s mission 31 (2014)
video courtesy of the fabien cousteau ocean learning center

the project builds on the success of mission 31 (2014), when fabien cousteau led five aquanauts at a 400-square-foot station in the florida keys. he set the then record for longest amount of time living underwater there: 31 days, and performed 3 years of equivalent research in a month that resulted in 12 published scientific studies and 9,800 scientific articles. see footage from the mission in the videos on this page.