Floating Cities: 15 Last-Hope Homes for a Watery World
September 6, 2010 by admin · View Comments
[ By Steph in Art & Design, Geography & Travel, Nature & Ecosystems. ]
With so many visions of humanity’s future involving the devastating effects of climate change, architects are looking toward a life without land: entire self-contained cities purposefully built on water complete with housing, schools, hospitals, restaurants and shops. These floating city concepts range from recycled oil rigs to what could be the largest structure ever built (if we ever discover a material strong enough to bear the weight, that is.)
Embassy of Drowned Nations
(images via: oculus)
As sea levels rise, it seems that some nations will inevitably sink beneath the depths, leaving behind thousands or perhaps millions of displaced residents. We may hope that the Embassy of Drowned Nations is never actually needed, but time will tell. The artificial island, conceived by Australian design firm Oculus, would temporarily house climate change refugees.
Drowned London, Rebuilt on Oil Rigs
(images via: io9)
If London, too, falls victim to climate change, where will everyone go? Perhaps they’d evacuate to abandoned oil rigs and recycled ship hulls, as in this concept by Anthony Lau. Says the designer, “By utilising the flooded landscape, a floating city of offshore communities, mobile infrastructure and aquatic transport will allow the city to reconfigure through fluid urban planning. Wave, tidal and wind energy will be ideal for this offshore city and the inhabitants will live alongside the natural cycles of nature and the rhythms of the river and tides.”
New Orleans Arcology Habitat
(images via: greener ideal)
Five years later, New Orleans is just beginning to feel like its old pre-Katrina self again – but that could change all too quickly if another major hurricane happened to hit the city. Perhaps residents should aim for a solution that works with rather than against the water they’re surrounded by – like this concept for a ‘New Orleans Arcology Habitat’, a floating metropolis in the Mississippi River. It’s not just a last-ditch emergency shelter: with housing, hotels, cultural facilities, a school system and even casinos, it’s a self-contained community for everyday living.
Boston Arcology
(images via: ahearn schopfer)
Boston may not be living under the constant threat of flooding like New Orleans, but rising seas could still be a problem for this bustling coastal city. Designer Kevin Schopfer would bring 15,000 Boston residents out into the harbor with the BOA development, a floating pedestrian-only city with all the amenities one would expect in any urban setting.
Seasteading San Francisco
(images via: seasteading.org)
For some libertarians, no government is good government – and that’s why they’d like to find a way to live in self-contained, self-sustainable floating cities located in international waters. The Seasteading Institute imagines “homesteading on the high seas” on mobile platforms. The group’s first project may be ‘ClubStead’, a 200-person resort seastead in the San Francisco Bay.
Shimizu Mega-City Pyramid
(image via: wikimedia commons)
If you’re interested in futuristic architecture concepts on the opposite end of the spectrum from the “tiny house movement”, look no further than Japanese firm Shimizu, which has come up with all manner of mega-projects ranging from electricity-collecting belts for the moon to this “Mega-City Pyramid”, which if built would be the largest building ever constructed. A self-contained city for one million people situated on a river delta, the 1.25-mile-high structure isn’t technically possible yet because no known material can support that kind of weight.
Green Float – Lilypad Skyscraper City
(images via: shimizu)
Another big idea from Shimizu is “Green Float”, which is just as much a sky city as a floating city, given that it places housing in tall skyscrapers perched on lilypad-like platforms. Each skyscraper is insanely tall at one mile high each, and would house 1 million residents, with the ‘stem’ of each tower containing vertical gardens.
Disney’s 1984 Sea City of the Future
(image via: paleofuture)
In 1984, Walt Disney had some interesting ideas of what agriculture would be like in farming areas near the sea by the year 2050. Published in a book called ‘The Future World of Agriculture’, this image was accompanied by the following text: “Robots tend crops that grow on floating platforms around a sea city of the future. Water from the ocean would evaporate, rise to the base of the platforms (leaving the salt behind), and feed the crops.”
1968 Sea City
(image via: darkroastedblend)
Dark Roasted Blend bemoaned the fact that, when it comes to visions of futuristic architecture, “the future’s gotten too damned small.” But that’s definitely not the case with those Shimizu projects, or with this mysterious concept, which the blog identifies as “Sea-City, 1968 – architect Hal Moggridge for Pilkington Glass Company.” The design is sadly bereft of further information but it’s certainly a striking image with its illuminated strip of buildings forming an artificial harbor.
Freedom Ship: City at Sea
(images via: freedomship.com)
Aesthetically speaking, the Freedom Ship isn’t quite on the level of most other floating city designs – but that may actually make it easier to achieve. An amazing mile long, this mega-stretched-out cruise ship could house over 50,000 people with living quarters, work space, retail, education and health care. It has its own full-size airstrip on the roof as well as a giant port for smaller leisure boats and visiting vessels.
Shanghai Expo’s Floating City
(images via: treehugger)
It never did materialize, but if this 2007 vision for a floating city had really been constructed, it certainly would have been the most innovative and eye-catching display at the 2010 Shanghai Expo. Dutch designers envisioned an eco-friendly series of honeycomb semi-spheres floating on the Shanghai River, packed with a 3D cinema, pubs, a shopping mall and a restaurant.
Ark City from ‘Brink’
(images via: io9)
The stunning “seagoing eco-city gone wrong” that serves as the setting for the game Brink was inspired by the writings of Geoff Manaugh, founder of BLDGBlog, and by concepts like the Shimizu Mega-City Pyramid. “It was familiar enough to draw on zeitgeist-ish current concerns, but distant enough in time and space that players wouldn’t have seen it before,” wrote Brink developer Ed Stern.
Buckminster Fuller’s Triton City
(images via: a place to stand)
From WebUrbanist’s ‘Retro-Futurism: 13 Failed Urban Design Ideas‘ – “If not for a certain tell-tale 1960s aesthetic, Buckminster Fuller’s ‘Triton City’ could easily fit among today’s designs for floating eco-friendly cities. The futurist, architect and inventor was ahead of his time as usual when he imagined this tetrahedronal metropolis for Tokyo Bay, a seastead for up to 6,000 residents. Fuller wrote about the possibility of desalinating and recirculating seawater ‘in many useful and non-polluting ways’ and using materials from obsolete buildings on land, which were hardly popular ideas at the time.”
The Gyre: Floating Oceanic Skyscraper
(images via: zigloo.ca)
From WebEcoist’s ‘Underwater Cities: 12 Sci-Fi Visions & Real Design Ideas’ – “Technically, the Gyre isn’t a floating skyscraper – it’s more like a seafloor-scraper. Rather than reaching high into the air, the tip of the Gyre descends 400 meters under the ocean’s surface from a floating platform with four arms that buoy the building and create harbors for massive ships. The Gyre, powered by the solar, wind and wave energy, would house a research station and a resort complete with shops, restaurants, gardens, parks and entertainment.”
Sea City 2000
(image via: futuresavvy)
FutureSavvy.net scanned this unidentified article about ‘Sea City 2000′, a concept based on the ideas of both Buckminster Fuller and Paolo Soleri, which features a pyramid-shaped building covered in solar panels on a floating platform. The pyramid contains apartments, shops, gardens and schools while the equipment underneath it would support jobs like fish farming and “mining the sea bed for minerals – sure to be an important activity in the 21st century.”
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Going up? Go Green! 15 Eco-Towers & Sustainable Skyscrapers
September 22, 2009 by admin · View Comments
With a burgeoning global population that has ever-growing needs for both food and housing, many architects are looking up for sustainable solutions that will prevent further sprawl and provide fresh food to urban residents. Vertical farms and skyscrapers that incorporate various functions like housing, recreation, work and tourism are like miniature self-sufficient cities, complete with transit and on-site energy production, minimizing the building’s carbon footprint and that of its residents.
La Tour Vivante: International Sustainable City
(images via: Atelier SOA)
La Tour Vivante is a vertical farm skyscraper with a light-shading skin that wraps around the structure and admits sunlight to targeted locations for both functional and aesthetic purposes. Designed by French architecture firm Atelier SOA, the skyscraper’s sustainable features include wind power, reclaimed rainwater, biogas production and on-site food production.
The architects explain, “The separation between city and countryside, urban planning and natural areas, places of living, consumption and production is increasingly problematic for sustainable land management. The concept of Tour Vivante aims to combine agricultural production, housing and activities in a single system.”
Toronto Sky Farm Concept by Gordon Graff
(images via: The Rathaus)
Designed by Gordon Graff when he was a Masters of Architecture student at Waterloo University, the Toronto Sky Farm concept seeks to provide enough food for 35,000 citizens per year. Though that may not be nearly enough to feed all the residents of downtown Toronto, it’s a start. Sky Farm would stand 59 stories tall with half its power produced by methane from plant waste. The hydroponic farming system would be fed with fresh water from Lake Ontario.
House of Peace Hotel in Tanzania Inspired by Nature
(images via: Inhabitat)
When WOW Architects set out to design the ‘House of Peace’ hotel in Tanzania, they found inspiration for its sculpted shape in the geological processes that shape rock formations in nature. With gentle slopes and greenery peeking out between floors, the concrete hotel is an interpretation of the way plate tectonics create hills, which are then molded by weather and stratified by sediments. Even the texture of the walls is drawn from that of fossils often found in such hills.
Almeisan Tower Brings Sky-High Sustainability to Dubai
(images via: Gizmag)
Though it’s unlikely to ever be built, the Almeisan Tower concept is nevertheless a fascinating peek at the ways in which we may be able to provide food for ourselves in the future. Created by architect Robert Ferry for a competition to design a tall emblem structure for Za’abeel Park in Dubai, Almeisan Tower would use solar cells and large mirrors to generate its own power as well as the power required to run the rest of the park.
Axis Mundi’s Wacky Pop-Art Idea for MoMA Tower
(images via: Design Boom)
Though it was Pritzker Architecture Prize Laureate, Jean Nouvel, who was actually selected to design the expansion of New York City’s Museum of Modern Art, another architect almost stole his thunder. Axis Mundi submitted an alternative design idea for the tower, with a stacked design that features vegetated walls and gigantic reproductions of iconic pop art. Firm founder John Beckmann said of the concept, “Instead of disguising the rich potential of towers that have a mix of uses, we looked for a way to express that diversity.” The resulting mixed-use mishmash certainly stands at a stark contrast to Nouvel’s sleek, contemporary winning design.
Entangled Bank: Green-Walled Eco-City
(images via: ArchDaily)
Charlotte, North Carolina firm LITTLE designed the Entangled Bank concept, a holistic design that “combines heavy duty technological prowess with artistic integration of systems”, as a juror of the Re:Vision Dallas competition described it. The concept connects various elements of community like housing, recreation, work and tourism in a sustainable shell that includes a living wall, wind turbines and an onsite biogas plant.
XERO Project Envisions Sustainable Dallas
(images via: David Barker + Partners)
While the Entangled Bank concept turned heads and made it to the top 3 in the Re:Vision Dallas competition, it was the XERO Project that took first place. The David Barker + Partners/Fletcher Studio design is based around the question, “What if one block in Texas became the sustainable model for the world?” The design envisions a high-density, zero-energy, agriculturally oriented pair of buildings that include public orchards, community gardens, food stalls, restaurants, retail space and housing. The design also imagines connecting the building to greater Dallas with intersecting greenways.
The Zuidkas Sustainable Tower in Amsterdam
(images via: Plus Mood)
How green can a skyscraper get? Architectenbureau Paul de Ruiter decided to find out with a design commissioned by the Government Buildings Agency of the Netherlands for a mixed-use building in Amsterdam. De Ruiter aimed to achieve the highest score possible on a range of environmental objectives to help the government determine a future standard for sustainability in architecture. The design consists of a glass envelope that accommodates a variety of ‘green houses’ – atria, CO2 greenhouses and hybrid greenhouses – in addition to offices, homes, a school and retail facilities.
Plantagon Geodesic Vertical Farm
(images via: Inhabitat)
Swedish-American company Plantagon has come up with an unusual twist on the vertical farm concept: a geodesic greenhouse containing a spiral ramp upon which fresh crops can be grown in urban environments. Plantagon says the farm “will dramatically change the way we produce organic and functional food. It allows us to produce ecological [resources] with clean air and water inside urban environments, even major cities, cutting costs and environmental damage by eliminating transportation and deliver directly to consumers. This is due to the efficiency and productivity of the Plantagon® greenhouse which makes it economically possible to finance each greenhouse from its own sales.”
Vertical Park: Stackable Architecture for Mexico City
(images via: Archicentral)
Not only do we need vertical buildings that bring many functions into one building, preventing the destruction of what little green space we have left, but we also need structures that can meet our needs as they evolve. The stackable ‘Vertical Park’ concept by Jorge Hernandez de la Garza is a modular skyscraper designed for Mexico City, where space is definitely at a premium. Each module provides spaces for living, working, urban farming, water reclamation and solar energy collection.
Pyramid Farm
(images via: The Vertical Farm Project)
Architecture professors Eric Ellingsen and Dickson Despommier have dreamed up yet another way in which agriculture can be incorporated into urban environments in the future. The Pyramid Farm offers a self-sustaining ecosystem that are capable of producing a wide variety of food – including fish and poultry – while also minimizing waste as much as possible. It would even have processes in place to transform waste into energy sources that could run the farm.
Dragonfly Urban Farm Concept
(images via: Vincent Callebaut)
Few urban farm concepts are quite as visually stunning as Vincent Callebaut’s Dragonfly, a tall wing-like structure designed around the Southern bank of Roosevelt Island in New York City. This entirely self-sufficient concept features two oblong towers and 128 floors filled with housing, offices, laboratories and farms that would be tended by the building’s occupants. The greenhouse, which defines the space of the design, supports the load and is buttressed by two inhabited rings covered in solar panels.
Harvest Green Tower
(images via: Design Boom)
Romses Architects envisioned the ‘Harvest Green Tower’ for Vancouver, winning a competition held by the city of vancouver ‘the 2030 challenge’ to find new methods of green building that can help address climate change issues. The Harvest Green Tower produces food – including boutique goat and sheep dairy – and generates its own energy through wind and solar power. Incorporated within the tower are also residences, transit, offices, retail space and research facilities.
Aberrant Agriculture by Scott Johnson
(images via: Rat Haus)
The Aberrant Agriculture concept by Masters of Architecture student Scott Johnson not only combines vertical farming, residential, hotel and retail functions in one sustainable skyscraper, it also processes and sells the food that is produced within. The agricultural core of the building grows 12 ‘power foods’ including berries, garlic and beans and whatever the building’s residents couldn’t eat would be sold to the public.
Modular Skyscraper Additions Add Garden and Power Producing Space
(images via: Ecoble)
All of these ideas for the sustainable skyscrapers of the future are great, but what about all the waste that would be generated by tearing old buildings down, and wasting new resources to rebuild? That’s where this concept by Daekwon Park comes in. It’s a modular system designed to act as add-ons for existing buildings, adding space for outdoor recreation, vertical gardening and wind power generation as well as other functions as needed.
Steph
