Prefabrication experiments - 286 - Modular city building - 07 - Floating urbanity

  

The rising sea level is one of the most threatening consequences of climate change. Melting ice sheets menace coastal cities and transform littoral ecosystems. This will render large populated territories uninhabitable and defy shoreline communities’ adaptability. Approximately 40% of the world's population lives in coastal areas and depends on them for their survival both economic and social. Building infrastructure that helps mitigate risks can help increase a community’s resilience. Planning can be combined with coastal protective measures to prolong livability and prevent areas from becoming completely submerged. This type of speculative land-farming from the oceans is not new. Buckminster Fuller’s Triton City imagined a floating urban bionetwork for two million citizens in Japan’s coastal waters as a completely self-sufficient living machine as a solution to predicted land scarceness. 

 

An analogous concept of floating cities has emerged from a partnership between Oceanix and architectural firm BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group). The project team includes specialists in every area of city building: planning, engineering, waste management, mobility and energy harvesting. The hypothetical city is a modular composition of 300-person hexagonal floating districts. The 4.5-acre hexagon cells are multiplied and arranged to construct a collective urban constellation. A large portion, approximately 3/4 of an acre of each hexagon is designated for food production.  The concept proposes thematic settlements formed from a group of six hubs relying on a common harbour. These centralized and specialized communities would be based on themes such as health care, culture or education. Loosely reconceptualizing Ebenezer Howard’s circular garden city, the hexagons are connected by loops. A surrounding external concentric loop of modular islands serves energy harvesting or water filtration. The required food, water and waste management systems are all be completely self-generated or sourced from the air or surrounding water. 

 

The floating islands are anchored to the ocean floor with biorock, a type of artifical limestone produced from chemical reactions between electric currents and mineral deposits.  Although all of the ideas applied to this floating oasis are credible and technologically possible, it remains an idealistic mission. Even so, many of the proposed concepts could be applied to city building in general and make landlocked urbanity more resilient. 

BIG and Oceanix's Floating Cities