UNDERLYING PHILOSOPHY
Until we easily cross the threshold separating us from the stars, I can hardly imagine another physical environment allowing more creative freedom than the vast empty mirror of the sea. With the sea we get the potential of a blank slate. What may or may not be done about architecture on the sea is still to be defined. There is a lasting poetry to the sea, it remains a go-to place for many romantics. Even the firmament is a "sea of stars" - humanity's proudest conquest and ongoing destination. The reality is that science and engineering are able to deliver on such massive waterborne projects, as they are intrinsically pragmatic, technically and economically feasible.
Until we easily cross the threshold separating us from the stars, I can hardly imagine another physical environment allowing more creative freedom than the vast empty mirror of the sea. With the sea we get the potential of a blank slate. What may or may not be done about architecture on the sea is still to be defined. There is a lasting poetry to the sea, it remains a go-to place for many romantics. Even the firmament is a "sea of stars" - humanity's proudest conquest and ongoing destination. The reality is that science and engineering are able to deliver on such massive waterborne projects, as they are intrinsically pragmatic, technically and economically feasible.
Another reality is that where all cities and metropolises stand, there used to be extensive habitats of countless ecosystems. Human settlements edged forward by wiping out everything at their borders, while continuing to drain the land far beyond those same restless borders. As long as there are resources to sustain their growth (encouragingly enough, we are successfully switching to renewables), this will be the law of the land, until little by little limitless national metropolises will blot out continents, their extinguished biotopes retailored to urban pockets and roofs, or fenced off reserves unless we can divert our rapacious nature to a glass-like plane (new dimmension) where to begin with, nothing alive stands in our way (still, below).
It would admitedly be very exciting to figure out how to relocate an entire national forest to rooftops, deer trails and wolf packs. But as it happens, a little over 70% of the planet is covered with nothing that we'd have to take down in order to make room for our asphalted slices of heaven (not counting Finland's urban strategies of circumventing sunshine and extending underground). It may be more fruitful to finally work with- and around human nature, rather than against it. Fortunately human nature is at least just as cabable as it is bad in it's world-building/ world-conquering capacities. Where hard science and humanity's big dreams come together, we generally make great things happen: the world wide web, the Apollo space program, the human genome project, (microwave popcorn), increasingly nuclear fusion.
While allowing existing urban typologies to slow down and recover, the process of urbanizing the water mirror should concurrently amount to a restoration of the seas and oceans, by building new marine habitats to provide for healthful sustenance and leisure, and by cleaning up the water itself.
AN ARCHITECTURAL EXPERIMENTATION SANDBOX TO Building and living on the sea & the vast potentiaL of theoretical and physical manifestations.
The oceans, although crowded with traversing vessels, are still a frontier in terms of human habitation. The few large waterborne settlements are either vernacular fishing villages or haphazard gatherings of shoddy fishing crafts. Modern civilization's only ventures in these marine environments, have so far happened almost exclusively by means of its industry. And although urban settlement on the oceans and seas has ultimately been denied by an absence of capable technology, presently that technology finally exists. Cargo vessels, oil platforms, cruise ships and the countless dry docks and shipyards that manufacture them, their mission and know-how, that so far have been devised to bring the fragmented landmasses back together into a revisited anthropic Pangaea, could refocus on educating and enabling the en-masse settlement of the blue in Blue Planet. Employing the exploratory and rugged shipping industry, entirely defined by the restless marine frontier, is advantageous as a proven strategy to reconsidering and designing potentially iconoclastic architecture, on the blank and borderless waterborne territory.
A RESEARCH OPPORTUNITY in areas such as: energy technology, floating architecture.
Considering that a floating city would be the first of its kind to be built in such adverse conditions and by highly technological means, it will employ the latest technology and design methodologies to reach the highest standards of living that it sets for itself. Aiming at environmental architecture and regenerative design, a synergistic mix of technologies would ensure, on the long run, energy and food self-sufficiency and socio-economic sustainability. Identifying the appropriate technologies and coalescing them into a coherent design philosophy that fits an ambitious and dynamic waterborne architecture is also part of what attracted me to this subject. Solar panels, wind mills, etc., how would they fit together in a floating city, from the very early design stages?
ENVIRONMENTAL CONCERNS AND PROPOSED SOLUTION
From competitive to parallel development. Global warning and environmental collapse are gradually becoming unanimously recognized, and the case for reaction has been definitively made time and time again. Yet tackling the issues of coastal overpopulation and resource depletion is not the drive of the floating mirrored city, not its main selling point. These issues are fundamental to the design methodology, but in reality the project is ultimately about creating more healthful and humane living environments, alongside nature (actually atop nature), rather than in competition with it, for space and resources. Again, this is the great advantage of building on the sea mirror: no forests to tear down and plant crops over, no marshes to drain and build over. All creatures and their habitats are safe underwater (unless they’re neighboring the Emirates). They may bump into the occasional anchor pillar, but as long as people can stick to the water line and help themselves from building shopping malls and minisubs parking lots on the bottom of the sea, they are safe from a future as endangered pets and revolutionary corral storeys in underwater seaweed cities.
PROJECT GOALS
- A pragmatic research into the present stages and potential states of waterborne architecture;
- The development of a consistent citywide design methodology;
- The design of a borough islet prototype: the floating city incremental expansion unit;
- The elaboration of the focal islet element: the kinetic flyer superstructures
- The development of a consistent citywide design methodology;
- The design of a borough islet prototype: the floating city incremental expansion unit;
- The elaboration of the focal islet element: the kinetic flyer superstructures