The purpose of this chapter is to highlight and comment on several projects of particular relevance to the "Mirrored Cities" thesis for commercially viable, humane and environmentally restorative coastal floating communities. They are organised in the following categories:
VISIONARY PROJECTS: proposals of the 70's & contemporaries;
INDUSTRIAL CAPABILITY: built floating industrial-made architecture;
RESIDENTIAL ARCHITECTURE: floating vernacular & dystopian self-organised communities.
INDUSTRIAL CAPABILITY: built floating industrial-made architecture;
RESIDENTIAL ARCHITECTURE: floating vernacular & dystopian self-organised communities.
This chapter excludes authored comtemporary floating architecture. Image Copyright to their respective authors.
VISIONARY PROJECTS
VISIONARY PROPOSALS OF THE '70s
VISIONARY PROPOSALS OF THE '70s
1960 PLAN FOR TOKYO BAY by Kenzo Tange
A Plan for Tokyo, 1960: Toward a Structural Reorganization was published and presented by Kenzo Tange at the Tokyo World Design Conference. The plan proposed a linear organized matrix for Tokyo Bay, which was to be an extension of the uncontrolled expansion of the city proper. This urban matrix was an adaptation of Kenzo Tange’s architectural notions of structural order, expression, and urban “communication space."
A Plan for Tokyo, 1960: Toward a Structural Reorganization was published and presented by Kenzo Tange at the Tokyo World Design Conference. The plan proposed a linear organized matrix for Tokyo Bay, which was to be an extension of the uncontrolled expansion of the city proper. This urban matrix was an adaptation of Kenzo Tange’s architectural notions of structural order, expression, and urban “communication space."
1961 FLOATING CITY ON LAKE KASUMIGAURA by Kisho Kurokawa
“This project was prepared as a housing project to be built on the surface of a lake in connection with planning of the New Tokyo International Airport in Narita. Vertical separation of vehicular and pedestrian traffic, on the roofs of the structure, is provided: the motorways and walks from a transport system which interconnects the structures of the city. A harbour is provided at each unit for use by surface crafts. A spiral escalator system provides a means of vertical transportation between the rooftop and lake transport systems. A city is expressed by residences. Each home owner is free to use whatever building materials preferred when constructing their homes on man-made land which has a spiral configuration and is provided with terraces. The structure of the city must be planned by a multi-planar transport system which is centred on activities of daily life. In particular, the spiral system, or the helix structure will probably bring a third order to urban space. The unity-space helix is the prototype of a city with three-dimensional growth potential. This was the prototype of the Helix Plan prepared for the second publication issued by the Metabolism Group.” - K. Kurokawa
“This project was prepared as a housing project to be built on the surface of a lake in connection with planning of the New Tokyo International Airport in Narita. Vertical separation of vehicular and pedestrian traffic, on the roofs of the structure, is provided: the motorways and walks from a transport system which interconnects the structures of the city. A harbour is provided at each unit for use by surface crafts. A spiral escalator system provides a means of vertical transportation between the rooftop and lake transport systems. A city is expressed by residences. Each home owner is free to use whatever building materials preferred when constructing their homes on man-made land which has a spiral configuration and is provided with terraces. The structure of the city must be planned by a multi-planar transport system which is centred on activities of daily life. In particular, the spiral system, or the helix structure will probably bring a third order to urban space. The unity-space helix is the prototype of a city with three-dimensional growth potential. This was the prototype of the Helix Plan prepared for the second publication issued by the Metabolism Group.” - K. Kurokawa
1967 TRITON CITY, A Study of a Prototype Floating Community, by R. Buckminster Fuller
In 1967, Buckminster Fuller, commissioned by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, completes a feasibility study that would determine the possibility of developing the water areas of major cities by floating new communities on the water adjacent to the urban core. The comprehensive 148 page paper including numerous social-economic and technical considerations, concludes that such a structure is feasible. Triton City would grow incrementally, from a basic neighbourhood -sized community unit, which would accommodate 3500 to 6000 people and which would support an elementary school, a small supermarket and local convenience stores and services. Three to six of these neighbourhoods form a town which includes a high school, more recreational and civic facilities and light industry. A full-scale city, of three to seven towns (90,000 to 105,000 population), would need more specialised industry and a city centre module to accommodate government offices and medical facilities. While this type of development has the advantage of waterfront living in the central city: urban convenience and suburban open space, the high density occupation results in great economies in transportation service and other utilities.
In 1967, Buckminster Fuller, commissioned by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, completes a feasibility study that would determine the possibility of developing the water areas of major cities by floating new communities on the water adjacent to the urban core. The comprehensive 148 page paper including numerous social-economic and technical considerations, concludes that such a structure is feasible. Triton City would grow incrementally, from a basic neighbourhood -sized community unit, which would accommodate 3500 to 6000 people and which would support an elementary school, a small supermarket and local convenience stores and services. Three to six of these neighbourhoods form a town which includes a high school, more recreational and civic facilities and light industry. A full-scale city, of three to seven towns (90,000 to 105,000 population), would need more specialised industry and a city centre module to accommodate government offices and medical facilities. While this type of development has the advantage of waterfront living in the central city: urban convenience and suburban open space, the high density occupation results in great economies in transportation service and other utilities.
COMMENTARY:
“The Study of a Prototype Floating Community” displays a rationalisation process very similar to my own, regarding the practicalities of urbanising adjacent coastal city centres. The obscurity of the paper lead me to discovering Fuller’s study after I had finalised the conceptualisation of the present "Mirrored Cities" project. Fuller's TRITON thesis and confidence strengthens my own. It underlines the common sense behind the idea of creating new, affordable land near an existing city core, in a manner comparative to land fill, as Buckminster Fuller himself argued.
Traits that the Mirrored Cities and Triton City share and advocate for:
- elimination of the high cost of land, from the total expense.
- capitalising on the technical proficiency of ship building industries.
- exploiting the advantages of reorganising or breaking the waterborne city apart into its basic units, and floating them into another configuration or place.
- capitalising on the logistics of adjacency to the land city centre, and the social quality of water proximity to dwellings
- a design provision that would allow upgrading various parts of the floating neighbourhoods, in order to keep them up to date
- elimination of the high cost of land, from the total expense.
- capitalising on the technical proficiency of ship building industries.
- exploiting the advantages of reorganising or breaking the waterborne city apart into its basic units, and floating them into another configuration or place.
- capitalising on the logistics of adjacency to the land city centre, and the social quality of water proximity to dwellings
- a design provision that would allow upgrading various parts of the floating neighbourhoods, in order to keep them up to date
Notable differences:
- as an architectural expression: Fuller’s formulation and strategy of exclusively employing mass production techniques for the construction of the neighbourhood city units, makes for arguably inflexible floating neighbourhoods, badly lacking Tange's and Kurokawa's formal dynamism. Triton seems over-efficient and resistant to diversity and speciation.
- Triton’s floating units are monolithic, static, under-developed. Their functionality is reduced, similar to that of a cruise-liner. The public and semi-public buildings themselves are buried inside the units, not taking true advantage of the waterfront situation.
- there is no elaborate strategy for attracting and accommodating the private sector, as with the present Mirrored Cities project, nor a strategy for fully developing the islets into tourism and leisure destinations.
- Triton lacks a marine habitats renewal strategy.
- Fuller is restrained by the crime issues of his day, and actively employs his architecture as a deterrent and pacifier, and the water proximity as an “outlet for frustrated energies”, more than as an opportunity to dramatically enhance the quality of living. Where Triton City aims to reform, the Mirrored Cities aim to advance and excel.
Fuller's TRITON project does not embrace the Sea in a sufficiently original and innovative fashion, as a building site with specific extraordinary formal challenges and implicit opportunities. Regarding to their structure and organisation: the overbearing monolithic Triton islets appear to lack human scale and flexibility through personalisation. By comparison: the fragmentation of the Mirrored Cities Islets, wherein people, their possessions and detritus continuously find and create nooks for themselves like sea-life in reef or on the hulls of passing ships.
VISIONARY PROJECTS
FLOATING CONTEMPORARY PROPOSALS
FLOATING CONTEMPORARY PROPOSALS
AUTOPIA AMPERE – A Self-Assembling City from the Sea, by Wolf Hilbertz
Autopia Ampere will begin as a series of wire-mesh armatures anchored atop a sea mountain. Once in place, they will be connected to a supply of low-voltage direct current produced by solar panels. Over time, electrochemical reactions will draw minerals from the sea to the armatures, creating walls of calcium carbonate (limestone). In much the same way that a household sponge absorbs water, the oceans absorb CO2. By removing carbon-containing compounds from the oceans, the mineral accretion process would help reduce the build-up of CO2, which is a greenhouse gas. As a step toward his ultimate ocean-grown city, Hilbertz has planned to grow a self-sustaining island city on Seamount Ampere, which is situated about halfway between the Madeira Islands and the tip of Portugal. If constructed, it will extend 50 ft. (15,24m) down to the bottom of the Atlantic in that spot. Besides shallow water, the site offers good fishing, a dependable ocean current, and poly-metallic nodules on the ocean floor that contain copper, cobalt, manganese, nickel and iron. A huge limestone dam will surround the city, Hilbertz says, and building components will be grown in the sea. Solar and wind generators will furnish power. So too will a thermal energy conversion system that will extract power from temperature differences among different ocean currents. Once completed, Autopia Ampere would become entirely self-sufficient. Wind and sea currents would provide energy. Marine life, both wild and cultivated would provide food. The “mineral accretion” process from which the island was built would be used to create building materials for global export. The underwater manufacturing process itself would help to control the build-up of CO2 which is a greenhouse gas.
Autopia Ampere will begin as a series of wire-mesh armatures anchored atop a sea mountain. Once in place, they will be connected to a supply of low-voltage direct current produced by solar panels. Over time, electrochemical reactions will draw minerals from the sea to the armatures, creating walls of calcium carbonate (limestone). In much the same way that a household sponge absorbs water, the oceans absorb CO2. By removing carbon-containing compounds from the oceans, the mineral accretion process would help reduce the build-up of CO2, which is a greenhouse gas. As a step toward his ultimate ocean-grown city, Hilbertz has planned to grow a self-sustaining island city on Seamount Ampere, which is situated about halfway between the Madeira Islands and the tip of Portugal. If constructed, it will extend 50 ft. (15,24m) down to the bottom of the Atlantic in that spot. Besides shallow water, the site offers good fishing, a dependable ocean current, and poly-metallic nodules on the ocean floor that contain copper, cobalt, manganese, nickel and iron. A huge limestone dam will surround the city, Hilbertz says, and building components will be grown in the sea. Solar and wind generators will furnish power. So too will a thermal energy conversion system that will extract power from temperature differences among different ocean currents. Once completed, Autopia Ampere would become entirely self-sufficient. Wind and sea currents would provide energy. Marine life, both wild and cultivated would provide food. The “mineral accretion” process from which the island was built would be used to create building materials for global export. The underwater manufacturing process itself would help to control the build-up of CO2 which is a greenhouse gas.
COMMENTARY:
The notion of employing Ampere's mineral accretion processes (as well as other similarly functional processes) towards healing as well as generating new marine habitats is core to implementing the Mirror Cities' marine ecosystems restoratiOn initiative.
Mineral Accretion presently stands as an emergent technology. Nevertheless, it should be taken into further consideration.
A RECLAIMED FLOATING CITY by Anthony Lau
The Thames Estuary Aquatic Urbanism gives new life to decommissioned ships and oil platforms by converting them into hybrid homes adapted for aquatic living 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. This strategy for creating a self-sufficient floating city by reusing ships and marine structures can also be applied to island nations such as the Maldives. Over 80% of its 1,200 islands are around 1 m above sea level. With sea levels rising around 0.9 cm a year, the Maldives could become uninhabitable within 100 years. Its 360,000 citizens would be forced to adapt and they could become the first floating nation.
The Thames Estuary Aquatic Urbanism gives new life to decommissioned ships and oil platforms by converting them into hybrid homes adapted for aquatic living 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. This strategy for creating a self-sufficient floating city by reusing ships and marine structures can also be applied to island nations such as the Maldives. Over 80% of its 1,200 islands are around 1 m above sea level. With sea levels rising around 0.9 cm a year, the Maldives could become uninhabitable within 100 years. Its 360,000 citizens would be forced to adapt and they could become the first floating nation.
COMMENTARY:
There are a number of obvious issues with the notion of overhauling decommissioned ships and rigs as living environments. It is primarily a matter of ships and floating industry almost universally not having been designed as spaces for permanent habitation and for fostering communities. And as with the challenges of rehabilitating historical or derelict buildings, it might generally be cheaper to recycle them and build from scratch.
Small scale, individual conversions would certainly prove valuable, constituted into landmark floating architecture as manifestations of the new Mirrored City waterfront. The revamped cruise ships and aircraft carriers would best be used as occasional plug-ins to an existing coastal city or a future hybrid (half-floating, half-overland) Metropolis. However, on a citywide scale the strategy of converting decommissioned floating infrastructure appears unrealistic considering modern design requirements, standards and rationales.
There are a number of obvious issues with the notion of overhauling decommissioned ships and rigs as living environments. It is primarily a matter of ships and floating industry almost universally not having been designed as spaces for permanent habitation and for fostering communities. And as with the challenges of rehabilitating historical or derelict buildings, it might generally be cheaper to recycle them and build from scratch.
Small scale, individual conversions would certainly prove valuable, constituted into landmark floating architecture as manifestations of the new Mirrored City waterfront. The revamped cruise ships and aircraft carriers would best be used as occasional plug-ins to an existing coastal city or a future hybrid (half-floating, half-overland) Metropolis. However, on a citywide scale the strategy of converting decommissioned floating infrastructure appears unrealistic considering modern design requirements, standards and rationales.
VISIONARY PROJECTS
MEGASTRUCTURES FOR THE FUTURE
MEGASTRUCTURES FOR THE FUTURE
SHIMIZU MEGA-CITY PYRAMID in Tokyo Bay
The Shimizu Mega-City Pyramid is a proposed massive structure in Tokyo Bay. The structure would be about 14 times higher than the Great Pyramid at Giza, and would house 750,000 people. The structure would be 730 meters above mean sea level, including 5 stacked trusses, each with similar dimensions to that of the great pyramid of Giza. This pyramid would help answer Tokyo’s increasing lack of space, although the project would only handle 1/47th of the Greater Tokyo Area’s population. Transportation within the city would be provided by accelerating walkways, inclined elevators, and a personal rapid transit system where automated pods would travel within the trusses. Housing and office space would be provided by twentyfour or more 30-story high skyscrapers suspended from above and below, and attached to the pyramid’s supporting structure with nanotube cables. This pyramid would help answer Tokyo's increasing lack of space and it would make good use of having a dense trade and business centre.
The Shimizu Mega-City Pyramid is a proposed massive structure in Tokyo Bay. The structure would be about 14 times higher than the Great Pyramid at Giza, and would house 750,000 people. The structure would be 730 meters above mean sea level, including 5 stacked trusses, each with similar dimensions to that of the great pyramid of Giza. This pyramid would help answer Tokyo’s increasing lack of space, although the project would only handle 1/47th of the Greater Tokyo Area’s population. Transportation within the city would be provided by accelerating walkways, inclined elevators, and a personal rapid transit system where automated pods would travel within the trusses. Housing and office space would be provided by twentyfour or more 30-story high skyscrapers suspended from above and below, and attached to the pyramid’s supporting structure with nanotube cables. This pyramid would help answer Tokyo's increasing lack of space and it would make good use of having a dense trade and business centre.
COMMENTARY:
Shimizu Mega-City would be a colossal landmark, fit to host the fictitious Tyrell Corporation. Its ambition and scale would forever capture the imagination of the world and cast a shadow on Tokyo itself, the capital city of the world’s first and only post-civilisation. The Burj Khalifa already towers 88 meters above the theoretical Shimizu, yet it would be demoted to just an obelisk in the sand, would the colossal Mega-Pyramid and its heart of twenty four hanging skyscrapers ever be constructed. This is may be the sincere aim for building it: as a symbol for the ambition, capacity and glory of Mankind. It is worth remembering that in its iconic portrayal, the Tyrell pyramids dominate a dark burning dystopian anthropocene. Should Shimizu look-alikes be in fact constructed, we may usher in more of Tyrell's Los Angeles: its burgeoning masses evading to some billionaire's newly industrialised outer world colonies (or be interred into another billionaire's Metaverse), all on the backdrop of decrepit urban landscapes implacably crumbling in acid rain. With this prescience in mind, it may be better to let the pharaohs, their ambitions and iconography be bygone and search out a different, more humane and restorative path through and beyond our very authentic accelerating environmental collapse.
The Mirrored Cities project and its "ELEOS" Islets as they are formally proposed here further, similarly carry themselves with the overbearing scale of a Shimizu Megastructure, yet they deconstruct and transmute its implacable mass into a powerful humane and ecological functional formal hierarchy. As landmark architecture, the Mirrored Cities are meant to register as definitive rallies for recovery from of our present toxic anthropocentric evolutionary cul-de-sacs. They further strengthen the initiatives that recent urban renewal programs have undertaken. The Mirrored Cities scale unequivocally signals our willingness and capacity to plan big and build big with ecology and humanity as primary drive, by means of visible palpable colossal architectural undertakings.
The environmental design is fundamental to the floating Mirrored Cities, as are social considerations, creating economic opportunities and setting living standards that are more affordable and with different arguably better qualities and goals.
The Mirrored Cities project and its "ELEOS" Islets as they are formally proposed here further, similarly carry themselves with the overbearing scale of a Shimizu Megastructure, yet they deconstruct and transmute its implacable mass into a powerful humane and ecological functional formal hierarchy. As landmark architecture, the Mirrored Cities are meant to register as definitive rallies for recovery from of our present toxic anthropocentric evolutionary cul-de-sacs. They further strengthen the initiatives that recent urban renewal programs have undertaken. The Mirrored Cities scale unequivocally signals our willingness and capacity to plan big and build big with ecology and humanity as primary drive, by means of visible palpable colossal architectural undertakings.
The environmental design is fundamental to the floating Mirrored Cities, as are social considerations, creating economic opportunities and setting living standards that are more affordable and with different arguably better qualities and goals.
INDUSTRIAL CAPABILITY
MARINE INSTALLATIONS
MARINE INSTALLATIONS
CRUDE CARRIER SHIP: "SEAWISE GIANT", a.k.a. Knock Nevis, an ultra large crude carrier class
• 1979 – Sumimoto Heavy Industries
• 31.541 sq. m • 458,45 m long • 68,8 m beam • 24,611 m draught • 29.8 m depth • 16 knots
The longest and the heaviest ship ever built (*2011), the Seawise Giant, had a displacement of 657,019 tones and with her drought of 24,6 meters was incapable of navigating the English Channel, the Suez Canal or the Panama Canal. It is considered the largest ship ever build and the heaviest man-made object. The ship could reach up to 16.5 knots (30.6 km/h) in fair weather and it needed 5.5 miles (8.9 km) to stop from that speed. It had a 2 miles (3.2 km) turning circle.
• 1979 – Sumimoto Heavy Industries
• 31.541 sq. m • 458,45 m long • 68,8 m beam • 24,611 m draught • 29.8 m depth • 16 knots
The longest and the heaviest ship ever built (*2011), the Seawise Giant, had a displacement of 657,019 tones and with her drought of 24,6 meters was incapable of navigating the English Channel, the Suez Canal or the Panama Canal. It is considered the largest ship ever build and the heaviest man-made object. The ship could reach up to 16.5 knots (30.6 km/h) in fair weather and it needed 5.5 miles (8.9 km) to stop from that speed. It had a 2 miles (3.2 km) turning circle.
MS Allure of the Seas and her sister ship Oasis of the Seas are the world’s largest passenger vessels. The order was given in February 2006 and under the name “Project Genesis” construction officially began at STX Europe in Turku, Finland, in February 2008. Her displacement – the actual weight – is estimated at around 100.000 tons, similar to that of an American Nimitz-class aircraft carrier. The steel hull alone weighs approx. 54.000 tons. Among its highlights are a 1380 seats theatre, an ice skating ring and a two-deck dance hall.
• 2008 – Royal Caribbean International, 8100 souls (5400 passengers + crew), $1.2bn vessel
• approx. 325.000 sq. m • 361 m long • 47 m beam • 9,4 m draught • 22,55 m depth • 72 m height above water • 18 decks
• 2008 – Royal Caribbean International, 8100 souls (5400 passengers + crew), $1.2bn vessel
• approx. 325.000 sq. m • 361 m long • 47 m beam • 9,4 m draught • 22,55 m depth • 72 m height above water • 18 decks
"THE WORLD" SUPERLINER SHIP: luxury floating apartments
• 2002 – ResindenSea in Miraramar, Florida, a privately owned floating residential community
• 43,524 gross tonnage • 196.35 m long • 29.8 m beam • 6.7 m draught • 18.5-knot (34.3 km/h) diesel power • 400 – 450 souls
The World has 165 residential units (106 apartments, 19 studio apartments, and 40 studios), all owned by the ship's residents. Between 100 and 300 residents, their guests and a crew of 250 live on board as the ship slowly navigates the globe, pausing in most ports from 2 to 5 days. All owners have a voice in choosing the year’s itinerary. Among such facilities unique to its residential nature are a boutique, a grocery store and delicatessen. Supplementing the full kitchens in all apartments are five restaurants. Among on-board entertainment features are a movie theatre, music performances and a library, while classes are offered on various topics such as navigation, arts and crafts, photography and dance. As of 2010, a 328 sq. ft. (30.5 m2) studio has a list price of USD $600,000. Ocean Residence 1006, 2 bedroom, 2.5 bath, list price USD $2,950,000. The World Suite 1108/1110 list price USD $13,500,000. Monthly homeowner dues range from $20,000 per month (for the smaller units) and up, and cover fuel, crew, maintenance and a meal allowance for the owner.
• 2002 – ResindenSea in Miraramar, Florida, a privately owned floating residential community
• 43,524 gross tonnage • 196.35 m long • 29.8 m beam • 6.7 m draught • 18.5-knot (34.3 km/h) diesel power • 400 – 450 souls
The World has 165 residential units (106 apartments, 19 studio apartments, and 40 studios), all owned by the ship's residents. Between 100 and 300 residents, their guests and a crew of 250 live on board as the ship slowly navigates the globe, pausing in most ports from 2 to 5 days. All owners have a voice in choosing the year’s itinerary. Among such facilities unique to its residential nature are a boutique, a grocery store and delicatessen. Supplementing the full kitchens in all apartments are five restaurants. Among on-board entertainment features are a movie theatre, music performances and a library, while classes are offered on various topics such as navigation, arts and crafts, photography and dance. As of 2010, a 328 sq. ft. (30.5 m2) studio has a list price of USD $600,000. Ocean Residence 1006, 2 bedroom, 2.5 bath, list price USD $2,950,000. The World Suite 1108/1110 list price USD $13,500,000. Monthly homeowner dues range from $20,000 per month (for the smaller units) and up, and cover fuel, crew, maintenance and a meal allowance for the owner.
PERDIDO OIL PLATFORM
• 2010 – operated by Royal Dutch Shell and built at a cost of $3 billion.
• Perdido’s hull is 550 feet long (167 m) and 118 feet wide (36 m). It’s nearly as tall as the Eiffel Tower and weighs 50,000 tonnes.
• 2010 – operated by Royal Dutch Shell and built at a cost of $3 billion.
• Perdido’s hull is 550 feet long (167 m) and 118 feet wide (36 m). It’s nearly as tall as the Eiffel Tower and weighs 50,000 tonnes.
COMMENTARY:
Companies have been building ships larger than the Empire State Building beginning 1979. The greatest cruise ship of today can accommodate over eight thousand passengers (*2011). The present ship-building facilities around the world have the capability to manufacture not only floating fortresses such as the Knock Nevis and the Allure of the Seas, but entire city blocks..
Companies have been building ships larger than the Empire State Building beginning 1979. The greatest cruise ship of today can accommodate over eight thousand passengers (*2011). The present ship-building facilities around the world have the capability to manufacture not only floating fortresses such as the Knock Nevis and the Allure of the Seas, but entire city blocks..
In the context of the Mirrored Cities project, it is relevant to understand the production capabilities that the existing ship-building and dry dock infrastructure possess. The purpose of this chapter was to illustrate a proven extraordinary infrastructural and technical capability to produce large-scale, economically viable, waterborne industrial facilities and architecture. Once assembled, each floating city unit of the Mirrored Cities would incorporate the best features of naval architecture: endurance, precision, expediency and the most advanced technologies available.
RESIDENTIAL ARCHITECTURE
VERNACULAR ARCHITECTURE
VERNACULAR ARCHITECTURE
Floating fishing villages of Southeast Asia
A community of around 1,600 people live on Ha Long Bay in four fishing villages: Cua Van, Ba Hang, Cong Tàu and Vông Viêng in Hùng Thang commune, Ha Long city. They live on floating houses and are sustained through fishing and marine aquaculture (cultivating marine biota). 600 fishing junks, which house an estimated 6,000 people dock at present in the Aberdeen Harbour, Hong Kong. All across Southeast Asia there are numerous instances where, having not found other alternatives at the time, entire communities have adapted to living on and off the sea alone.
KO PANYI a.k.a Koh Panyee, Phang Nga Province, Thailand is a fishing village notable for being built on stilts by Indonesian fishermen. The population consists of roughly 200 families or between 1500 and 2000 people descended from 2 seafaring Muslim families from Java. The settlement at Ko Panyi was established at the end of the 18th century by nomadic Malay fisherman. Ko Panyi is known as Pulau Panji in Malay language. It was during this time that the law limited land ownership solely to people of Thai national origins, and due to this fact the settlement was, for the most part, built on stilts within the protection of the island’s bay, providing easy access for the life of a fisherman. With the increase of wealth for the community, due to the growing tourism industry within Thailand, purchase of land on the island itself became a possibility, and the first structures of relevance were built; a mosque and a freshwater well.
The village has a Muslim school which is attended by both males and females in the mornings. Due to the informal nature of this education, many of the male children attend schools further afield in Phang Nga or in Phuket. Further emigration from the village is encouraged as the size of the settlement is restricted by dangerous water conditions in the rainy season. A mosque based on the island adjacent to the settlement serves the predominantly Muslim population and is a focal point and meeting place for the community. A market stocked with goods from the mainland sells basic amenities such as medicine, clothes and toiletries.
RESIDENTIAL ARCHITECTURE
DYSTOPIAN SELF-ORGANISED COMMUNITIES
KOWLOON WALLED CITY
DYSTOPIAN SELF-ORGANISED COMMUNITIES
KOWLOON WALLED CITY
KOWLOON WALLED CITY
Infamous the fabled. Rising abruptly in the heart of urban Hong Kong, 10 to 14 storeys high, an area 200 metres by 100 metres of solid building home to some 35,000 people, Kowloon City stood until recently as one of the densest urban slums in the world. It has been debated that it was also the closest thing to a truly self-regulating, self-sufficient (and well documented) modern city. After serious fire in the ‘70s, the authorities were finally allowed in with electric meters. Out of all the chaos and apparent lack of real organisation, a sort of society began to flourish. Soon, there were factories of every description, small shops, schools and kindergartens, some of them run by organisations such as the Salvation Army. Medical and dental care were also provided locally, by many of the resident doctors and dentists with Chinese qualifications and years of experience, but lacking the expensive licences required to practice in the rest of the Colony. These residents set up their clinics on the edges of the City and charged their patients a fraction of what they would pay elsewhere. Numerous restaurants lay on the City’s fringes, and embedded deep in its heart were a temple and relics of the City’s distant past.
And so life went on. Every afternoon the alleys were alive with the throb of hidden machinery and the clacking of Mahjong tiles, while up on the roof, in cages not much smaller than some of the City’s homes, cooed hundreds of racing pigeons, joined there by children playing after school. And here, in this richness and diversity, lies what was truly fascinating about the City. For all its physical shortcomings, and they were many, its residents had succeeded in creating a true community - and, ironically, one that was to flourish in the City’s final years, after the authorities had moved in to arrange the clearance and the Triads had been forced to move out. – City of Darkness: Life in Kowloon Walled City
IN CONCLUSION:
The Walled City is both a celebration and a caricature of the modern metropolis. It celebrates the dynamism and vibrancy of social density and closeness. It caricatures the "amazing" inconspicuous proclivity of urban typologies at endlessly boxing city inhabitants in between the endless colossal opaque walls of their constituent buildings. Going back to the early 13th century, the word amazing can be traced to amasian (a + masian, maze), which is to stupefy, to make crazy. In this labyrinthine sense, cities are still "amazing". It was only after 1704 that amazing has been recorded to mean wonderful.
Yet cities bring close together businesses, production facilities and private living spaces. It is this closeness that makes them such efficient thriving entities.
Infamous the fabled. Rising abruptly in the heart of urban Hong Kong, 10 to 14 storeys high, an area 200 metres by 100 metres of solid building home to some 35,000 people, Kowloon City stood until recently as one of the densest urban slums in the world. It has been debated that it was also the closest thing to a truly self-regulating, self-sufficient (and well documented) modern city. After serious fire in the ‘70s, the authorities were finally allowed in with electric meters. Out of all the chaos and apparent lack of real organisation, a sort of society began to flourish. Soon, there were factories of every description, small shops, schools and kindergartens, some of them run by organisations such as the Salvation Army. Medical and dental care were also provided locally, by many of the resident doctors and dentists with Chinese qualifications and years of experience, but lacking the expensive licences required to practice in the rest of the Colony. These residents set up their clinics on the edges of the City and charged their patients a fraction of what they would pay elsewhere. Numerous restaurants lay on the City’s fringes, and embedded deep in its heart were a temple and relics of the City’s distant past.
And so life went on. Every afternoon the alleys were alive with the throb of hidden machinery and the clacking of Mahjong tiles, while up on the roof, in cages not much smaller than some of the City’s homes, cooed hundreds of racing pigeons, joined there by children playing after school. And here, in this richness and diversity, lies what was truly fascinating about the City. For all its physical shortcomings, and they were many, its residents had succeeded in creating a true community - and, ironically, one that was to flourish in the City’s final years, after the authorities had moved in to arrange the clearance and the Triads had been forced to move out. – City of Darkness: Life in Kowloon Walled City
IN CONCLUSION:
The Walled City is both a celebration and a caricature of the modern metropolis. It celebrates the dynamism and vibrancy of social density and closeness. It caricatures the "amazing" inconspicuous proclivity of urban typologies at endlessly boxing city inhabitants in between the endless colossal opaque walls of their constituent buildings. Going back to the early 13th century, the word amazing can be traced to amasian (a + masian, maze), which is to stupefy, to make crazy. In this labyrinthine sense, cities are still "amazing". It was only after 1704 that amazing has been recorded to mean wonderful.
Yet cities bring close together businesses, production facilities and private living spaces. It is this closeness that makes them such efficient thriving entities.
Architecturally, the Mirrored Cities project sets itself as an alternative to the ubiquitous labyrinthine world cities. It coagulates, contorts and dynamically displaces itself in such manners that it continuously reveals and conceals the Sea's natural Horizons. It is in equal measure "built" and "unbuilt". Similarly to Kowloon and the vernacular floating communities of South East Asia, the ELEOS Islets appear diaphan via their formal interpretation of structure and functional hierarchy. They remain emergent, vociferous and novel, accommodating and displaying effervescent vibrant communities along their elevated commercial highways, the public waterline mantels, in the semi-public and residential winged tower blocks.
RESIDENTIAL ARCHITECTURE
DYSTOPIAN SELF-ORGANISED COMMUNITIES
GRANDE HOTEL MOZAMBIQUE (IN ABSENTIA: TORRE DE DAVID)
DYSTOPIAN SELF-ORGANISED COMMUNITIES
GRANDE HOTEL MOZAMBIQUE (IN ABSENTIA: TORRE DE DAVID)
GRANDE HOTEL MOZAMBIQUE
Once one of the most luxurious hotels in southern Africa, the Grande Hotel in Beira, Mozambique, was abandoned by its original owners five decades ago. It is now home to between 2,000 and 3,000 people who live in squalid conditions, without running water or electricity. Yet for these people the crumbling building is a self-contained community where they sleep, eat and work. For some, as well as being their home, the Grande Hotel provides their livelihoods. Its corridors act as market places, with traders selling everything from sugar to toiletries. Others sell fruit and vegetables in front of the hotel entrance. Like any community, it is organised. It is headed by a “secretary” whose job it is to resolve residents’ problems, and some residents act as security. Some of the building’s original squatters have claimed rooms as their own and now act as landlords, letting them to others. Although there is no electricity, running water or sewage system, the residents are expert improvisers. Some access electricity by connecting to external cables, while others employ solar panels, said Gamariel. The hotel’s outdoor swimming pool is now used to wash laundry, while the pool changing room is used as a mosque.
Once one of the most luxurious hotels in southern Africa, the Grande Hotel in Beira, Mozambique, was abandoned by its original owners five decades ago. It is now home to between 2,000 and 3,000 people who live in squalid conditions, without running water or electricity. Yet for these people the crumbling building is a self-contained community where they sleep, eat and work. For some, as well as being their home, the Grande Hotel provides their livelihoods. Its corridors act as market places, with traders selling everything from sugar to toiletries. Others sell fruit and vegetables in front of the hotel entrance. Like any community, it is organised. It is headed by a “secretary” whose job it is to resolve residents’ problems, and some residents act as security. Some of the building’s original squatters have claimed rooms as their own and now act as landlords, letting them to others. Although there is no electricity, running water or sewage system, the residents are expert improvisers. Some access electricity by connecting to external cables, while others employ solar panels, said Gamariel. The hotel’s outdoor swimming pool is now used to wash laundry, while the pool changing room is used as a mosque.
Similarly with the better documented Torre de David in Caracas, Venezuela, as a more vertical oversized iteration.
COMMENTARY:
The Grande Hotel (Torre de David and others) are an ad-hoc manifestations of modern mixed-use towers. Once deprived of artificial lighting, glass, precious wood and luxurious furnishings, what remained of a previous architectural beacon for comfort was what most typical concrete constructions are to begin with: dark, oppressive hulks in which people desperately try to live out humane nurturing existences. I would like to point out how superficially designed the physical line is, that sets apart a luminous and leisured idyllic habitation from a cavernous desperate effort. Sustainable architectural quality often whimsically hangs by a capricious socioeconomic thread. In the case of the Grande Hotel, skin-deep architectural furnishings yet again disastrously played a much too critical role in setting aside brief heaven from a continued human and environmental hell. One wonders: how much more does individual and social life improve, when architectural design increases in profundity and sophistication?
The Grande Hotel (Torre de David and others) are an ad-hoc manifestations of modern mixed-use towers. Once deprived of artificial lighting, glass, precious wood and luxurious furnishings, what remained of a previous architectural beacon for comfort was what most typical concrete constructions are to begin with: dark, oppressive hulks in which people desperately try to live out humane nurturing existences. I would like to point out how superficially designed the physical line is, that sets apart a luminous and leisured idyllic habitation from a cavernous desperate effort. Sustainable architectural quality often whimsically hangs by a capricious socioeconomic thread. In the case of the Grande Hotel, skin-deep architectural furnishings yet again disastrously played a much too critical role in setting aside brief heaven from a continued human and environmental hell. One wonders: how much more does individual and social life improve, when architectural design increases in profundity and sophistication?
The Mirrored Cities project reinterprets the typical dense motionless hulking slab (super)towers into aerated, more dynamic and restorative living places.