In a quiet, shady street in Rijswijk, the Netherlands, Koen Olthuis and the design team at Waterstudio are changing the world. From this deceptively nondescript headquarters, Waterstudio is designing the cities of the future. If Olthuis has his way, they will be safer, more flexible and more resilient than current cities. How will he do this? Olthuis is designing floating cities. — nextcity.org
8 Comments
Probably not.
Possibly maybe.
An industry to be dominated by engineers. Making it happen is to rigorous for architects. The idea will be pushed until a manufacturer picks it up and then mainly engineers will design them and oil companies will find use for them and hire mainly engineers for the simple no thrill models. Don't worry it will eventually happen and that is when architects will stop participating in the development.
Snake oil. We can't even build sustainable cities on land, what's to say that 'adaptable' (read-disposable) cities on the water will fare better? If anything, we should be re-treating from both the ocean and land to allow it them to re-generate the ecosystems that life depends on. How are 100,000 people cities floating in the ocean supposed to be safer and more environmentally sound in an era of increased weather volitility and oceanic acidification? These pie in the sky solutions, while intriguing on the surface, simply help defer the hard choices we will need to make about where and how we should inhabit our lovely blue pearl.
The Elon Musk Effect.
Really big, really expesive, really stupid ideas that get taken seriously.
There is a culture of lame internet ideas that are tweeted then forgotten two seconds later.
Ha after the rich are done ruining the land they will just sail away on Elysium.
I don't think you're too far from the truth jla-x. That's what the whole privatization thing is about. Slam everything about the government so you can push more services into the private sector where they can be owned by a few. A parallel world without any accountability.
Like Elon Musk, these guys are spewing magic dust as a way of generating publicity. No harm there and no doubt there will be some usefull bits that come from exploring these far flung ideas. But our obsession with the new and improved, like the 're-birth' that born again Christians must feel, facilitates corporate America's need to produce stuff at an unsustainable clip. What kid is going to explore in one of these 'smart' islands?
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