Faced with the threat of rising sea levels said to jeopardize 90% of the world's largest cities by 2050, UN Habitat convened its first roundtable to discuss potential adaptation strategies. In particular, the dozens of experts, investors, scientists, and officials, were there to explore new approaches to building sustainable offshore hubs for living and working, also known as floating cities.
The specific proposal was for Oceanix City, a collaboration between Bjarke Ingels, water engineering and zero waste experts, and Mark Collins Chen, an entrepreneur who wants to build groups of floating islands that would be able to act as new cities for those impacted by rising sea levels. Chen—who also cofounded Blue Frontiers in 2017 to build floating homes, offices, and hotels—has been looking to actualize the idea of a society-at-sea since learning of the impact rising waters would have on the islands of his native French Polynesia.
Working with the Danish architect, Oceanix has presented a utopian vision for a city at sea, where residents use 100% renewable energy, eat a plant-based diet grown via ocean farming and aquaponics, and tiny-sized smart cars roam around.
The maritime metropolis is comprised of prefabricated, 4.5-acre platforms that are secured to the ocean floor using biorock and would be able to withstand a category 5 storm. Each platform will house—affordably, we are assured—300 residents, along with mixed-use spaces, communal farming functions, and other community-based uses like education and healthcare.
As communities grow, transform and adapt over time, the modular platforms can be clustered together to form larger communities—i.e. villages, a cluster of six, and cities, a cluster of six villages. Eventually, the goal would be to allow the floating islands to achieve full autonomy, so that residents have a self-sufficient place to live. For Ingels, he describes this as building "thriving nautical communities for people who care about each other and our planet."
These sexy renderings just make me irrationally furious. Fixing the climate problems we face will take hard, unsexy, collaborative, methodical work - not fun kayak rides to pick up a dockside latte!
I know Bjarke's Sustainable Hedonism is attractive but I'm believing in it less and less.
"These sexy renderings just make me irrationally furious. Fixing the climate problems we face will take hard, unsexy, collaborative, methodical work - not fun kayak rides to pick up a dockside latte!
I know Bjarke's Sustainable Hedonism is attractive but I'm believing in it less and less."
We need to do both, this is not about fixing climate problems but trying to make it work with the knowledge that we simply are facing sea level rise. It takes that as a given fact, which it simply is. We can't design ourselves out of climate change, but we can design ourselves out of too much doom and gloom as a result of climate change. No matter what unsexy collaborative efforts, that's not going to stop the continuos rising of sea levels, coastal cities will flood, so this is one way to deal with the loss of human habitat. This is not about a belief in sustainable hedonism, this is just about building floating communities. My €0.02
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Hopefully it'll turn out better than last time.
I love that movie.
Great idea. It's not as if the ocean is a dynamic environment.
where are these "calm, sheltered waters near coastal megacities" you speak of....
This looks less like a UN project and more like another playground for the 1% ... it's shocking the UN is being used to float these dumb concepts.
if all of the icecaps melted, there would still be a lot of land, but the existing cities would mostly be gone -- and we'd still be forced to live by the coasts as ships are still the most efficient and zero energy wind travel around the world (after all of the oil is gone).
These sexy renderings just make me irrationally furious. Fixing the climate problems we face will take hard, unsexy, collaborative, methodical work - not fun kayak rides to pick up a dockside latte!
I know Bjarke's Sustainable Hedonism is attractive but I'm believing in it less and less.
"fun kayak rides to pick up a dockside latte" is excellent, Donna. LOL'd at that one. Is that kayak Uber or Lyft?
But the real trick is getting your dry cleaning home... dry.
Spot on! This is just disingenuous clickbait.
What’s frustrating is they can come out with nice designs on one day (like the BQE redesign) and then goofy tone deaf PR sci-fi the next. I think it’s a strategy, but one that only leads to more luxury condo clients in the end
For a firm of their size, they have to do lucrative one-liner condo projects to justify their staffing. BIG made that decision when they expanded to their current size. Cultural and institutional projects just can't bring in a consistent revenue stream.
Eventually, the goal would be to allow the floating islands to achieve full autonomy, so that residents have a self-sufficient place to live.
It is the esthetics of denial, retreat, and self-absorption we have seen elsewhere. Comparison could be made to Hudson Yards.
For Ingels, he describes this as building "thriving nautical communities for people who care about each other and our planet."
All the uncool people, of course, will perish.
So much for alarmist fantasies and virtue signaling by celebrity architects trying desperately to stay in the limelight.
"Located in calm, sheltered waters ..."
Reminds me of Musk's Mars mission. Bjarke should lead the way by moving into one of these floating turds.
See, B'yark's figured it all out. The secret is all the triangles and hexagons. They have a calm, soothing effect on those nasty old oceans. The problem with that oil rig is that it's all cubey and orthogonal. Duh.
Those photos make my hands sweat!!
"Located in calm, sheltered waters, near coastal megacities .... " where there are no hurricanes, typhoons, cyclones, tsunamis, and so forth. Right.
"These sexy renderings just make me irrationally furious. Fixing the climate problems we face will take hard, unsexy, collaborative, methodical work - not fun kayak rides to pick up a dockside latte!
I know Bjarke's Sustainable Hedonism is attractive but I'm believing in it less and less."
We need to do both, this is not about fixing climate problems but trying to make it work with the knowledge that we simply are facing sea level rise. It takes that as a given fact, which it simply is. We can't design ourselves out of climate change, but we can design ourselves out of too much doom and gloom as a result of climate change. No matter what unsexy collaborative efforts, that's not going to stop the continuos rising of sea levels, coastal cities will flood, so this is one way to deal with the loss of human habitat. This is not about a belief in sustainable hedonism, this is just about building floating communities. My €0.02
Yes sea levels will rise/are rising. But aren't the infrastructure and technological challenges of floating harder than just moving inland and building smarter on dry land? Granted, we have lots of space in the US for that inward movement.
That might work for the US, but other countries might not have that luxury. Also, what will be the conditions on that dry land? There are already serious issues with droughts and lack of fresh water in large chunks of the US too since rainfall is decreasing, etc.
Floating is really not that hard actually, you don't need heavy and expensive foundations, all you need to do is trap some air and Bob's your uncle, you can even move your home easier if you need. We have quite a floating culture in NL actually with houseboats and floating homes, even entire neighbourhoods floating on water. Once again Bjarke takes his cues from the Dutch :-)
current drought in the us - https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/
This is a tent-city proposal for flooded-out coastal megacities.
Calling Harry Frankfurt.
corporate bullshit strikes again.
Under the aegis of the U.N.
but it's weird, looks like a socialist utopia for billionaires that don't really want it.
It is more like necessity of surviving in this world. Florida will be one of the first cities which will need this.
do I tell you? I'll just wait until somebody else tells you....
Looks familiar
The Chinese are going with Plan B in the South China Sea. Guess they didn't get the memo from the UN.
More info, please.
Dredge and dump.
Cf:
"thriving nautical communities for people who care about each other and our planet."
only problem bjarke bro, is that people who can afford to throw money at this don't really care about each other or the planet.
Look familiar? Like I said, utopia for the 1%
That's not floating
This may not be a bad idea...put a bunch of assholes on a raft and send them out to sea...
Peter Thiel did it first.
looks like fyre festival 2.0
Each City will have an ORB floating at the center, that will be washed clean of the dusts of Burning Man by said rising sea levels!
Bjarke's next plan to save the earth:
“Finally, a viable living solution for all 10,000 of us.”
megafloat research has been around in Singapore since the '90s. It's crucial for survival for the island nation.
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