UN Meeting’s Gorgeous Renderings Of Extreme Weather-Proof Floating City
Architectural firm BIG has unveiled a beautiful concept for a new floating city to assist populations that are subjected to extreme weather events and rising sea levels.
BIG founder Bjarke Ingels revealed the blueprints in a discussion on sustainable floating cities at the United Nations New York headquarters. Dubbed the ‘Oceanix City’, the plan consists of buoyant islands clustered together to form villages in groups of six. These clusters can be subsequently repeated in any multiple of six to form a 12-hectare village that holds up to 1,650 residents, and even to form an archipelago home for 10,000 citizens.
Oceanix, a company that develops innovative ways to build on water, roped in the creative minds of BIG, which in turn teamed up with MIT's Center for Ocean Engineering and Oceanix to form the hexagonal island.
The main aim of the ‘Oceanix City’ is to provide a habitable, offshore environment to counter the effects of rising sea levels, a problem expected to plague 90-percent of the world’s coastal cities by 2050. Each module is built on land then towed to sea, before being anchored in place as miniature islands that can withstand up to a category-five hurricane.
The firm also plans to erect the buildings on these modules with locally-obtained replenishable materials, as well as adopt renewable energy sources like wind, water turbines and solar panels. The roofs of these structures seem to also extend outwards for shade and to house solar panels, according to the renderings.
Additionally, the cities are conceptualized to be self-sufficient—expected to farm and produce their own food—and follow a zero-waste policy.
Each island also has 3,000 square meters of agricultural land that can be repurposed as free space.
In hopes of creating a cohesive living environment, each village will be equipped with water baths, markets and spiritual and cultural hubs to help people live together as a community. The aim is to create an affordable yet adaptable solution for otherwise displaced societies.
The concept’s creators detail that the sustainable floating cities should serve as refuge to the world’s needy, rather than be a luxurious option for the rich.
Amina Mohammad, the UN Deputy Security General, commends that this might mark a major step for developing cities that are threatened by rising sea levels and extreme weather events.
There are serious ideas in the pipeline for a prototype to be built and launched on New York’s East River. ‘Oceanix City’ follows similar pre-existing projects such as the colony of floating houses along Amsterdam’s IJ river and an amphibious house found in the UK. Even the US is joining in the craze, with Boston and Miami having taken steps to address flooding and other ways to bolster their vulnerable shorelines.
We look forward to continue working with an incredible team and @UNHABITAT to implement resilient & sustainable #floatingcities around the world! View Oceanix City here: https://t.co/X8FKQL0AnC #maritimemetropolis #oceanixcity pic.twitter.com/g8MLL27CKn
— BIG (@BIGstertweets) April 4, 2019
[via Dezeen, opening image via BIG]
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