The future is floating, these builders believe.
As the seas rise, a small team of big dreamers have proposed we take to the water’s surface and live atop the waves.
An international team of architects and designers led by Italian firm Luca Curci Architects and UK-based Tim Fu Design, “with the support of Artificial Intelligence,” have released renderings of their eco-friendly proposal for a sustainable floating city capable of housing 50,000 inhabitants. The newfangled photos resemble something out of the 2013 dystopian sci-fi flick “Elysium” starring Matt Damon, in which Earth is a hellhole and the rich live on a lush, tech-filled space station that orbits the planet’s sad remains.
There are plenty of curved lines, smooth white structures, orbs with webbed roofs, a circular-appearing street grid, and something resembling the aesthetic of Manhattan’s Little Island, only applied at a metropolis-wide scale.
The “Floating City community will feature a total of 25 acres of interconnected platforms” and various neighborhoods, each containing “hi-rise and low-rise buildings surrounded by a membrane of photovoltaic glasses which provide electricity to the whole floating system and make it energy-independent,” according to a press release.
There will be a zero-waste policy, 100% green transport systems, water desalination, energy storage solutions, an array of renewable energy resources and farming — all on a buoyant bit of manmade municipality that’s smaller than Staten Island.
“The sustainable city allows its residents to get into a healthier lifestyle, in connection with natural elements, re-thinking the traditional concept of community and society,” says the release. It will also be a tourist destination, with areas for hotels, wellness centers, shopping malls, sports centers and leisure attractions, according to the release.
To visit, guests and residents can come by sea or air thanks to “several naval entries,” external and internal docks, and droneports attached to every floating platform.
The minds behind the project see it as an “adaptable, and scalable” blueprint for other such developments. As for where they’ll build it, the site is currently listed as “worldwide” on the website.
Floating City will be presented for the first time during this year’s Biennale Architettura.
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