HOW CLOSE ARE WE TO LIVING IN THE OCEAN?

  DO YOU EVER GET THE URGE TO JUST BUILD A NEW WORLD? LIKE, FROM SCRATCH? TO RE-THINK THE UNSUSTAINABLE PATTERNS THAT LED TO OVERCROWDED CITIES, DWINDLING NATURAL RESOURCES, AND THE DRAMATIC IMPACTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE? SOME SAY WE SHOULD JUST CUT OUR LOSSES AND MOVE TO MARS.

 AFTER ALL, WE’RE QUICKLY RUNNING OUT OF FRONTIERS HERE ON EARTH EXCEPT, OF COURSE, THAT SALTY ONE COVERING 70% OF OUR PLANET.

 

HOW CLOSE ARE WE TO LIVING IN THE OCEAN?

WE’VE ALREADY BUILT UNDERWATER HOTELS AND SUBMARINE LABORATORIES, AND WE KNOW WHAT YOU’RE THINKING... AN ATLANTIAN METROPOLIS WOULD BE AWESOME. 

BUT THERE ARE A FEW REASONS BIOSHOCK IS PURELY FICTIONAL.  

INTENSE PRESSURE, A DISTINCT LACK OF OXYGEN AND LIGHT, MAKE THIS 

EXTREMELY EXPENSIVE ON A LARGE SCALE. 

BUT WHAT WE COULD DO IS BUILD A CITY ON TOP OF THE WATER. 

IN FACT, COASTAL CITIES HAVE BEEN EXPANDING INTO THE OCEAN FOR DECADES, OFTEN RELYING ON DESTRUCTIVE LAND RECLAMATION TECHNIQUES.

 

BUT WHAT IF WE SIMPLY DESIGNED CITIES TO FLOAT? FLOATING VILLAGES EXIST ALL OVER THE WORLD, AND OVER THE PAST FEW DECADES, SOME WILD IDEAS HAVE SURFACED FOR SCALING THAT UP. 

It's not about kind of a rarefied, resort-like, free government, totally independent world 200 miles off the shoreline. 

It's really about creating a working neighbourhood that could sit within a protected harbour, adjacent to a dense coastal city. 90% of the world’s major cities are going to be dealing with the effects of sea-level rise in the coming decades.

 AS IT BEGINS TO SWEEP OUR FOUNDATIONS AWAY, COULD SEA LEVEL RISE FINALLY PROVIDE THE FOUNDATION NEEDED FOR SUCH AN EXPERIMENT? 

A COMPANY CALLED OCEANIC THINKS SO.

 ALONGSIDE INTERNATIONAL CONTRIBUTORS, OCEANIC AND ITS TEAM OF DESIGNERS AND ENGINEERS RECENTLY UNVEILED AT THE UNITED NATIONS A CONCEPT FOR A SUSTAINABLE FLOATING CITY.

 

THE DESIGN AIMS TO SUPPORT 10,000 RESIDENTS, ACCOUNTING FOR FOOD, WASTE, WATER, ENERGY, AND MOBILITY. 

We wanted to make sure that we would provide all the resources that the people would need to really feel like they're part of a vibrant collective system.

 

The design of Oceanic city is a move away from the very flashy, futurist kind of utopian proposals we see a lot. It reflects the kind of utopian architectural style that has been developed maybe in the last 20 years called New Urbanism to really give that nostalgic neighbourhood feel to it. 

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THE TEAM STARTED WITH A SIMPLE CHOICE: THEY OPTED FOR A PONTOON STRUCTURE, FOR MORE SHALLOW, SHELTERED HARBORS, OVER A SEMI-SUBMERSIBLE DESIGN SUITED TO THE OPEN OCEAN. THESE STRUCTURES, BESIDES BEING FLEXIBLE AND MODULAR, ARE RESISTANT TO TSUNAMI AND EARTHQUAKE DAMAGE PROVIDED THEY’RE DESIGNED FORTHE PHYSICS OF WATER. 

For any floating body on a water surface, there are actually six forces that act on it. You've got the surge force, where an object sort of slides forward and backwards. 

You've got a sway, where it slides from side to side. You've got the heave, where it goes up and down; a roll or a pitch or yaw, where it rotates horizontally. 

The hexagon just ends up being a great way of approximating the stability of a circular shape in the water. It really lends itself well to combining into fields, or rings, too, when you combine six of them, create a sheltered harbour. 

Then those kinds of villages, or clusters, can combine to create an even larger sheltered harbour. That kind of system of growth continues in a fractal pattern. 

OKAY, SO AN AQUATIC, EARTHQUAKE-RESISTANT BEEHIVE THAT GROWS OUTWARD LIKE A SNOWFLAKE? I’M ONBOARD. BUT WITHOUT WORKER BEES AND A QUEEN, HOW DOES THIS COLONY SUSTAIN ITSELF? 

You could harness energy if you had a decent wind source through offshore wind turbines.

 There's also this technology called OTEC, basically what it does is that it takes the differential between the surface temperature of the sea and deeper waters to drive cooling that creates an energy source. 

IN ADDITION TO WIND TURBINES, OCEANIC CITY WILL RELY ON SOLAR PANELS AND WAVE ENERGY. 

BUT WHAT THE TEAM BELIEVES IS MOST CRUCIAL A MIX OF HIGH- AND LOW-TECH SOLUTIONS, PLUS SOME MINOR LIFESTYLE ADJUSTMENTS BYITS RESIDENTS. 

The plan is to embrace a plant-based diet.

 When you eliminate animals from a diet, we can, right off the bat, start saving our resources of land and water. 

We are relying on greenhouses, orchards, and also aquaponics and aeroponics systems which will be used within the platforms. 

We are going to reduce the number of waste we create by having reusable packaging throughout the island and have as little waste created as possible. 

We will recycle, we will reuse, and we will compost. 

THOUGH THIS MAY JUST SEEM LIKE A QUICK FIX FOR OUR OVERDEVELOPMENT PROBLEM, OCEANIC WANTS TO CONSIDER LONG-TERM SOLUTIONS THAT HELP THE MARINE ECOSYSTEM TOO. 

You would really want cutouts to allow sunlight to penetrate. In terms of the pontoon structures, some of them use gill technology that allows water to actually pass through the structure minimizing the impact on the environment. 

We're working with the Global Coral Reef Alliance on a technology called Biorock, which takes a steel cage, puts a very small amount of electricity into it. 

That electrical charge helps attract mineral deposits, which then attract coral and marine life. By building up reefs, and itself acts as a kind of wave break, it can actually start to help dampen the effects of storm surge, and waves, and erosion on existing coastlines. 

I think what floating structures offer is quite a good intimacy with the water. 

There's almost the sense of accountability or ownership of that particular patch of ocean that you want to preserve. BUT WHAT IT SEEMS EVERYONE IS AFTER AS THEY FLOAT THESE PROPOSALS… IS A CHANCE TO START FRESH. 

The modular approach to this design allows the city to flex its muscles in different ways. And fit the needs not only of the city itself but of the coastal city that it's adjacent to. 

The lessons that we learn on the water, how we're growing food within a more compact footprint, how we're generating our energy, how we're dealing with our waste are then lessons that can actually then be exported back to land.

 BUT WE WON’T IMMEDIATELY JUMP INTO A FULL-FLEDGED CITY RIGHT OFF THE BAT. 

THESE PROJECTS COULD START OUT IN A FEW DIFFERENT WAYS. If you're talking about satellite installations you would really be looking at the biggest corporations in existence right now, which are tech companies.

 Something like Google or Facebook creating a campus or a massive data centre on a floating platform off somewhere. 

In a lot of ways, I think Disney would be perhaps the best candidate for creating a floating resort city. The first larger village for Oceanic could be something like a university. SO… HOW CLOSE ARE WE TO LIVING IN THE OCEAN? I think we're closer than you might think.

 Once we have a partnership with an interesting city or state, we'll be able to pretty quickly get the first prototype in the water and then really just build on it from there. 

We work on a lot of different kinds of climate change adaptation projects. In the case of New York City, we have a really dense, existing coastal neighbourhood. 

But what the Oceanic city provides is a tool to adapt. I think we will see a lot of cities expand onto floating parts of themselves in the next 20 years. 

The technology is there... let's try and make sure that we don't need for it to be so pressing before we actually create these structures. Let’s create it in anticipation of the need that will come.