Floating Homes: Architects’ Genius Answer to Rising Seas

Floating Homes: Architects' Genius Answer to Rising Seas

Around the globe, architects are exploring ways to make use of the rising water as oceans continue to rise along with other phenomenon like erratic flood, climate change and global warming.

With the Dutch at the wheel, they have started projects in the unique aqua-architecture including a maritime housing estate, a floating prison facility and greenhouses in the Netherlands.

"The focus on floating solutions has grown enormously. It has shifted from freak architecture to more sustainable, flexible alternatives," says Dutch architect Koen Olthuis, citing increasing support from the government and interest among investors in Asia and Russia.

Even in the earlier decades, architects and planners, particularly Japanese and Americans, dreamed of marine cities housing millions of people.

"Climate change will require a radical shift within design practice from the solid-state view of landscape urbanism to the more dynamic, liquid-state view of waterscape urbanism," says Danai Thaitakoo, a Thai landscape architect, who is involved in several projects based on this idea. "Instead of embodying permanence, solidity and longevity, liquid perception will emphasize change, adaptation."

Construction recently began on the Olthuis-designed New Water estate, 600 homes and a luxury apartment complex on land purposely inundated.  He added that interests in water-based living and work space have accelerated over the past decade.

The Maas houses sell from $310,000, about 25 percent more than equivalent homes, in part due to the cost of connecting them to specially designed utilities and drainage.

Posted by James Fried on Wednesday April 04 2012, 3:58 AM EDT. Ref: Yahoo. All trademarks acknowledged. Filed under Featured News, World. Comments and Trackbacks closed. Follow responses: RSS 2.0