SERIOUS WONDER | 8 Floating Architectural Visions Of Our Future

8 floating architectural visions of our future that will inspire and amaze…

Since water and flooding has been on everyone’s mind this week (particularly here in New York), we figured we’d throw together some super cool water-centric architecture. Most of these buildings are winners and honorable mentions in eVolo magazine’s annual skyscraper competition. I had the good fortune to write for eVolo in the past, and I was always fascinated by the incredibly creative design submissions eVolo received for the competition. More awesome conceptual and futuristic architecture can be seen here. Hopefully we won’t need to inhabit any of these any time soon, although I wouldn’t really mind. Who knows though, maybe you’re about to see your future house?

1. Noah’s Ark, Aleksandar Joksimovic, Jelena Nikolic

This floating city is meant to be 100% sustainable and to accommodate land-dwellers displaced by disasters, war, and generally all the bad things that happen on land. Noah’s Ark’s can be strung together to form networks connected by underwater floating tunnels. Click the photo to read more.

2 . Oceanscraper, Hui Chen, Luying Guo

In this design, custom submarines dock with the larger cone-shaped infrastructure to form an adaptable, ever-changing structure. Submarines may come and go as they please. The design is also powered by nuclear power generated by two decomissioned Russian nuclear submarines that sit on the ocean floor underneath the Oceanscraper. Click the photo to read more.

3. Waterscraper, Mathias Koester

More of a vacation destination than a necessary habitable space, the Waterscraper by Mathias Koester offers ocean access to tourists and researchers alike. The Waterscraper reaches 400 ft. below the ocean surface, with viewing decks and research space included. Doesn’t hurt that theres 8 beaches on board either. Click the photo to read more.

4. HO2+Scraper, Sarly Adre Bin Sarkum

The HO2+Scraper may be my favorite design of this collection. Like many of the other designs, its meant to be entirely sustainable, its own self-sufficient floating city. It has a forest on top, aquaculture and agriculture space, and actually provides for an environment for local sea-life. It’s bioluminescent “tentacles” generate power through their kinetic energy fueled by sea current, and are a place for sea-life to gather. The HO2+Scraper is not just zero impact, it actually provides more to the people and environment it serves. Click the picture to read more.

5. Water Circle, YoungWan Kim, SueHwan Kwun, JunYoung Park, JoongHa Park

Perhaps the most currently-feasible design on this list, the Water Circle redesigns the fossil-fuel producing oil rigs that dot the world’s oceans. It transforms the rigs to gather, purify, and store seawater for countries in need. The platform is transformed into agricultural and recreational space for the workers living on the rig. Click the photo to read more.

6. Seascraper, William Erwin, Dan Fletcher

Another great design that uses the currents of the ocean to power itself, the Seascraper by Dan Fletcher and William Erwin aims to reduce population density on land. Instead of living in overpopulated and inefficient cities, people could live in smaller, self-sustaining Seascrapers. Fletcher and Erwin’s design presents the possibility that not only could life on the sea be good for the Earth, but it could also be strikingly beautiful.

7. RISE: Post-disaster Parasitic Shelters, Mike Reyes

Here’s an awesome design I got to write about at eVolo. These adaptable structures fix to disused buildings to provide much-needed shelter for survivors of (seemingly apocalyptic) disasters. Designers Mike Reyes was inspired by the rooftop slum dwellings on the outskirts of Brazilian cities, noticing the adaptability and resourcefulness of the people who built and inhabited them. Basically, a national or city government would store thousands of these collapsable and deliver them atop buildings to survivors there. The survivors can then unfold and attach the dwellings to the sides of the building. While certainly not ideal living situations for anyone, the RISE dwellings certainly provide the most important necessity to post-disaster survivors: shelter.

8. Heaven and Earth, by Wei Zhao

Heaven and Earth is by far one of the more imaginative floating city designs I’ve seen, and is more of an honorable mention just because its so damn cool. So cool its on a list of water architecture and it doesn’t even involve water. When I say this is a floating city, I mean floating. Like above your head. In the sky. Basically, Heaven and Earth floats above the Earth by using magnets on its underside to oppose the magnetic force of the Earth. That’s a lot of magnets. It’s so farfetched, but how cool would a levitating city, complete with cityscapes, green space, and lakes be? Lets just hope the Earth’s magnetic field doesn’t switch anytime soon.

Got some cool post-apocalyptic, water-centric, crazy floating awesome architecture for us? Comment or send us an email and let us know!

November 1, 2012 By Dennis Lynch

About the author

I'm a freelance journalist based out of New York City. I specialize in the arts, architecture, design, and music. I spend most of my time writing and the rest reconciling laptops, Casio keyboards, and old tape machines to make music. I can be reached via Twitter.