L’sea level rise it is already having effects in various areas of the world with low coasts, even more so in countries where the average altitude is a few meters above sea level. Small island states and atolls in Oceania are among the most at risk, with many people forced to abandon their homes.
Throughout the world, rising seas and urban expansion thus constitute a disastrous combination: entire populations live in territories that, sooner or later, will be submerged by the waters.
However, a rather futuristic solution can be seen on the horizon: the construction of floating cities.
South Korea is the pioneer
South Korea is leading the way with an innovative project off the coast of Busan, which combines advanced and traditional technologies to build a large-scale floating city. This pilot city, designed to host over 10,000 people, represents a significant step forward. Indeed, although similar structures already exist in the Netherlands, Thailand and other parts of Southeast Asia, they are generally made up of small groups of houseboats tied together.
How a “floating city” works in practice
The novelty of this first project in South Korea lies in new concepts and scale: rather than a conglomeration of small boats, each city is designed to be built on huge floating concrete platforms. The challenge is to ensure that the entire structure remains afloat, while still ensuring access to the essential services that define a city.
The founder of Dutch architecture firm Waterstudio (which has already designed a floating development in the Maldives) Koen Olthuis he explained that “physics is very simple“: a concrete block, as such, sinks, but if it has the shape of a box, instead, it floats.
“It’s Archimedes! The amount of volume you remove is equal to the weight of the water displaced” Olthuis underlined.
In the specific case of the project in Busan, the collaboration between the United Nations Human Settlements Program (UN-Habitat), the architecture firm BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group), and the technology company Oceanix of New York, is fundamental. Oceanix designs and builds floating infrastructure that allows people to live and work sustainably on the ocean.
Oceanix Busan in detail
The floating city under construction off the coast of South Korea, Oceanix Busan, is based on a series of interconnected floating platforms. The initial project will cover 6.3 hectares and be able to accommodate approximately 12,000 people.
The community will be connected to the mainland via a bridge, and each platform will be anchored to the seabed. The infrastructure will be designed to handle electricity, water, waste and some food production. Second Itai Madamombe (among the creators of Oceanix), the goal is not only to achieve self-sufficiency but also, if possible, produce energy in sufficient quantities to provide support to the nearby community.
Nothing to do with it with what has been done so far by cities that need to expand: they reclaim the land using large quantities of rock or cement, and then fill it with more earth and clay until the ground becomes high enough to build. “They are essentially dumping debris and other things into the ocean to create new land, which presents a lot of problems“, Madamombe recalled.
