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Parthenon, The Floating Sea Wall

Inhabitat, Tafline Laylin, December 2015

Certain world leaders might be dragging their feet on addressing climate change, but in the meantime, Koen Olthuis and the rest of the Waterstudio crew are working on solutions that we can use today. The Blue energy floating sea wall is a floating breakwater that doubles as an energy generator. Called The Parthenon, the floating breakwater not only stems the crash of water pushing into a harbor, but harvests the tremendous energy a wall of water like that can generate.

Waterstudio used the Hudson River to illustrate their new design’s function. “In a harbour on the Hudson river in New York the wave conditions are so strong that a sea wall must protect its boats. The strong current in the river is constantly attacking it and water is pushing itself against and through the fixed wall, which results in more corrosion of the sea wall every year.”

The floating sea wall acts as a permeable breakwater that converts the wave power into electrical energy while reducing the waves’ impact on the harbor at the same time. “The floating breakwater lives with the force of the river instead of fighting it,” they told Inhabitat in an email.

Related: Aquatect Koen Olthuis tells Inhabitat how to embrace rising sea levels

The columns of the sea wall are comprised of 3-foot cylinders that rotate – both clockwise and counter clockwise – at low speed. The energy created by this rotation is then captured in a concrete box inside the floating platform. The cylinders are filled with water to give the structure flexibility without affecting in any way the efficacy of the wall in reducing the wave’s impact on the harbor. The whole thing is then anchored to the riverbed, and the top can double as an urban green space or boulevard.

“The Parthenon blue energy sea wall resembles the column structure of the famous ancient temple in Greece,” according to Waterstudio, “but divers see it as a part of the sunken city of Atlantis.”

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Floating villas Waterrocks Zeewolde on sale

Floating Villas Waterrocks are on sale. These 9 villas located in Zeewolde all have an unique waterview. For more information:

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Project Waterrocks Zeewolde

Balance d’eau ontwikkelt 9 luxe, door Waterstudio.NL onder architectuur ontworpen, drijvende woningen in de Blauwe Diamant, Zeewolde.

U heeft rondom waterbeleving met vrij uitzicht over het water en weilanden.
De woning heeft een eigen ligplaats met verbinding naar diverse recreatie vaarroutes.
De ruime tuin met berging biedt tevens ruimte voor parkeren op eigen terrein.
Een unieke locatie voor drijvend wonen centraal gelegen in Nederland!
U wordt eigenaar van het perceel en de drijvende woning naar uw keuze.

In principe is dit min of meer hetzelfde als een landkavel, alleen de woning drijft en is afgemeerd aan meerpalen.
De woningen voor het project, Waterrocks de blauwe diamant, zijn ontworpen door Waterstudio.NL uit Rijswijk.
Het bureau, geleidt door Koen Olthuis, is al sinds 2002 gespecialiseerd in architectuur en stedenbouw op en aan het water. In 2007 Olthuis stond op nr 122 van de Time Magazine lijst met meest invloedrijke mensen in de wereld, door de wereldwijde interesse in zijn waterontwikkeling. Het Franse magazine Terra Eco koos hem als een van de 100 “groene” personen die de wereld gaan verbeteren in 2011. In 2015 hij is geselecteerd bij een internationale jury als een van de vijftig jonge vernieuwers van de 21ste eeuw in het boek “50Under50”. Bouwen op water is Olthuis levenswerk en hij is internationaal ook wel bekend als de “Floating Dutchman”.

U heeft nu de kans om in een echte Waterstudio woning te wonen!

Koen Olthuis: “De waterwoningen in de Blauwe Diamant hebben zijn voor ons heel bijzonder, wij zien de drijvende woning als een “normale” woning op een drijvende fundering. In dit project komt dit goed naar voren, een stevige ruime woning, een grote tuin en de sfeer van het leven op het water. Solid as a Waterrock!”

U heeft al een kavel met hierop een complete waterwoning type Waterrocks 1 voor € 399.500,- VON inclusief BTW.

Het Balance d’eau bouwconcept
De basis bestaat uit een robuuste drijvende betonnen kelderbak welke prefab wordt geproduceerd. De constructie van de opbouw is licht van gewicht, hoog geïsoleerd, stijf en sterk.

Kwaliteit

Een nieuwe woning is één van de belangrijkste beslissingen van uw leven. U moet kunnen vertrouwen op de kwaliteit. Dit is bij een drijvende woning niet anders dan bij een landwoning.
Mede omdat de Balance d’eau woningen uit prefab elementen op locatie worden geassembleerd is de bouwkwaliteit, het afwerkingsniveau en het wooncomfort van hoog niveau.

Genieten

Wonen op het water geeft een gevoel van vrijheid en natuurbelevening. Met het vrije uitzicht over het water en de mogelijkheid om vanuit uw eigen ligplaats met een bootje weg te kunnen varen ervaart u dit in project Waterrocks in de overtreffende trap. Elke dag voelt als een vakantiedag!
Optimaal wooncomfort
Met een speciaal ontwikkeld computerreken- en simulatiemodel wordt het ontwerp uitgebalanceerd en ligt het zwaartepunt zo laag dat de woning stabiel in het water ligt en ook bij harde wind nauwelijks beweegt. Zodoende kan het wooncomfort wedijveren met luxe landwoningen.
Duurzaam
Het bouwsysteem heeft een hoge isolatiewaarde. Hierdoor is het energieverbruik laag en voldoet het systeem aan de laatste EPC normen van het bouwbesluit.
Optioneel is zelfs een innovatieve warmtewisselaar mogelijk die de energie opgeslagen in het oppervlaktewater gebruikt om de woning te verwarmen, een innovatie op energiebesparing!

Interesse?

Neem bij interesse contact op met ZO makelaars – ZO.nl
Ook kunt u op afspraak de voorbeeldwoning te Delft bezoeken om de bouwkwaliteit, het wooncomfort, maar bovenal de meerwaarde van het vrije wonen op water te ervaren.

Omgeving

Zeewolde, Natuurlijk centraal in Nederland

Zeewolde ligt centraal in Nederland. Het centrum van Amsterdam of Utrecht ligt op nog geen 50 km afstand.
Zeewolde is een watersport paradijs met heerlijk zwemwater, idyllische vaarten en tochten om per boot of kano te verkennen. Vandaar dat de waterwoningen ruimte bieden voor een eigen ligplaats!
Aan de langgerekte Veluwerandmeren vind je een eindeloos lange kustlijn, Zeewolde heeft het grootste zoetwater ‘binnenstrand’ van Nederland! Nieuw is het eiland in de vorm van een tulp.

Omgeving

In het centrum van Zeewolde kunt u heerlijk winkelen en even genieten op een gezellig terras waar je vele restaurants, cafés, terrassen, winkels en boetiekjes vindt. Overzichtelijk en modern ingericht en alles op loopafstand.
Zeewolde biedt vele kilometers gemarkeerde en ongemarkeerde wandelroutes, langs het water of door de bossen en uitgestrekte ruige natuurgebieden zoals De Stille Kern.
Het Horsterwold en Hulkesteinse Bos vormen een van de grootste aaneengesloten loofbossen van West-Europa, waar vele bijzondere dieren en planten voorkomen zoals bevers, zeearenden en wilde Konikpaarden.

Planning

Projectfase: bouw gestart
Start verkoop: december 2016
Start bouw: juni 2017
Verwachte oplevering: december 2017

Woningtypen

Van de 9 huizen in dit project zijn er nog 25 beschikbaar

Waterrocks 1

Vrijstaande woning€ 399.500 v.o.n.

woonoppervlakte113 m² woonopp.
aantal kamers4 kamers
8 huizen beschikbaar

Waterrocks 2

Vrijstaande woning€ 406.400 v.o.n.

woonoppervlakte113 m² woonopp.
aantal kamers4 kamers
8 huizen beschikbaar

Waterrocks 3

Vrijstaande woning€ 408.000 v.o.n.

woonoppervlakte113 m² woonopp.
aantal kamers1 kamer
8 huizen beschikbaar

Waterrocks 5

Vrijstaande woning€ 449.500 v.o.n.

woonoppervlakte113 m² woonopp.
aantal kamers1 kamer

Eerste waterwoning Stadswerven volgende maand bewoond

By Albert Sok
AD
April.11.2017
Photo Credit: Victor van Breukelen

Eerste waterwoning Stadswerven volgende maand bewoond
Dordtenaren Paul en Alice Rijfkogel moeten nog vier weken geduld hebben, maar dan kunnen ze eindelijk hun drijvende droomhuis in het water van de Wantij betrekken.

Sinds maandagavond ligt de eerste van vijf drijvende woningen te pronken in de rivier. Het afgelopen jaar werd de blikvanger gebouwd in Heerenveen, waarvandaan die zaterdag vertrok richting de Stadswerven. Woensdag en donderdag wordt de loopbrug vastgemaakt aan de waterwoning, waarna binnen de laatste puntjes op de i gezet kunnen worden. ,,We moeten alleen nog behangen en de vloer leggen’’, popelt Rijfkogel, nu nog woonachtig in Dubbeldam. De komende weken volgen nummer twee tot en met vier. Volgend jaar zomer meert ook de laatste van de vijf aan.

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Sea Tree

By Pierre-Mathieu Degruel
Cercle
2017
Photo Credits: Waterstudio

This prospective project created by the Waterstudio agency is designed to be located in harbours basins. This sea tree is a floating structure composed of superimposed immersed and emerged terraces. On each level a different ecosystem evolves and offers green habitats for animals rejected from citied (birds, bees, bats…). Under the sea’s surface, the tree recomposes an environment favourable to small marine creatures and, when the climate allows it, artificial coral reefs. A real modern day Noah’s Ark, this growth catalyser of fauns and flora is inaccessible to man. The cities of New York and Singapore are seriously considering installing some.

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Continuing Education: Floating Buildings

By Katharine Logan
Architectural record
April.1.2017

As the ice melts and the seas rise, building on waterfront and flood-prone sites begins to look a lot like foolishness, yet backing away from the water takes more willpower than most cities and towns can muster. Ever since the first settlements took root on flood-fertilized riverbanks, next to the water is where people have always wanted to be.


The floating houses designed by Waterstudio, which make up a neighborhood on Amsterdam’s Lake Ijssel, have “foundations” formed in a single pour to eliminate joints.
Photo © Waterstudio

The Waterstudio’s Villa De Hoef, in the Netherlands, normally sits on dry ground alongside a waterway. But when it floods, the house floats.
Photo © Waterstudio

A developer is currently seeking zoning approval to build 29 Waterstudio-designed private floating islands on an inlet north of Miami Beach.
Image © Waterstudio
Denizen Work’s proposal for a floating and relocatable church for the Diocese of London features a roof composed of a pair of asymmetrical, pleated wings. These are lifted, like the pop-top of a vintage camper, once the vessel is docked.
Image © Denizen Works

Denizen Work’s proposal for a floating and relocatable church for the Diocese of London features a roof composed of a pair of asymmetrical, pleated wings. These are lifted, like the pop-top of a vintage camper, once the vessel is docked.
Image © Denizen Works

Carlo Ratti’s scheme for Currie Park in West Palm Beach, Florida, consists of interconnected piazzette. The park, which will float on Lake Worth Lagoon, incorporates amenities such as a restaurant, an amphitheater, and a circular pool.
Image © Carlo Ratti Associati

Carlo Ratti’s scheme for Currie Park in West Palm Beach, Florida, consists of interconnected piazzette. The park, which will float on Lake Worth Lagoon, incorporates amenities such as a restaurant, an amphitheater, and a circular pool.
Image © Carlo Ratti Associati

So what are the options for staying put and living with water rather than moving away from it? They range from keeping water out— with barriers, stilts, and raised ground planes —to letting water in, with ground floors designed for periodic inundation, to, ultimately, rising above it all, with floating architecture. Yes, really. “Whether it’s New York or London, Bangkok or Dhaka, all these cities are growing, all these cities are next to the water, and all are threatened by the water,” says Koen Olthuis, founding principal of Netherlandsbased Waterstudio. “Floating developments can be part of the solution.”

The technology of floating architecture isn’t new. Each of the projects considered here uses tried-and-true technology adapted from marine applications to achieve its unusual results, whether it’s a floating house, an island, a church, or a plaza.

Houseboats, for example, have been around for centuries, and the floating houses that make up a neighborhood in Ijburg, under development in Amsterdam’s Lake Ijssel, are “really just better houseboats,” says Olthuis, “built to the same standards as a house on land, using the same methods and materials.”

For all their similarities to houses on terra firma, however, the float houses Olthuis has designed for Ijburg differ in a crucial aspect: their buoyant “foundations,” or lower levels. Formed in a single pour to eliminate joints, and emphatically free of cracks, a prefabricated concrete tub—or hull—is designed to displace a volume of water with a weight equivalent to the weight of the house. The hull is submerged the depth of half a story and secured to telescoping piles at diagonally opposite corners, allowing the house to rise and fall with the water but not wander about. (Typically, bedrooms are located on the partially submerged level, and the water reduces heating and cooling loads on the house.) As a refinement, automatic air-water balancing tanks help keep the house level when the residents invite more than a few friends to a party.

A buoyant foundation can also be used to build amphibious architecture on flood-prone land. Amphibious architecture retains a connection to the ground under ordinary circum- stances and floats as high as needed when flooding occurs. As a flood-mitigation strategy, amphibious architecture works with natural cycles, instead of trying to resist them.

Waterstudio’s 1,440-square-foot Villa De Hoef, for example, usually sits in a garden beside a waterway in the small Dutch town of De Hoef. When the waterway floods, which happens every 10 years or so, the house floats; as the flood recedes, the house returns to its original position. With a maximum anticipated flood level for the site of only 4 feet, the project’s engineers deemed it safe to tether the house with cables and surround it with a wooden deck, in preference to telescoping piles. A skirt of nylon net prevents flood debris from becoming lodged beneath the house. “Low-tech, low-maintenance,” says Olthuis. Maintaining the amphibious system requires periodic visual inspection of the cables and deck, and, every five years, a recalculation of the house’s added or moved live load to determine and adjust its center of gravity. This is in case the occupants have accumulated more belongings or rearranged the furniture.

Expanding the applications for floating architecture, Waterstudio is now designing private islands that will float on a patented platform moored to the seabed. With projects under way for Dubai and the Maldives, the firm’s Amillarah project is currently seeking zoning approval for a “villa flotilla,” as the Miami Herald dubbed the proposal, with 29 floating islands on Maule Lake, an inlet north of Miami Beach.

Expected to sell for about $12.5 million each, the floating islands will make only a few hundred very wealthy people happy, notes Olthuis. Ultimately, however, he sees a more egalitarian future for the technology, as a solution for people worldwide who live in slums that are close to open water and vulnerable to flooding. Improving these so-called wet slums is almost impossible, since governments are unwilling to condone illegal settlements by sponsoring upgrades and because lenders are unwilling to invest in something that will be flooded out.

But, building on their experience developing floating islands, Waterstudio has proposed simple schools and critical infrastructure, such as water-treatment plants, that would sit on small floating islands and be connected to the slums. The firm has recently completed a prefabricated floating school that will be shipped to Dhaka and assembled next to a wet slum there. Such facilities typically qualify as temporary solutions, which makes them acceptable to government officials. They can be relocated as needed, retaining their value, which makes them attractive to investors. And they can be leased for limited periods, which makes them accessible to the communities that need them. “It’s a delicate system, where you get investors, regulators, and users all together to improve life in these wet slums,” says Olthuis.

A versatile, affordable, and mobile solution is exactly what the Church of England’s Diocese of London was looking for when it commissioned London-based Denizen Works to design a floating church and community hub to support the diocese’s outreach program along London’s waterways.

With the rocketing cost of land, London’s waterways are the busiest they’ve been since the industrial revolution, with a floating bookshop, cinema, restaurants, and even a puppet theater, as well as a significant residential component. The activity on the water could soon be eclipsed, however, by the activity of new development along the water’s edge. In 2015, the mayor’s London Plan identified key brownfield “Opportunity Areas,” many of which lie along these waterways.

With its floating church, the diocese is responding both to the anticipated growth of new waterfront communities on brownfields and underdeveloped lands, and to the difficulty of finding space in the rapidly redeveloping city for a new church. “We spotted this opportunity,” says Hayley Harding, program management officer with the diocese, “and felt that it was something that could grow and support development and change.”

The priority for the diocese is to establish a presence in emerging communities—on and beside the water—as early as possible, and in a space that the local parish can own and manage, running both secular and worship activities as it sees fit. The floating church will moor at key regeneration sites for threeto five-year periods, offering services, and developing relationships with growing communities. Ultimately the Diocese will evaluate whether and how to build a permanent facility.

The competition brief for the project called for a multifunctional space that could accommodate a diverse program of worship and celebrations, art exhibitions, yoga classes, parent-and-toddler groups, and supper clubs. “They’re not just looking to bring the church to these emerging communities,” says Murray Kerr, director at Denizen Works, “but a sense of community as well.”

Denizen’s winning scheme, developed in collaboration with Turks Shipyard and based on a traditional wide beam canal boat, provides 500 square feet of interior space, plus decks, in a vessel that is 60 feet long and 12 feet wide but less than 6 feet above the waterline, so that it can easily clear the London canal system’s low bridges. The design, which is projected to cost about $370,000, includes an innovative roof that generates a play of light and volume. Once the vessel is docked, the roof’s two asymmetrical segments can be raised to reveal pleated sides much like the bellows of a church organ (or, more prosaically, the pop-top of a vintage camper). The longer wing shelters the hall, while the shorter one covers the ancillary spaces, including a kitchen and an office. Crafted from resinimpregnated sailcloth, the translucent bellows will provide a soft, ambient light during the day and act as a Chinese lantern at night, says Kerr, “creating a warm, inviting glow for passersby and imbuing the interiors with a celestial quality.”

“They delivered something we weren’t expecting,” says Harding. “This beautiful volume is something that can be a sacred space as well as a community asset. And Denizen’s partnership with a shipyard demonstrates that it is viable.”

The church will be Denizen’s first project to float. By contrast, the work of Turin, Italy– based Carlo Ratti Associati demonstrates an abiding fascination with water, so it’s no surprise that the firm’s 2016 master plan for the Currie Park waterfront at West Palm Beach, Florida, incorporates a significant water-based element. What is unexpected is the use of a technology adapted from submarines to carve volumes of habitable space into the surface of the Lake Worth Lagoon.

“One of the aims of our work is to imagine an architecture that adapts to human need, rather than the other way around—a living, tailored space that is molded to its inhabitants’ needs, characters, and desires,” says Carlo Ratti, the firm’s founding partner and the director of the Senseable City Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “Water is a reconfigurable material, and it allows us to develop adaptive, ‘fluid’ designs.”

The plan envisions a floating plaza (or, perhaps more accurately, a series of floating piazzette) projecting out onto the lagoon. The plaza will hang in the water, with its surface about 5 feet below sea level, providing views across the water from this unusual perspective. The project is anticipated to have virtually no environmental impact, floating in the lagoon just like a midsize boat, using no fuel, and discharging nothing into the water.

As part of the 50-acre master plan, the plaza will connect to West Palm Beach’s city center along a pair of leafy promenades, and will incorporate such facilities as an organic restaurant with its own hydroponic cultivations, a circular pool, and an amphitheater.

Now in design development while seeking municipal approvals, the plaza will consist of a series of lightweight steel modules composing a peninsula of about 5,000 square feet. The structure’s deck will be made of galvanized steel (similar to boat construction), with teak finishes. Beneath the plaza, a series of sensoractivated air-water chambers will open and close, releasing or taking in water according to the number of people walking on the surface, and adjusting for a height differential of up to 20 inches, which accommodates loading changes of up to 100 pounds per square foot. “The use of responsive digital technologies is often employed to introduce movement and complexity to static architecture,” says Ratti, “but it can equally be used to achieve stasis and equilibrium within a moving landscape.”

With this project, West Palm Beach aims to reclaim its connection to the natural environment it is part of, give shape to a vibrant new district, and, says Ratti, “radically redefine the relationship between architecture and water.” Ratti has identified the theme that unites these disparate examples of floating architecture: a floating plaza that engages with water in a playful new way; a floating church that enables an ancient institution to reach out to its changing city; floating islands that uplift the few and the many; amphibious architecture that celebrates a river even in flood; and a floating neighborhood that provides a city with new “ground.” All of these offer new possibilities for changing waterfronts and new possibilities for us to stay where we really want to be—by the water.

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A Future Afloat

By Erik Bojnansky,  BT Senior Writer
Biscayne Times
volume 15 issue 1
Photo Credits: Waterstudio

IT MAY SOUND CRAZY TODAY, BUT DESIGNERS AND ENGINEERS AROUND THE WORLD ARE ALREADY EMBRACING LIFE ON THE WATER

For more than 14 years, Dutch architect Koen Olthuis has been designing buildings that float. His portfolio includes the construction of 200 floating homes and offices in the Netherlands.

Later this year, luxurious floating islands designed by his Rijswijk­based architecture firm, Waterstudio, will be shipped from the Netherlands to Dubai and the Maldives. Olthuis is also experimenting with floating computer classrooms and other facilities called City Apps that he hopes will soon be transported to flood­prone Bangladesh. And he’s in contact with a New Jersey developer who wants to transform the Lincoln Harbor Yacht Marina into a floating residential community with views of the Manhattan skyline.

Olthuis has other ambitious ideas, too. On his architecture firm’s website, www.Waterstudio.nl, you’ll find plans for floating apartment buildings, floating restaurants, floating hotels, floating cruise ship terminals, floating places of worship, floating beaches, floating golf courses, floating “sea trees” for animals, floating facilities (City Apps) for flooded slums, and floating islands for  he very wealthy.

“When we started in 2003, we were the only office that was 100 percent into floating structures,” says Olthuis. “Everybody said we were crazy. But we saw the market, and today there are many, many architects working on floating structures in Holland and in Europe. It has become more mainstream.”

Olthuis also wants to bring his designs to Miami’s urban areas and show that water, especially in the form of rising sea levels, doesn’t have to be an obstacle to future development. It can be an asset.

“The reason I’m an architect is that our cities are not perfect. They don’t function as well as they should,” says Olthuis, who floats his structures on concrete box foundations filled with Styrofoam. “I think that water is the next ingredient to improve the performance of cities.”

Rising seas pose a major threat to Greater Miami. Within the next 80 years, climate change may result in ocean levels that are up to seven feet higher than today, washing out huge sections of flat Florida. But Olthuis feels his floating structures can literally rise to the challenges that tides could bring in the coming decades. And for the present, he argues, floating neighborhoods can provide greater flexibility for urban planners, especially in places like Miami and Manhattan, where vacant land is scarce and expensive.

So far, Miami has not taken well to his plans. His idea to create a floating Major League Soccer stadium for David Beckham in downtown Miami didn’t sail. And his proposal to build a floating parking facility for the American Airlines Arena ran aground.

And then there is Maule Lake, a privately owned body of water in North Miami Beach bordering the upscale neighborhood of Eastern Shores. Business associates of Olthuis, through the Dutch Docklands Company, were contracted to buy the lake. It’s here that Olthuis planned to anchor 29 artificial islands ­­ each about 7000 square feet, with a four­bedroom house, vegetation, swimming pool, and a couple of boat docks ­­ and sell them for $12.5 million apiece. A 30th island, called an “amenity island,” was to feature a clubhouse. The floating community would be called Amillarah. (The project is named after another Dutch Docklands venture, Amillarah, in the Maldives. The word amillarah means private island in Maldivian, according to Dutch Docklands.)

Many Eastern Shores homeowners were horrified at the thought of 30 private islands being built in what they considered their backyard. Among their fears: that the islands would become projectiles during powerful hurricanes, that they would ruin the aesthetics of the neighborhood, and that they would attract throngs of gawkers.

“We don’t want it. We’re going to fight against it. And we’re not going to let it happen,” said Chuck Asarnow, president of the Eastern Shores Homeowners Association, in an interview with the BT in May 2015. In response to the outcry, the North Miami Beach City Council (four members of which, including Mayor George Vallejo, lived in Eastern Shores) declared Maule Lake to be a “conservation area” in July 2015, thus prohibiting development.

But Amillarah in North Miami Beach may not be dead in the water. This past October, Scott Weires, an attorney representing Raymond Gaylord Williams, the owner of Maule Lake, sent North Miami Beach officials a letter announcing his client’s intention to sue under Florida’s Bert J. Harris, Jr. Property Rights Protection Act for $37 million in damages if the city doesn’t rezone the lake. Maule Lake, incidentally, was a rock quarry used by the Maule Rock Mining Company, run by E.L. Maule, in the early 20th century. Williams is a descendant of Maule.

Under the Harris Property Rights Protection Act, a private property owner can seek relief when a governmental body imposes restrictions on the use of that property.

In a February 2, 2017, memo to NMB officials, city attorney José Smith stated that the Williams claim “lacks both merit and validity,” and that the law firm of Weiss Sorota Helfman had been retained to represent the city. Eastern Shores residents remain defiant, insisting that there were never any rights to build on the lake because it was never zoned for development.

“That took them awhile. I thought it was over,” says Fortuna Smukler, chair of the Eastern Shores Crimewatch committee, regarding Williams’s filing of a Harris action 18 months after the city designated the lake a conservation area. “I have confidence in our city attorney. He originally said that Williams won’t have a claim, and I believe him.”

Adds David Templer, an attorney and board member of the Eastern Shores Homeowners Association: “It’s pretty interesting that we use up all the waterfront land [for development] and, hey, now we can use up the water, too.” Weires contends that Williams has the right to develop the lake he has inherited, or to sell it with the development rights attached.

“Our investigation has revealed that these privately owned lands are not environmentally restricted and were never properly zoned by the city,” Weires tells the BT. “As a result, we contend that our client has a constitutional right to develop the entire parcel any way he wishes.

“That said,” Weires continues, “our client has always been, and continues to be, open to discussing possible resolutions with the city that would allow for the reasonable development of some portion of the 117 acres, while maintaining a large amount of the open water.”

And Olthuis? He’s still interested in building floating homes for Maule Lake. It will be a chance to showcase his buoyant residences, designed to withstand the strongest hurricanes, as an environmentally friendly method of developing submerged real estate.

“Miami can test these kinds of floating structures in order to use them on a bigger scale in the near future,” he says.

Olthuis isn’t the only person seeking to build innovative structures directly on the water. There are a number of bold designs floating around.

Among those proposing plans is the California­based Seasteading Institute, a nonprofit organization that received significant early funding from libertarian by Libertarian billionaire Peter Thiel “to provide a machinery of freedom to choose new societies on the blue frontier.” This past January, the Seasteading Institute signed a memorandum of understanding with the French Polynesian government that aims to build the first phase of a selfsustaining, floating village within the territorial waters, which would also have its own Special Economic Zone and “unique governing framework.”

The village, estimated to cost between $10 million and $50 million, is being designed by Blue 21, a Dutch engineering firm that also specializes in building floating structures. It will be  constructed by Blue Frontiers, a for­profit company spun off from the Seasteading Institute. Not to be confused with the nonprofit marine conservation group Blue Frontier Campaign, the Seasteaders’ Blue Frontiers aims “to develop and construct floating islands and to operate the seazone.” The institute envisions thousands of seasteads “across French Polynesia, the Pacific, and the world” that would “test new ideas for government.”

Doug Pope, a Jacksonville­based shipwreck treasure hunter, also wants to jump­start plans to create his project, Oceana Water Resort, a 50­unit hotel sitting on an elevated platform and rising six stories above the Gulf of Mexico, 16 miles northwest of Key West. It would be situated in water 55­60 feet deep, he told the Miami Herald in February, and sit on pilings that could be raised and lowered as needed. Oceana, Pope declares, will be designed to withstand winds up to 200 miles per hour and will be powered by generators in concert with wind and solar power.

And in Riviera Beach in Palm Beach County, Fane Lozman, a former outspoken North Bay Village activist, wants to build state­of­the­art stilt homes capable of responding to the tides, on 25 acres of prime submerged real estate that’s just a few miles from President Donald Trump’s Mar­a­Lago.

Steve Israel, a real estate investor and developer, says Mother Nature inspired his desire to turn Lincoln Harbor Yacht Club in Weehawken, New Jersey, a marina he has owned for 25 years, into a floating­home community.

“Hurricane Sandy flooded everything around us, including things that were anchored on the ground,” Israel recounts. “But all my boats floated up. We have high pilings ­­ and no damage.”

Olthuis has already designed a “double­story flood­resistant yacht” without motors that can serve as floating homes for Lincoln Harbor. But because New Jersey bans stationary houseboats, Israel is also seeking someone who can build luxury “livable yachts” with engines and limited mobility ­­ at least until the houseboat law is overturned.

“This is what I am mostly excited about,” Israel says, touting the marina’s views of Manhattan and
proximity to a New Jersey­New York ferry. Israel sees this as an opportunity to destroy a nationwide stigma against houseboats, and a means to prepare for a wetter future. “Both cities [New York and Miami] are likely to be flooded in the near future,” he says. “Why assume that the places we live have to be anchored to the ground?”

If his Lincoln Harbor venture works out, Israel may try something similar for the marina he’s redeveloping in Fort Myers near the site of a future 18­story condo he may co­develop or sell to another investor. (The proposed condo has parking on the first three floors, Israel says, partly as a precaution against future flooding events.) Israel would also love to set up a floating community in Miami: “I do believe Miami is very ripe for the same kind of deal.”

Building directly on the water isn’t a new thing. There’s Olthuis anticipated a parking crunch with this structure floating next to American Airlines Arena.
evidence that people have lived in stilt­houses on the shores of lakes and seas since prehistoric times. And there have been floating villages in Asia for centuries.

In Florida, the waterways of Miami and Miami Beach were once filled with houseboats, says Paul George, a historian affiliated with the HistoryMiami Museum, and a “It kind of evolved,” George says, noting that the first houseboats on the Miami River, in the 1920s, were anchored near Grove Park in today’s Little Havana. “My sense is that some of these people were Northerners,” he says. “They were staying on houseboats, staying during the season, which is wintertime in Miami.” By the 1930s and 1940s, there were hundreds of houseboats on local waterways.

By the 1950s and 1960s, houseboats were also tied to docks in Miami Beach and North Bay Village, inspiring a television show in the early 1960s called Surfside 6, about a detective agency based on a houseboat moored across the street from Miami Beach’s Fontainebleau Hotel.

Just off of Key Biscayne, in the shallow waters of Biscayne Bay, another aquatic community sprouted, called Stiltsville. Its origins can be traced to 1933, when Crawfish Eddie Walker turned a wrecked ship into a spot where he could sell chowder and bait to recreational fisherman. “He was a great storyteller,” George says.

Within a few years, Walker had neighbors. Various clubs, restaurants, lodges, and weekend homes were established, either on grounded ships or in stilt houses that rose ten feet or more above sea level.

At its height there were 27 houses and converted shipwrecks in Stiltsville. But the community’s structures were gradually weeded out by hurricanes. Prior to Hurricane Betsy in 1965, there were 24 businesses operating on old ships and stilt­houses, notes George. After Betsy there were just 17.

Permits for new structures stopped after Biscayne National Park took over Stiltsville in 1980. The businesses and residences that remained were allowed to operate another two decades. Then along came Hurricane Andrew, which whittled the houses down to seven. After a campaign was launched to save the structures, the remaining seven houses are now shuttered, preserved relics that are maintained by their former owners, now referred to as “caretakers.”

Hurricanes slashed the number of houseboats in Miami and Miami Beach, too. That and a growing stigma toward houseboats. Some of the vessels on the Miami River became unsightly hunks of junk. George says the houseboat dwellers were often referred to as “river rats.” By the 1980s and 1990s, the City of Miami was outlawing them on the Miami River and other waterways. Miami Beach passed similar legislation. And marinas? They started turning away houseboats and other vessels used as full­time residences.

It’s thanks to Fane Lozman that Dutch Docklands now has some added legal support in its pursuit of the Maule Lake project. Lozman, the creator of Scanshift, a software program that keeps tabs on the stock market, fell in love with the Miami houseboat lifestyle more than a decade ago and fought all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court for his right to continue living on one.

Lozman has a reputation for fighting. In 2003, when his first houseboat was tied up in North Bay Village, he tangled with Al Coletta, a politically influential property owner who allegedly threatened Lozman when he asked if a ramp could be provided for a disabled elderly houseboat owner.

Soon Lozman was fighting Coletta’s allies at North Bay Village City Hall. In November 2003, Commissioner Robert Dugger was arrested for official misconduct based on evidence Lozman collected showing that Dugger failed to disclose his financial connections to Coletta. The Seasteading Institute hopes to build a floating city in French Polynesia, like this concept designed by Blue21.

In April 2004, police Chief David Heller resigned and Mayor Al Dorne and Commissioner Armand Abecassis were arrested for actions related to an obscene threatening cartoon left anonymously in Lozman’s mail.

Lozman might still be in North Bay Village if it hadn’t been for Hurricane Wilma in October 2005. His houseboat survived, but 41 of the neighboring houseboats sank, and the marina where he docked was destroyed. In the aftermath, he discovered that many marinas were reluctant to accept houseboats for fear of turning them into “aquatic trailer parks.”

The only place that would accept Lozman’s houseboat was a marina owned by the City of Riviera Beach, 75 miles up the coast from North Bay Village. Within two months of relocating, Lozman learned that the city planned to condemn the marina as part of a controversial $2.3 billion waterfront redevelopment plan. Lozman sued to stop the project. Riviera Beach officials responded by claiming that Lozman hadn’t paid his dock fees, an accusation he denied. In 2009, after a circuit court judge ruled that his motor­less houseboat was a “vessel,”

Riviera Beach officials seized his houseboat under admiralty law, towed it away, and destroyed it. Lozman, in turn, appealed the case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. In 2013, the court ruled that Lozman’s houseboat was, indeed, a home and not a vessel.

Although Lozman says he’s still litigating to be compensated for his home’s destruction, it was his case that has helped Koen Olthuis’s Dutch Docklands associates argue that the proposed floating islands in Maule Lake will be, in fact, floating properties. Lozman bought another houseboat, a circa­1967 two­story home that was once featured in a Frank Sinatra crime drama called Lady in Cement. Unable to find another marina, he kept it anchored in Biscayne Bay near in the 79th Street Causeway.

Then in 2014, he was contacted by the owners of 200 acres of submerged property on the Intracoastal Waterway, along A1A in Singer Island, a narrow strip of land that is now the most affluent part of Riviera Beach.

“They were wealthy people whose family was paying taxes on it for the past 94 years,” Lozman says. The family was so enamored of his “David versus Goliath Doug Pope’s vision of his Oceana Water Resort, a 50­unit hotel 16 miles northwest of Key West in the Gulf of Mexico. story,” as Lozman puts it, that they offered to sell him 25 acres of their submerged land for $250,000. The deal closed later that year.

By the summer of 2016, Lozman had triumphantly towed his second floating home, the Sinatra houseboat, adorned with a banner proclaiming his Supreme Court victory, and anchored it at one of his submerged land parcels. Lozman also announced his intention to build a community of floating homes on his 25 acres.

His waterfront condo neighbors, who lived along A1A, were less than thrilled. Last July, Singer Island residents, fearful of losing their views and property values, petitioned the Riviera Beach City Commission to not grant Lozman street addresses.

Lozman says his neighbors’ expressions of dismay weren’t limited to petitions or pleas to local media. A couple of men in a boat tried to hit him with a drone, Lozman recounts, and someone broke into his houseboat and left garbage bags filled with feces.

“One woman came over and tried to buy my property,” Lozman remembers. When he said no, “she started cursing at me. She wouldn’t take no for an answer.” (E­mails to the Singer Island Homeowners Association, as well as calls to the association’s president, went unanswered by deadline.)

This past August, Lozman’s Sinatra houseboat sank. The cause isn’t known, but Lozman says the fact that a door to the second floor of his houseboat was open, and that several hatches were missing, indicate an intruder may have sunk it. Witnesses also saw people with flashlights near his property prior to the sinking, he adds.

In spite of his best efforts, the home couldn’t be salvaged. The matter is under investigation and Lozman now lives with his girlfriend at an undisclosed location.

Despite the setback, in November Lozman won yet another case, this one forcing the City of Riviera Beach to give him street addresses for his properties, enabling him to obtain permits from the city, state, and Army Corps of Engineers.

Lozman has since changed his mind about creating a community of floating homes in Riviera Beach. Instead he wants to create Tidal House at Renegade, a development of 40 or 50 two­story stilt homes that use a pinion gear system to move with the tides, plus aerodynamic roofs that can withstand high winds.

Terry and Terry Architects, a San Francisco firm run by brothers Alex and Ivan Terry, came up with the design that, Alex Terry tells the BT, was unveiled at an architecture exhibit in Venice, Italy, last summer and is based on exploratory oil rigs.

“They’re kind of a response to changing climate and a lot of issues with tidal action…and places where there is severe storm action,” Alex Terry says, adding that the Tidal House design has also garnered interest in India.

“The stilt home is a superior solution,” says Lozman, who has hired contractor Donna Milo, a former Upper Eastside resident (and one­time Miami City Commission candidate) to build the homes. Lozman hopes to start construction by 2018, adding that he’s already had offers to buy Tidal House residences for $3 million each.

“In Palm Beach County, three million is not a lot of money,” he notes, pointing out that the condos on Singer Island sell for as much as $10 million.

Wayne Pathman is an environmental and land­use attorney. He has served on special committees on sea level rise for the City of Miami and Miami­Dade County, and is chairman of the Miami Beach Chamber of Commerce.

Pathman advocates for extensive changes in urban codes and infrastructure improvements to address the threat of rising seas. He supports actions spearheaded by Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine ­­ namely, adding pumps and elevating streets to handle flooding.

Pathman has advocated against creating new historic districts in the city’s North Beach neighborhood, arguing that doing so would limit options for property owners in the future, as tidal events become more pronounced. Pathman often reminds people that the insurance industry is already looking at the future impacts of sea level rise in Florida.

But placing floating homes and stilt houses on South Florida’s waterways? “I don’t think people here in South Florida are really ready for floating homes like other parts of the world,” he says. “It has to be explored when sea level rise becomes more of an impact.”

Miami Beach, in particular, has been pretty tough on even common boats anchoring on the city’s waterways, this in response to waterfront homeowners who complain that liveaboards (full time boat residents) invade their privacy. Although a proposed law making it illegal to live aboard a boat full­time was rejected in 2002, the city has recently passed laws forbidding vessels from anchoring in public waters without permission, except for specified areas near the Venetian Causeway.

Dutch architect Olthuis emphasizes that Maule Lake has been privately owned for decades, and he is sure the Amillarah project would be beneficial to the surrounding neighborhoods and the city itself. He points out that the Supreme Court ruling in Lozman’s case clarifies that floating homes without motors are actually homesteads that can be taxed as property. In other words, floating homes can provide cities with revenues.

Olthuis argues that places like South Florida need to start thinking seriously about how climate change will affect living choices.

“You can see that cities like Miami and New York and Guangzhou are the top cities being threatened by sea level rise, in terms of assets,” he says. “Miami has to come up with different kinds of solutions. You have to come up with new technology, and you have to change the DNA of cities. You have to slowly start implementing these kinds of developments that have growing resiliency.”

He’s hopeful that building codes in Florida will soon force developers to build in preparation for a changing environment, much like in his native Netherlands. “In 10 or 15 years, builders will, for the most part, have made the switch to resilient typologies like floating houses or stilt houses in Miami,” he predicts.

Other aspiring builders, like Doug Pope in Jacksonville, think the new administration in Washington will be their ally in removing regulations. A single regulation ­­ dealing with Oceana’s water treatment ­­ stood in the project’s way when it was proposed in 2010, Pope asserts. Then the project fell into limbo when Oceana’s financial backers suddenly balked. Now he is somewhat confident he can find new investors to raise the $26 million needed to build Oceana.

“Things are looking better,” he says. “I wouldn’t say ‘good.’ I would say better.” But why submit yourself to outside governmental regulations at all? Joe Quirk, a science author affiliated with Peter Thiel’s Seasteading Institute, says technology can innovate more quickly if entrepreneurs don’t have to report to government. That’s why the Seasteading Institute wants to create floating­island “startup societies” with their own autonomy.

If the French Polynesia pilot project succeeds, notes Randolph Hencken, the institute’s executive director, he can envision “future seasteads in places like Miami and Bangladesh.” Says Quirk: “In order for us to bring this technology to Florida or Miami, the governments of Florida and Miami would have to legislate us some measure of legislative or regulatory autonomy.”

Absent new discoveries that could clean the atmosphere of greenhouse gases, the oceans will continue to warm and rise ­­ increasingly faster ­­ as ice from Greenland and Antarctica slips beneath the waves, predicts Harold Wanless, chairman of the University of Miami’s Department of Geology and an outspoken climatologist.

Because humans have been burning fossil fuels for more than a century, Wanless points out, the planet has about as much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere today as it did 3 million years ago, a time when there were no polar ice caps and the oceans were 80 feet higher. “This isn’t a cloud of smoke that will just evaporate,” Wanless quips.

The UM professor adds that we won’t have to wait until 2100 to see the full effects of sea level rise. In less than 30 years, he says, tidal flooding will be significantly worse for low­lying areas like Broward, Miami Beach, Key Biscayne, west Miami­Dade, south Brickell, and Miami’s Edgewater and Upper Eastside neighborhoods, along with other areas up and down the Biscayne Corridor. (For more on sea level rise projections, see “Six Feet Under,” June 2015.) According to Wanless, Miami Beach’s expensive efforts to mitigate rising seas will only last a couple of decades.

Wanless says the innovations proposed by Olthuis, the Terry brothers, and the Seasteaders are “nice” and “creative,” but he questions if anyone is going to want to live in a flooded area that will be significantly hotter, ravaged by more powerful storms, and difficult to traverse.

A better idea, Wanless suggests, would be preparing places like Omaha, Nebraska, to accommodate the millions of people who will be displaced from coastal communities in the United States.

Olthuis, however, is undeterred. He’s confident his floating­structure designs can help South Florida adapt to the changes that most scientists agree are certain to come. And in addition to Maule Lake, he has leads on other sites.

“You can imagine that other people with new opportunities have contacted us,” he says. “Developers who are asking if we can do the same for their water.” Olthuis wouldn’t identify those developers or where future floating projects might be located.

“They’re not ready,” he explains. “They must get hold of all their licenses and all their agreements before they start bringing their projects into the open.”

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Floating City Apps – Floating Facilities for Flood Prone Areas

By Ed Hill
Floodlist
February.06.2017
Photo Credits: Waterstudio, UNESCO

 

A previous article in our series on floating architecture highlighted the work of Dutch architecture firm Architectstudio Marlies Bohmer in creating the floating community of Waterbuurt in Amsterdam. The point was made that, although it is in a developed country, it is one of the first working examples of a floating community not made up of houseboats, but actual dwellings. Another interesting Dutch architecture firm looking into floating facilities for flood­prone communities is Waterstudio.nl, which, as the name implies, specializes in ‘waterborne architecture’. Waterstudio, in fact, designed several of the private floating houses of Waterbuurt, and also has designed a number of other floating houses around the world.

Floating City Apps

With about one billion people worldwide living in shantytowns, many of which are located in areas prone to flooding, the need for innovative solutions to providing decent shelter and facilities is growing daily. Since floodprone areas are least likely to receive investment for upgrading, architect Koen Olthuis of Waterstudio.nl has put forward a proposal for small scale floating facilities as a bottom up approach to improving opportunities in what he terms ‘wet slums’ – called Floating City Apps.

 

Replicable and Multi-purpose

The Floating City App designed by Waterstudio is based on the concept of a floating shipping container fitted out for multi­purpose use. The first such unit, housing 20 tablet computer workstations and 2 teaching screens, will be utilised as a classroom during the day and an Internet café in the evening. The unit has a simple construction, the modified shipping container being fixed to a base of wooden pallets floating on a wire gabion framework containing bags filled with recycled PET bottles.

The materials for the floating base are readily obtainable in developing countries so the units are easily replicable. In addition, the idea of used PET bottles for flotation is intended to provide an avenue for recycling, in order to help keep waterways clear of plastic pollution. The interior of each City App container will be fitted in the Netherlands with built­in walls and equipment, purpose designed for the specific use it is intended for. In addition, it will have solar PV panels on the roof and solar power equipment installed behind the interior walls.

Floating City Apps have been designed for six different uses; communication & education, sanitation, community kitchen, health care, garbage collection and construction. The term City App was inspired by the concept of applications, or ‘apps’ found on mobile phones. Although several phones may look the same, each is different in terms of the apps that have been loaded onto it – hence the idea that the same floating container concept can be used for different purposes.

Floating City App Foundation

It costs about €50,000 (US$53,000) to design, build and deliver a floating City App and, in order to realize the implementation of the concept, the Floating City App Foundation was established with Dutch aid organization Cordaid in 2013. The foundation works with several partners, including the UNESCO­IHE Institute for Water Education, as well as authorities in the proposed recipient country. At a ceremony in Dhaka, Bangladesh, in June 2015, an agreement was signed between Floating City Apps, Cordaid and the Bangladeshi Computer Council of the Ministry of Post, Telecommunication and IT, in the presence of the State Minister of ICT, Mr Zunaid Ahmed Palak and the Dutch Minister of Infrastructure, Mrs Melanie Schultz, for the first Floating City App to be established in Bangladesh. Floating City App Bangladesh Netherlands Collaboration

Unesco­IHE Institute for Water Education assists Cordaid with a process of identifying and mapping sites for Floating City Apps. With the aid of local agents, a ‘wet slum’ is mapped and the needs of the community assessed in order to determine the most appropriate use or uses. Shipping containers will be fitted with the relevant Floating City App designs, and the containers shipped to the nearest destination port, from which they can be transported by road. The floating platform will be constructed on­site and the container will then be attached to the platform.

Chris Zevenbergen, Professor of Flood Resilience of Urban Systems at UNESCO­IHE Institute of Water Education notes that the Communication and Education App will be also used for early flood warning systems in these areas.

“We will provide recommendations to the World Bank to work differently with regard to slums upgrading” he says, “Not a one size fits all approach, but tailor made solutions for slums using local knowledge … investing in slums is not very attractive to donors. I hope this attitude changes, as slums are an important economy for the city. You can think of micro financing solutions for example”.

“Concrete solutions such as the City Apps developed by Koen Olthuis and partners should really help to attract financial support for further development” concludes Zevenbergen.

Business Model

Olthuis says that there is a business model for the operation of the Floating City App. It will be leased to a local entrepreneur who will be able to provide the service to community members for a small fee. The repayment period is expected to be in the order of 20 to 30­odd years. If the situation changes and the App is no longer required or viable, it can be towed to another destination, or shipped back to the Netherlands for refitting or repurposing. Olthuis explains: “So these are catalyst functions for upgrading wet slums. We have a business model. If we want to upgrade life of the poorest worldwide, one billion people, we can’t just spend money and give them money, we have to provide the tools to upgrade the lives themselves, by providing them (with) these kinds of apps.”

Since the floating City Apps are technically classed as vessels, they can qualify for insurance and private financing, which should make them attractive options for local businesses. “Cordaid’s ambition is to co­create smart and sustainable solutions with businesses and local partners for people in need. Social enterprise holds the future” says Cordaid CFO Willem Jan van Wijk, adding “That is why we cooperated in the realization of the first Floating City App for Bangladesh.”

Pilot Floating City App Passes Final Test

The first pilot Floating City App, containing the classroom, underwent its final testing for ‘sea­worthiness’ and stability in the Hofvijver in front of the Dutch Parliament Building in Den Hague, on 11 March 2016. This was accompanied by the official handing over of the App to the honorable Ambassador of Bangladesh, Mr Sheikh Mohammed Belal by the representative of The Hague Municipality, Mr Karsten Klein. The pilot communication and education Floating City App is expected to be shipped to Bangladesh early in 2017, where it will be sited on the Banani Lake adjacent to the Korail slum in the capital city, Dhaka. Korail covers 150 acres (61ha) of waterside land, mostly belonging to Bangladesh Telecommunications Company Ltd, and is home to over 40,000 residents. Many of the homes are built on stilts over the water, so the placing of a Floating City App on the water will be easily accessible and not out of place. “If I were to build only floating islands for the wealthy, I would only make 150 people happy in the next 50 years,” said Mr Olthuis, who is the grandson of both an architect and a shipbuilder; “If we use this technology also to upgrade slums, we can change the lives of millions.”

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Beam me up – Cruise Terminal & Ice dream – Krystal hotel

By 2Board
Issue no 36
Jan-Feb.2017

 

SCI-FI MEANS OF TRANSPORTATION FROM PLANES TO TRAINS, EVERYTHING ABOUT HOW WE MOVE 150 FROM POINT A TO POINT B IS ABOUT TO CHANGE, AND THESE STILL-IN-DEVELOPMENT
INNOVATIONS WILL PUT US A FEW STEPS CLOSER TO TELEPORTATION.

As much excited we are by the innovations on new ships like Quantum of theSeas, it’s hard not to wonder how dramatically different cruise ships will look in the future. On the other hand, magnetic levitation technology will be available, powering trains, and cutting travel time into half. Hyperloop would send passengers between cities at speeds of more than 970km/h in capsules that float in partial vacuum tubes. And Mars gets closer as corporate leaders, like Elon Musk of SpaceX and Richard Branson of Virgin, have even proposed accelerated timelines for landing people.

OCEANIC EXPLORER THE SEA ORBITER STILL ON PROGRESS

French architect Jacques Rougerie has designed a starship Enterprise for the water, and not merely for its futuristic shape. SeaOrbiter is envisioned as a hightech moving laboratory, carrying crew of up to 22 scientists on long treks through an environment not inherently friendly to human life. Initial funding has been provided by the French government, several companies,
and a crowd-funding campaign.

SUSTAINABLE AQUATIC STRUCTURE CRUISE TERMINALON PROGRESS

Floating Ship Terminal’s design is simple the three sea-level sides allow for easy approach and mooring by giant cruise ships, while the lifted corner acts as an access-way for smaller vessels. With 5 million square feet of shopping, dining, and entertainment, this hybrid could be a private island of the cruise industry.

ICE DREAM KRYSTALL HOTEL NORWAY

Developed by Dutch Docklands, a company that specialises in the construction of floating structures, it is located on an ice crystal between the most beautiful fjords.Τhe property will be built with a concrete base and tethered with cables to the adjacent fjords. However, guests should be unaware of the small changes in position. The five-star offering will boast a spa and is designed to be completely selfsupporting and self-sustainable.

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Interview of the The New York Times with Koen Olthuis

CHRISTOPHER F. SCHUETZE NOV. 28, 2016

A Dutch Architect Offshores the Future of Housing

Floating houses in Amsterdam designed by Koen Olthuis. Mr. Olthuis’s architectural firm, Waterstudio, which he founded in 2003, has completed more than 200 floating homes and offices. CreditFriso Spoelstra/Waterstudio.nl
RIJSWIJK, The Netherlands — Early next year when a converted cargo container on a floating foundation of plastic bottles opens on the flood-prone shores of Korail Bosti, Bangladesh’s largest slum, few of its users are likely to celebrate the 320-square-foot space as a revolution. Yet, according to Koen Olthuis, the lead architect on the project, it is part of the greatest transformation in urbanism since Elisha Otis built the safety brake that gave rise to the modern elevator, skyscrapers and ultimately urban density.

“It will change the DNA of cities,” Mr. Olthuis said of the technology at the heart of his designs in an interview in his studio, a converted supermarket in this suburb of The Hague that also serves as his business headquarters.

In an era when the needs of growing urban centers are changing rapidly and rising sea levels threaten waterside construction, Mr. Olthuis has been busy working on a solution: the floating building.

Mr. Olthuis founded Waterstudio — which he describes as the first modern architecture firm to exclusively build floating houses — in 2003. More than a decade on, he and his team consider themselves pioneers in a growing movement. The firm has completed more than 200 floating homes and offices, many of them in the Netherlands, where several floating neighborhoods have sprung up in the last decade.

The team’s designs have gone global, with showcases ranging from exclusive floating islands in Dubai and the Maldives for the superrich, to more modest designer homes in Europe and the United States, to projects like the floating container, called City App, that will serve as an education center in the poorest neighborhoods in Asia.

A rendering of a floating private island that can be moved around to suit the owner’s desires.CreditWaterstudio.nl and Amillarah Private Islands
Mr. Olthuis was a candidate for Time Magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in 2007, and he has been described as a visionary in the media. The BBC dubbed him the “Floating Dutchman” when featuring his plan to build a floating block in Naaldwijk, the Netherlands.

“He was really one of the first architects who saw that building on water could develop a whole new design language,” said Tracy Metz, an American journalist based in the Netherlands and a co-author of “Sweet & Salt: Water and the Dutch” (2012).

Although live-aboard boats and then houseboats have existed for centuries, the modern floating house is a relatively recent invention, with new materials and methods allowing for full-height construction without the loss of stability or the risk of intruding moisture.

The buildings are constructed on a floating foundation (sometimes stabilized by fixed stilts), which makes them flood-proof, affordable and independent of expensive real estate, although obtaining building permits can be tricky.

Perhaps most important for the slums of Dhaka, the units — which can house amenities like internet terminals, toilets and showers, large-scale water filtration, medical clinics, community kitchens and workshops — can be moved easily to where they are needed most.

 

Koen Olthuis CreditWaterstudio.nl

“If I were to build only floating islands for the wealthy, I would only make 150 happy people in the next 20 years,” said Mr. Olthuis, 45, who is the grandson of both an architect and a shipbuilder. “If we use this technology also to upgrade slums, we can change the lives of millions.”

As for most of Waterstudio’s other clients, the top draws are the crisp, elegant and open designs, the water views, and — for those with pockets deep enough — the optional private beaches.

The first units of his high-end Oceana project in Dubai are to be delivered next summer. For the project, Mr. Olthuis and Dutch Docklands, the development firm he co-owns, are designing and building 33 islands of 11,000 square feet that support custom-built villas of up to 5,500 square feet each, at an estimated total project cost of $170 million.

The villas themselves resemble smaller houses he has designed in the Netherlands. With open spaces and barely-there transitions between the indoors and the outdoors, his designs are airy, light and modern. The undersides of the islands are equipped with anchor points for marine life that resemble holds on artificial climbing walls, leading to a collaboration with Ocean Futures Society, established by Jean-Michel Cousteau, the son of the explorer Jacques Cousteau.

Christie’s real estate, which is acting as a broker for the units, notes that they can be transported around the globe. Depending on the level of customization and enhancements, the islands will sell for an estimated $5 million.

A rendering of City App, a floating cargo container that can be used to deliver essential services to areas in crisis. CreditWaterstudio.nl
For those on a tighter budget, Mr. Olthuis is set to help reconvert on-the-water living spaces in Weehawken, N.J., just south of the Lincoln Tunnel, on the Hudson River. The first phase of the project focuses on “livable yachts,” which are scheduled to go on the market late next year for slightly less than nearby condos, according to Steve Israel, the developer.

In Bangladesh, the City App aims to bring services to the most affected areas of a large and flood-prone slum. It is the first time Mr. Olthuis has brought his ideas to bear in development work and is almost entirely funded by a foundation he set up that receives funding from Dutch partners.

The floating structure that will pioneer the program was built this year in a yard in Helmond in the south of the Netherlands, nearly 5,000 miles from Dhaka, and features two rows of computers and benches. Four other models are now being built to bring other urgently needed services to Dhaka, although none of the units will consist of actual dwellings.

While he is mostly known in design circles for his open glass constructions, Mr. Olthuis sees a broader mission. He is also an academic member of the flood resilience group at Unesco-IHE in Delft, a water research institute.

In his version of the future, cities will make better use of their water surfaces. In some cases, they will have no choice. Mr. Olthuis envisions public buildings like schools, stadiums and even parks being moved to different waterside neighborhoods according to need.

“In 20 years,” he said, “cities are going to be different than today.”

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