Waterscape Urbanism

I was struck by a recent mis-use of the term landscape urbanism in this article from the Atlanta Journal Constitution on the need for climate change inspired floating homes.  Quoting  Thai landscape architect Danai Thaitakoo on the need for dealing with innundation.

"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, who is involved in several projects based on this principle. "Instead of embodying permanence, solidity and longevity, liquid perception will emphasize change, adaptation."

While amphibious architecture is nothing new, and i agree that it will become more common in the future there are two points.  The first is minor - that of the mis-characterization of landscape urbanism as 'solid-state' and 'embodying permanence, solidity and longevity'.  If there's any flavor of urbanism that emphasizes change and adaptation, it's landscape urbanism - so i think there's a disconnect in that above paragraph.  Just saying.

Second, and more troubling, is the idea that we must react to climate change by building floating structures - rather than address the topic at hand.  It's similar in nature to dealing with semi-urban forest fires by designating fire-safety clearing zones of tinder and brush around houses, rather than looking at not building homes in these areas - or heaven forbid - letting them burn.  Or coming up with vertical farms due to our misguided agricultural subsidies and policies that make it impossible to grow a variety of food on terra firm.   

Its cause.  Not effect.  We spend way too much time on solutions to problems and calling it need-inspired innovation - rather than getting to the real root of the problems themselves.  May not be as press-worthy of sexy, but at least its real.

Europe Journal: Diana Memorial Fountain

Located at one of the far ends of Hyde Park in London is the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fountain, an elegantly curved ring of water opened in 2004 (design by Kathryn Gustafson  from her London office of Gustafson Porter).  Although somewhat controversial, I found the feature quite engaging, even experiencing it late in the day in somewhat rainy weather.  The flattened perspective gives subtle hints to the overall shape, but invites exploration.

Simple pathways were added after the fact due to some issues with sogginess, but are done pretty well.  You can never really see the entire feature in one view due to some subtle berming of the interior areas as well.

The movement and sound of water is subtle as well, with a variety of textures and smooth falls that glide along - not rushing rapids, but a trickling and bubbling that is peaceful.

Some details show the different water flow characteristics, and you see the construction technique of the individual computer-cut pieces of granite connected together at intervals - a sort of sculptural feat in it's own right.

 

The aerial shows the overall configuration of the oval, with some of the context of the adjacent Serpentine Lake.

Unfortunately, videos of the features didn't make it back from Europe with me - so there is the missing experiential aspects and the sound and movement of water - which is really part of the experience.  If you are in the area, definitely worth a side trip to check it out for yourself

Mississippi Modelling

An article that came up amidst discussions on the Landscape Urbanism Reader revisits the question of scale brought by up Linda Pollak in her essay 'Constructed Ground'.   On Design Observer, Kristi Dykema Cheramie investigates the wonderful history of the massive model built to simulate river conditions in her essay The Scale of Nature: Modeling the Mississippi River.

 

:: images via Design Observer

RBC: Zeekracht (OMA)

Zeekracht | OMA

A related follow-up to the essay by Koolhaas, this short essay explores Zeekracht, a master plan for the North Sea, driven by it's "high wind and consistent wind speeds and shallow waters..." making it "...arguably the world's most suitable area for large-scale wind farming."  The project master plan (below) outlines the strategy.  "Rather than a fixed spatial plan, proposes a system of catalytic elements, that, although intendted for the present, are optimized for long-term sustainability." (72)

From an ecological perspective the proposal looks to incorporate elements call 'Reefs' which are described as "simulated marine ecologies reinforcing the natural ecosystems (and eco-productivity) of the sea." (72)

 

The local implementation is "...designed to be sited, programmed, and phased to meet the evolving demands and plans of North Sea regional development," fulfilling the potential of the area as "...a major player in global energy production and trade through wind power alone." Aside from the energy potential, there is the idea thinking of this in tandem with ecological restoration, as "Farms developed along ecological zones and around existing decomissioned platforms create marine remediation areas, new recreational parks, and recreational sea routes." (72)



The project offers the example mentioned by Koolhaas as a "combination of politics and engineering" (71) that is essential to attain and ecological urbanism, attaining both productivity and remediation: 

images via OMA website
more from the official Zeekracht site


(from Ecological Urbanism, Mostafavi & Doherty, eds. 2010, p.72-77)

More Hidden Rivers - NYC

An interesting post from Urban Omnibus from earlier in January entitled 'Grey vs. Green: Daylighting the Saw Mill River' is less intriguing in design concept that in larger idea of envisioning the expression of the variety of waterways that are hidden/buried/forgotten within our urban areas.  As referenced by Eric Sanderson through  his work on the fabulous Mannahatta project "The movement of water is universal. What takes it out of the ordinary is the infrastructure we have built around and in spite of it. Mannahatta notes that there were once 34.9 miles of “rocky headwater stream communities” and 14.2 miles of “marsh headwater stream communities” on our island, in addition to numerous springs, ponds, and intermittent streams."


The idea of  a more artistic expression comes out in the great image from the article.  The idea, as mentioned in the caption: "Spanning the corridor between the 42nd Street/Bryant Park BDFV station and the 5 Av 7 station, Samm Kunce’s mosaic “Under Bryant Park” is an evocative imagining of the root and water paths behind the tiled walls. ."

:: image  via Urban Omnibus - Photo by Zach Youngerman

The design concepts seem pretty standard fare visually, although the are made up of highly artificial and engineered system.  The authentic expression of 'system' seems an interesting challenge for designers, similar to restoration processes for the LA River which has elicited terms like 'Freakology' to describe the hybridized ecological system.

More Hidden Rivers

Always a fan of explorations of lost rivers, this one is takes the existing urban pattern and erases the former route of the Fleet River in London (via the Londonist)

"As most readers will know (and we’ve seen first hand), the river is now entirely underground and used as a sewer, but you can still pick out its course in the sloping streets of its former banks and, occasionally, a telltale street name. Reader Simon Dovar is one of many to be intrigued by this vanished river, and has put together a map of its route:  " I did a bit of research to trace the path of the lost River Fleet as it meanders under the streets of London. As you can see the map is completely hand drawn in pencil as well as the street indicators. The river is indicated by the rubbed out streets."  Nice touch – a vanished watercourse marked out in erased pencil lead."

:: image via  The Londonist

Aquifers not Aquitards

From the recent post on watershed boundaries, a reader mentioned the concept of underground aquifers and their relation to geographical boundaries and .  My title is in jest (sort of) referring to 'Aquitards' which according to Wikipedia is "a zone within the earth that restricts the flow of groundwater from one aquifer to another", but I thought an apt metaphor for our overuse and depletion of these amazing resources.  So in a crude analysis, the map of US aquifers is pretty amazing (here's a comparison of 'watersheds' and 'aquifers' in two maps with some context of states and cities (images from National Atlas mapping tool)

aquifers

watersheds

While many aquifers develop in tandem with surface waterways, others are disconnected from these sources giving them different patterns.  Ancient sources are often tapped, with draw-down causing these to be depleted much faster than they are recharged.  One of the most familiar, the 10 million+ year old Ogallala Aquifer (synonymous with 'High Plains Aquifer') that supplies water to the agricultural bread-basket of the world - centered in Nebraska and spreading from the southern tip of South Dakota into the northern panhandle of Texas.  

:: image via Wikipedia

I hadn't considered the number of aquifers and their distribution (another great tool is an online mapping application from National Atlas, found here), but it's interesting to see the difference between more broadly based, central aquifers (not specifically linked to a river) like the Ogallala, or in Oregon the Pacific Northwest Basaltic rock aquifers (unlike the Columbia River based systems to the north.  These more agriculturally oriented aquifers can be compared to small scale aquifers like the Biscayne which supplies drinking water to much of Central Florida.

:: image via USGS

The interactive mapper allows you to zoom in on state & county boundaries, as well as locations of significant cities, to see the relationship of urban agglomeration to aquifers, for instance a closer look at the area centered on Chicago (mapped from the National Atlas).

The cause and effect of cities and aquifers is probably more significant in the impacts of urbanization on water supplies (both through depletion and pollution) and the delicate interaction between surface and subsurface conditions.

:: image via Wikipedia

While subsurface conditions do exist separate from visible surface conditions, there are impacts as many rivers as charged with these underground sources, and depletion (and diversion) has caused some rivers to no longer reach the oceans - such as the Rio Grande and the Colorado (anyone guess the reasons) or the filling of traditionally large reservoirs like Lake Mead and Powell - creating significant water scarcity issues in certain metropolitan regions.  Another great lens to look at cities, so more on this to come... seems the hydrological cycle is tied to everything we do.

:: image via EDRO

Disaster Imagery

The Gulf oil spill - documented by Photographer Edward Burtynsky, best known for his fabulous work 'Manufactured Landscapes'... capturing the essence of the breadth of disaster and human-wrought destruction. (via Treehugger, more images on the exhibit at the Metivier Gallery).


:: image via Treehugger

Reading Owens Lake

One of my favorite chapters of the great Infrastructural City (read my review here) is the chapter by Barry Lehrman entitled 'Reconstructing the Void: Owens Lake' which delves into the 'accidental preservation' of the Owens Lake basin due to the depletion of water resources as they were diverted to Los Angeles. As part of the mammoth 'reading circle' on the book, Lehrman has posted some great stuff on the genesis and background of the essay.


:: image via InfraScape Design

It's a delight to hear Lehrman read the chapter, so definitely link to the 30-minute audio file and grab the headphones, as it's an interesting take in the author's own words. I'm sure there will be more interesting tidbits from the gaggle of smart bloggers rummaging about in the book and finding heady, insightful, and multi-syllabic ways to intelligently parse the text - but the words from the author's mouth (literally) are a fascinating 'read' into this chapter worth checking out.


:: image via InfraScape Design

FLOW: A Competition

Winners of the international competition „FLOW“ arrived via an email today. The european competition is: "... for students in the last two years of architecture, engineer, art, landscape, town planning, sociology and young architects were born after December 31st, 1975 in Europe."



The subject area of the competition is the City of Brussels, covering the port area and the canal in the center of the City: "This competition of ideas aims to enable participants to propose an innovative and daring architectural project which simultaneously envisages the environmental, social, technical and economic dimensions involved. The objective of the contest is to reflect on future new lifestyles and organisations, to prefigure them and to overturn mentalities, which will make it possible to provoke reflections between the private and public sector."

Student First prize: S1 Mutations
School : UNIFE (Italy) Alessandro Bellini, Jacopo Casolai

"The complexity of the problems encountered facing the competition and the dimensional matter of the canal in Brussels, encouraged us to seek out a programmatic approach. This will provide some guidelines disregarding, for the first time, the real architectural intervention.

A lot of documents and open questions involve the European Capital and specifically its 14 km canal: starting from that amount of informations and from the specific FLOW competition's requests we draw up a critical MANIFESTO in ten points. This document underline the canal's points of weakness and possible courses of actions, and suggest a method, called induced mutations, which is able to generate more and more well-framed urban transformations."

VIDEO 1 MANIFESTO from alessandro bellini on Vimeo.

Young Professional First prize: P7 The line
(Deutschland) Marine Miroux, Christoph Hager, Ingo Hüller, Demian Rudaz

La Ligne from Marine Miroux on Vimeo.

Check out all of the entries on the website. I think the idea of the videos as part of competition deliverables are a great idea - as it allows the static imagery to coalesce into a more complete narrative which aids in understanding the specifics.

Modelling Dynamic Processes

One of the interesting links I found on Bradley Cantrell's site showed a very cool project being developed by the UC Berkeley to simulate river dynamics, which have notoriously been difficult to replicate.

Via Science Daily: "Christian Braudrick, William Dietrich and their colleagues are the first to build a scaled-down meandering stream in the lab that successfully meanders without straigtening out or turning into braided streams. The substrate is composed of sand to represent real-life gravel; white light-weight plastic for sand, and alfalfa sprouts for deep-rooting vegetation."


:: image via Science Daily

The new information gleaned from this research will allow researchers "...to investigate the role of various factors in determining the shape and migration rate of streams and how variables associated with climate change and land use might be expected to affect river form."

While the sophistication of digital modeling continues to amaze, I find it very interesting that certain physical processes need analog physical models in order to capture the myriad variables in accurate ways. As we strive for more ways to plan for unpredictable circumstances, we may find a resurgence of the physical model, along with our digital tools, as new/old ways of understanding complex dynamic processes.

Hydrological Infill

As an adjunct to the recent post on the abstract 'Blue Road' that attempts to restore in spirit hidden waterways, the inverse process (proposed, but thankfully not implemented) of river removal from in NYC, circa 1924 as a way to alleviate traffic congestion - via Gothamist: "In this issue of Popular Science, circa 1924, there's an article discussing New York's traffic problem — which at the time was reportedly causing the city to lose over $1M a day. One proposed solution: drain the East River and convert it into a 5-mile system accommodating roadways and the subway, while also providing parking spaces in garages and housing city centers."


:: image via Gothamist

It's shocking due to scale and prominence, but probably more shocking is how many rivers, streams, creeks, wetlands, and ponds were filled for development and progress in cities around the world. It seems apt to possibly take a cue from Venice or Amsterdam in embracing, rather than erasing, the natural (or often unnatural) water features as modes of transport and amenity. I could see a new mode of canoe commuters using these to avoid surface traffic snarls via Blue Highways.

The Blue Road

A link worth checking out is from Dutch artist Henk Hofstra who painted roadways vibrant blue to symbolize hidden watercourses in the 2007 piece entitled 'The Blue Road'.


:: images via Henk Hofstra

"In April 2007... a road in Drachten, The Netherlands, is painted blue to symbolise the water. It is 1000 meters long and 8 meters wide. It was created to form an urban river and recreate the path of a waterway that used to be where the road currently runs. They will start to dig a new canal here in 2008. The text WATER IS LEVEN is written on the blue road. The water will bring back life again in the centre of Drachten."


:: images via Henk Hofstra

It's definitely compelling from a large-scale, but also from a pedestrian scale as the contrast with the drab gray of the cityscape is dynamic at either. It brings up interesting connotations of the way we paint our roads and public sphere to create a complex network of symbols utilizing a bright contrast on a grey canvas - such as the functional bright green Portland bike boxes, or the community building and often terribly executed idea of paint in the service of intersection repairs. Rarely do these take the scale and depth of expression as shown in Hofstra's work here and the purity is quite stunning.


:: images via Henk Hofstra

The metaphor goes even further (maybe a bit too far) with a sub-installation that shows a car being swallowed at the bank, by the reclaimed 'riverscape'. I get the idea as a piece of whimsy, but not the most compelling part of the installation by far. Maybe if the car weren't blue, and there were paved 'ripples' emanating out, it would be more successful. I guess that's my opinion, and doesn't really mean much in the big picture of this project - a detail only.


:: image via Henk Hofstra

Also, the linearity of the 'river' in this case seems to downplay the naturalness of topography and hydrology - but as it is the Netherlands, it's likely that old waterway was perhaps man-made and arrow straight. The juxtaposition of the man-made upon the natural is a challenge but somehow an opportunity... while both rivers and streets work on models of efficiency and movement, there are radically different mechanisms at play. The linear path give the opportunity for a much more abrupt statement, translated 'Water is Life' in large text upon the full length of the roadway.


:: image via Henk Hofstra

In Portland, there's been talk of taking the disappeared streams map to a larger scale - to do something like this showing the hidden pathway of previous streams in the City, those crossing roadways or meandering through neighborhoods... and abstracted 'daylighting' project, or a full-scale mapping exercise confronting us daily with what was, and could be. Powerful stuff.

spotted via Daniel Lerch on Facebook

Where the Revolution Began

The passing of Lawrence Halprin has close ties to an upcoming book that is being released this weekend celebrating his legacy in Portland. This Saturday is a chance to celebrate the legacy of Halprin in Portland, with the release of 'Where the Revolution Began: Lawrence and Anna Halprin and the Reinvention of Public Space'.



On Saturday, December 5th, at 2pm, join us for the release of a book celebrating the world-renowned Portland fountain plazas designed by Lawrence Halprin. The event will be located at the Ziba World Headquarters Auditorium (map) at 1044 9th Ave NW. A quick rundown of events:

Introduction by: Portland Parks Commissioner Nick Fish

Lecture performance by: Ron Blessinger, violinist, Third Angle Ensemble, with dancer/choreographers Linda K. Johnson, Tere Mathern, Cydney Wilkes, and Linda Austin.

Screening of: The City Dance of Lawrence and Anna Halprin. A documentary about the September 2008 performance in Halprin’s Portland plazas.

::

About the Book:
Some additional information about the book, from a press release issued by the Halprin Landscape Conservancy:

"Between 1963 and 1970, Lawrence Halprin and Associates realized the Portland Open Space Sequence: a quartet of public plazas in Portland, Oregon, that redefined the city and set a bold new precedent for urban landscape architecture. Comprised of Lovejoy Fountain, Pettygrove Park, and Ira Keller Fountain), plus the lesser-known Source Fountain, the plazas are a collage of striking concrete forms, gushing water, and alpine flora that, in their seamless mix of nature and theater, created a playful metaphorical watershed coursing through the central city."


:: image via Halprin Landscape Conservancy

"Where the Revolution Began (Spacemaker Press, $29.95) is the story of how these plazas came to be. Born of the creative experimentation and collaboration between the late Halprin and his wife, pioneering choreographer/dancer Anna Halprin, the Portland Open Space Sequence came to life in the unlikely setting of the Portland’s first scrape-and-rebuild urban renewal project. But Halprin defied the conventions of both American urban renewal and midcentury modernism, designing the kind of inviting, exuberant public space not seen since Renaissance Rome’s Trevi Fountain and Piazza Navona.

The book is an outgrowth of “The City Dance of Lawrence and Anna Halprin,” a performance that took place in the plazas in September 2008 as part of PICA’s annual TBA Festival. The book’s release, the performance, and screening is a celebration of Halprin, who passed away October 25 at age 94.

For Lawrence Halprin, one of the 20th century’s most influential landscape architects, the Portland plazas were the first step in a career-long exploration of sequential works of landscape design, from the Haas Promenade in Jerusalem to the Roosevelt Memorial in Washington, D.C. For Portland, Halprin’s work marked the beginning of a tradition of remaking the city around interactive public spaces, such as the famed Pioneer Courthouse Square. And for landscape architecture, the plazas laid the earliest foundations for the ecologically and socially responsive urbanism on the rise today.

Replete with historic photographs and Halprin’s notebook drawings, Where the Revolution Began is a historically complete document of how this pivotal moment in urban landscape history came to be, from concept to fruition.

All proceeds from sales benefit the Halprin Landscape Conservancy, a nonprofit organization devoted to educating the public and preserving the Portland Open Space Sequence."

Essays by:
John Beardsley is the director of garden and landscape studies at Dumbarton Oaks and is the author of Earthworks and Beyond: Contemporary Art in the Landscape and Gardens of Revelation: Environments by Visionary Artists.

Janice Ross is a professor in the Drama Department and director of the Dance Division at Stanford University. She is the author of Anna Halprin: Experience as Dance and Moving Lessons: The Beginning of Dance in American Education.

Randy Gragg is editor in chief of Portland Monthly magazine and has written on art and architecture for Architectural Record, Metropolis, Preservation, the New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, and numerous other publications.

Contemporary photography by:
Susan Seubert regularly photographs for National Geographic Traveler, Geo Saison, and the New York Times, among other publications. She was a 1999 recipient of Life magazine’s Alfred Eisenstaedt Award.

Funding generously provided by:
Oregon Arts Commission/National Endowment for the Arts
Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts
Portland Development Commission
Portland Parks & Recreation
Schnitzer Care Foundation
Russell Development Company
And many others.

As We Found Them... As We Leave Them

A provocative image found in an email from the local Audubon Society email offers the visual of 'As We Found Them... As We Leave Them', a Jay “Ding” Darling cartoon from 1923, as a statement about the state of our rivers in the face of urbanization.



The reason for the email was an upcoming hearing on the Willamette River in Portland. The text:

"On Wednesday, December 16th at 630 pm Portland City Council will hold its first hearing on the North Reach River Plan. This is a unique opportunity to reverse more than a century of degradation in the Willamette River as it passes through Portland. The North Reach stretches 11 miles from the Fremont Bridge to the Confluence with the Columbia River. It is one of the most degraded stretches of river in the United States.

The North Reach Plan is the City's first major update to the zoning code and design guidelines for this stretch of River since 1987. The Plan took more than two years to develop and proposes more than $500 million in new infrastructure to support river industries and new trail alignments that will provide the public with greater access to the river. The Plan also proposes critical new strategies to protect and restore habitat in the North Reach. Specifically the plan proposes the following:

• Environmental Zoning to provide baseline protections for the most important riparian and upland resources;
• A system of 21 permanently protected restoration sites designed to allow listed salmon and steelhead to safely pass through the North Reach;
• A funding structure that requires industry to fully mitigate to replace existing habitat that is eliminated in the course of development and a small additional fee which will go towards supporting habitat improvement in the North Reach.

We expect strong industry opposition to this plan. Industry has been arguing to eliminate environmental regulations on industrial properties and to gut the proposed funding mechanisms. If they have their way, the regulations established under the new River Plan would be even weaker than the regulations that we have today---the regulations that have already allowed the North Reach to become the most degraded stretch of river in Oregon."

Get out and protect the rivers in Portland people. Questions can be directed to Audubon via Conservation Director Bob Sallinger.

More from the Ecotone

I am a fan of the conceptual parti of the 'ecotone' as seen from the Integrating Habitats competition award winner 'Urban Ecotones' from 2008. The use of this landscape ecology principle, which is defined as a transitional zone between distinct plant communities, offers a lot of mileage as an evocative strategy within it's original sphere of influence, as well as being re-purposed as a metaphor in urbanism and more developed strategies.


:: image via InfraNet Lab

The recent announcement (via InfraNet Lab) of 'Ecotone Hydro Park' by McGill University student Tania Delage uses this theoretical concept of 'ecotone', along with Lebbeus Woods' more politically defined idea of 'borderline', "...the site where various systems collide, superimpose, or react to create a new condition," to develop a proposal for a project in the Great Lakes region.

"At an ecological scale, the site is the Great Lakes basin and Saint-Lawrence River, the largest freshwater system of the world. The watershed is home to many ecological systems and provides important migratory routes for fish that spawn in fresh water only to return to their salt water habitat. Ringed by areas of intense urbanization, the watershed represents a major transportation artery for commercial navigation and provides a source of hydro electric power to the surrounding areas. The waterway also serves as an open sewer to cities along its shore, as it simultaneously supplies their drinking water."




:: image via InfraNet Lab

"The two water levels present in the site offer opportunities for a changing landscape, atune to the cyclical hydrological variations. Floating filtering gardens, located on the high water level sway back and forth with the currents produced by the dam to reminding visitors of the inner-workings of the facility itself. At the lower water level, an extension of the nature park is created, allowing visitors to experience the filter housing sequence."

Cool project, great ideas, and simple, effective graphics. Student work is alive and well. Read and see more images at InfraNet Lab, Design Under Sky, Urban Logic, and probably many others.


:: image via InfraNet Lab

Two if by Land, None if by Sea

Just last month, a strange site appeared in Portland, docked at Waterfront Park. The area, chain-linked off from anyone getting too close, gave a vision of a spectacle equal parts Rose Festival Fleet Week and kitschy episode of the The Love Boat, spawned from gigantism of the engineering prowess and the ego that could only yield something as warped in size and concept as 'The World'.


:: Portland, Meet the World - image via Google Images

This thought stuck in my head - why? While life at sea on the move, from port to port, may at least give one a feeling that there is a different destination looming, adventure around the corner, or least a feeling that if you're on a boat, your life can't be standing still - life on the static 'floating island' must come from those willing to stay put. This is the concept of 'Seasteading' is just that - homesteading on the sea. This is not a houseboat... think more like an oil derrick with buildings on top.


:: Club Stead - image via Wikipedia (copyright TSI, used by CCR)

The main group behind this concept is The Seasteading Institute - and the winners of the "...first Seasteading Architectural Design Contest ...invited participants to design the floating city of their dreams. " ...were recently unveiled, via a post on Bustler. I filed this under Veg.itecture due to the inclusion of images of rooftop greenery - but thought better even though I guess if the entire 'field' on which the design is placed is a giant (patent pending?) floating platform, then it's all on structure. Here's some of the notable entries - but read more at Bustler.

The Swimming City by András Gyõrfi won top prize - and really seemed ok, but not necessarily conjuring up visions of innovative sea life - more like a new urbanist development in a bustling suburb of florida. Even the greenery seems pastoral - like someone's front yard.


:: images via Bustler
On the flip side, there were definitely those with the aquatic theme in full speed, sporting fins and other such ichthymorphic features that I thought would dominate the competition, such as the Winner of the Prize for Aesthetic Design: SESU Seastead by Marko Järvela


:: image via Bustler
A lot just look like some new modern buildings (albeit sometimes with an icing of the Veg.itectural) photoshopped onto a square surrounded by water. The water in this could be the surrounding street in the urban block - as removed from an seasteading context as these are.




:: images via Bustler

These could literally be floating anywhere - so not necessarily contextual. Then again, if you place something out in the sea, what is the context? The most contextual I think really captured 'oil derrick'... motif was Resort by László Szabó...


:: images via Bustler

Also, the most innovative idea I thought may go to: the Cultural center, Designer: Mark McQuilten, Robert Davidov and Ben Attrill... featuring a floating scene of contextual destruction with a 'Planet of the Apes' apocalyptic scene moored next to the current Statue of Liberty. Sort of a post-global warming Ellis-island welcome to the new world.


:: images via Bustler
A goodly portion of these are just plain awful - but enough interest to think: 1) of the technical problem solving to make these ideas work on a floating, seaworthly platform, 2) do these operated similar to small island nations with 95-100% imports of practically everything, aside from fish?, and 3) what would motivate someone to live on one of these - aside from the random assorted Bond villian? So curious.