Water Citadel, The Netherlands
Inhabitat: How does floating architecture tie into sustainable design?
Koen: The first and most important goal in all of our plans is to design scarless developments. This means that both during as well as after the lifespan of the functions, the building leaves neither a physical footprint nor carbon footprint. Compared with building on land, water provides several opportunities for a more sustainable design approach. For example, one can think of water cooling and heating. These developments can use sea wind for cooling, floating solar fields for the local production of energy, and there is also potential for re-using a building at other locations and organizing the building process more efficiently by centralizing construction. ‘Sustainaquality’ is the search for new ways to increase sustainable developments. Sustainaquality brings together sustainability- aqua and quality.
Water Citadel, The Netherlands
Inhabitat: Living on water is an idea that is finding itself on the radars of more and more people. What do you see as the catalyst for this movement going from a novel idea to widespread reality?
Koen: The predicted growth of the world’s population to about 10 billion people by the year 2100 – this is the strongest catalyst for this movement. Mega-cities are desperately in search of space, and if we want to protect our planet while creating new density at the same time, we have to use the existing water in and around our cities. The key to a sustainable future for humanity can be found in a healthy balance between the use of land and water for the production of food, energy, clean water and shelter. Going beyond the waterfront is an efficient and exciting way to bring extra flexibility to our planet.
+ Koen Olthuis Waterstdio.NL
This interview is brought to you by Autodesk – Accelerating Better Design.
Venice could probably use some of these!
absolutely gorgeous!!!
I want live on a floating city!
I’m excited to see more floating projects come to fruition.
Really great interview. I was especially interested in what he had to say regarding tsunamis and building on the water.
Very interesting. I’m glad that people aren’t just building floating cities without considering the safety issues.
How do the fish feel about this?
As a Piscean, this is a dream come true.
Its very interesting how floating infrastructure can be protected from natural disasters- earthquakes and floods are pretty tough to design for when they are as large as what we have seen in the last couple years.
Absolutely fabulous ideas, some of the buildings are spectacular, with such a peaceful surroundings and energy.
Great concepts considering the speed at which our earth is changing, these ideas could save lives one day. Magnificent work, don’t stop!
Great work of this Dutch Water Architect. Here’s another great Dutch concept: Video Floating City in Rotterdam, The Netherlands http://bit.ly/ihM2fS
How is waste disposal handled?
I can appreciate your great work waterstudio since we are involved in visualizing and bringing floating city concepts like NOAH ( New Orleans Arcology Habitat) and Harvest City to virtual live. Nice job waterstudio, would love to visualize one of your projects as well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srwFzw82o6w
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1Flnbn53dY
i am quite young, it may happen in my lifetime. Then we will be more near to nature.