DeZeen reports that the Danish architecture firm BIG recently unveiled a floating city concept called Oceanix City that would house 10,000 people. The idea sprang from the threat of extreme weather events and rising sea levels. The plans were unveiled in New York City at the United Nations building. "We've based it on this modular idea of a hexagonal island," said Bjarke Ingels principal at the firm. "It has the omni-direction of a circle but it has the modularity and rationality of something manmade."
Oceanix – a company that develops innovate ways to build on water – commissioned BIG to develop the concept, working with MIT's Center for Ocean Engineering and Oceanix. The scheme was unveiled at the First UN High-level Roundtable on Sustainable Floating Cities, which Oceanix co-convened with MIT, the Explorers Club and UN-Habitat, a UN offshoot mandated to work with city development.
Floating modules would be arranged to protect an inner circle of water. Oceanix City is intended to provide a habitable, off-shore environment in the event of rising sea levels, which are expected to affect 90 per cent of the world's coastal cities by 2050. Each of the modules would be built on land and then towed to sea, where they would be anchored in place. The miniature islands are also designed to survive a category-five hurricane. Arrangements would be flexible so that the cities could be moved if water levels became too low.
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