20,000 Floors Under the Sea
Posted by James_Knutila on Wednesday, Mar 10, 2010
Malaysian architect Sarly Adre Bin Sarkum’s entry into the 2010 eVolo Skyscraper Competition is an underwater office and apartment building. The concept is a smorgasbord of green tech — harnessing the wind, sun, and waves to generate its power. The scraper grows its own food using hydroponics and the miniature forest that sits on top, and is stabilized by tentacles that harness kinetic energy. The architects have an ambitious plan:
“We envision a future where land as a resource will be scarce; it is only natural progression that we create our own. Approximately 71% of the Earth’s surface is ocean, even more if climate change has its way, hence it is only natural progression that we will populate the seas someday. We picture a new metapolis, created from a collection of hO2+ scrapers, as a city that does not consume nature but creates and produces nature. In the end becoming hO2+ Cities.”
Undersea settlement is the future — just ask Dennis Chamberland, an aquanaut who wants to colonize the undersea regions of the earth (Watch our documentary on Chamberland and his ‘Aquatica’ on Motherboard). Kevin Costner is definitely on board, as well as James Cameron.
Some observations/constructive criticism:
- If it springs a leak, Joe Nobody in the bottom floor cubicle is in some trouble.
- Be sure to pack some Vitamin D, because natural light is going to be scarce.
- Those hammerheads in the diagram are looking pretty big — if sharks are 200 feet long in the future, I’ll stay on the surface, thanks very much.
- The objects at the end of the tentacles look a lot like coffins. Does that raise some red flags?
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