Floating Riviera Print

Global warming makes coastal ecosystems always more fragile, with sea rise and frequent extreme weather conditions. Current practices of construction of reclamation areas moving the coastline and destroying inner lagoon are no more sustainable. However, sea trades make economical and social development of the coastlines always essential and the growth of existing coastal urban systems and the development of new coastal settlements are supposed to continue with the rise of global population. At the same time, with economical changes and depletion of natural resources, other urban system could suffer depopulation and abandonment of large areas, like it happens today in Fordist industrial cities. As an answer, the artwork is a vision for a different new urban model for a sustainable, resilient and reversable development of coastal lagoon settlement: the floating city. “Floating bubbles” with double curtain would contain neighborhood units with a mix of functions (commercial, café, restaurant, offices, home-office single and duplex units), around an inner green court. In the upper part of the “bubble”, a vegetable garden with hydroponic cultures provide vegetables for the neighborhood unit, while the lower part is occupied by technical services, drinkwater tanks and sewage collection, partly brought to phytoremediation plants and partly used for fertilizing. The inner curtain of the “bubble” would slide and rotate on the outer courtain, reducing the effect of the wave movements. Photovoltaic glasses in the upper part of the curtain, together with energy recovery from wave movement, would provide partial energetical self-sufficiency of the “bubble”. A system of opening in the two curtains would provide natural ventilation of the “bubble” that works as a unique climatized system. “Floating bubbles” would not be isolated worlds. Floating piers, with moveable bridges allowing boat transit, could provide pedestrian connections between the bubbles and with coastline, like the urban streets do in a conventional settlement. Finally, floating islands with phytoremediation plants complete the system, allowing phytoremediation of the gray water produced in the bubbles and enhancing the quality of water of the lagoon. The whole floating city is not fixed, but can be moved to another location, and has a near zero impact on the lagoon natural ecosystem. The work has been exhibited in "Alterglobalism" exhibition in Belyaevo Gallery in Moscow, May-August 2021.