Posted 07.31.2009 at 4:29 pm
11 Comments
Citadel Floating Apartment Complex
The Citadel, a 60-unit luxury apartment complex designed by Dutch firm Waterstudio, defies the tides while cutting energy use by 25 percent
Waterstudio
There are two ways to react to global warming: you can fear it, or you can embrace it. Architect Koen Olthuis of Dutch design firm Waterstudio chooses the latter. His Citadel apartment building, part of a larger water-management development project called New Water in the Netherlands, is the first floating apartment complex in the world.
The Dutch are uniquely accustomed to dealing with fluctuating water levels; much of the Netherlands is below sea level, and vast swaths of land, known as polders, are continually pumped free of the accumulating rainwater that threatens nearby homes and buildings. The Citadel will simply rise and fall with the changing water levels, making it impervious to flooding, tides, and sea waters inching upward as a result of global warming.
Built atop a floating heavy concrete foundation, The Citadel will house 60 luxury apartments, a parking garage, a floating roadway, and boat docks. Each apartment will naturally have waterfront views via a garden terrace, and greenhouses will be interspersed throughout. But the greenest feature of the Citadel is its cooling system: submerged pipes will pump water throughout the structure to cool it, reducing its energy use by 25 percent compared to a conventional building.
So chin up, residents of low-lying cities everywhere. While we can’t seem to figure out how to put the brakes on global warming, at least we know we can embrace the rising water. The Citadel is proof that when the sea threatens our living spaces, we can rise above it.
[via Inhabitat]
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when can i move in?
www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEUWrj7SyPk
I wonder what the per sq ft building cost would be compared to a similar apartment building on land ?
I wonder what one of the apartments would cost?
I love it, waterside real estate is cheaper than dirt cheep that is if your on the water side of the waterside.
It's a great idea and I love it so much. But want to know about the transportation and stability (some people suffering from sea sick because of shaking). Where we can dock if someone wants to go somewhere .. have to use boat?
MYO HAN HTUN (a) KO TOE
wow thats pretty cool, there basically just like huge house boats with out motors, I think that there making floating houses in holland I wonder what happens if it sinks that would not be very good I guess
Just another reason to not do anything about global warming.
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"Oh, the ice caps are melting? No problem we have an aparment building that floats." Quote from some dumbass Dutch(duche).
Sounds cool but how much an apartment will cost? I guess it will be very expensive to move in one of those floating homes.
http://www.medicaldictionaryweb.com/
boka, I'm with you on the climate change issue issue, but the Dutch, as a group, are *extremely* environmentally-conscious -- hell, they HAVE to be, with so many of them living below sea level. So, it's unfair to speak of them as you do. I'm not Dutch (some distant ancestors is all), but I do have Dutch friends who aren't only concerned, but some of them are activists.
Those worrying about getting seasick, I imagine you don't need to be concerned. A few months ago I read about individual houses engineered exactly the same, and those slide up and down guide posts. With several of those posts around the perimeter, the only directions the structure can go are up and down -- no tilting, no floating off into the briny deep. I would imagine a similar arrangement exists for this apartment house.
I have no idea what these apartments will cost, but I'll lay odds they WON'T be cheap -- for the novelty factor alone, if nothing else. It's like living in a houseboat -- gone 5 stars!
Ha, that is hillarious. It is kind of like the Jetsons but with water. Those suckers cannot be cheap.
www.reddoorindy.com
Yes. It is like the Jetsons with water, but hey we did love the Jetsons way of life. This might represent the future before the years of dark for some inhabitants on our planet.
www.london-hideaways.com