Follow ArchinectJun 13 '08180
ShowCase is a new feature on Archinect, presenting exciting new work from designers representing all creative fields and all geographies. It's common knowledge that the planet is warming, ice caps are melting, and water levels are rising. The international scientific community predicts that a temperature elevation of 1째C will lead to a water rise of 1 meter, resulting in massive land loss and the displacement of millions of people world wide. Vincent Callebaut, a visionary Belgian architect, is responding to this inevitability with his proposal LILYPAD, A Floating Ecopolis for Ecological Refugees .
Aerial view over Monaco LILYPAD is touted by Callebaut as a prototypical auto-sufficient amphibious city... a tenable solution to the rising water levels. In addition to providing housing for those displaced by the transforming land/water relationships, LILYPAD also produces sustainable energy for developed regions.
Aerial views over the Maldivian Atolls
Entirely autosufficient, Lilypad takes up the four main challenges launched by the OECD in March 2008: climate, biodiversity, water and health. LILYPAD is a true amphibian - half aquatic and half terrestrial city able to accommodate 50,000 inhabitants and inviting the biodiversity to develop its fauna and flora around a central lagoon of soft water collecting and purifying the rain waters. This artificial lagoon is entirely immersed, ballasting the city. It enables inhabitants to live in the heart of the sub aquatic depths. The multi functional program is based on three marinas and three mountains dedicated to work, shopping and entertainment. The whole set is covered by a stratum of planted housing in suspended gardens and crossed by a network of streets and alleyways with organic outline. The goal is to create a harmonious coexistence of humans and nature, exploring new modes of crosscultural aquatic living.
The floating structure is "branches" of the Ecopolis inspired of the highly ribbed leave of the giant lilypad of the Amazonia Victoria Regia
The giant lilypad of the Amazonia Victoria Regia (left: top surface; right: bottom of lilypad) The floating structure of the Ecopolis is directly inspired of the highly ribbed leave of the great lilypad of Amazonia Victoria Regia. The double skin is made of polyester fibers covered by a layer of titanium dioxide (TiO2) like an anatase which by reacting to the ultraviolet rays enable to absorb the atmospheric pollution by photocatalytic effect.
The three mountains are ecological niches, aquaculture fields and biologic corridors
The main deck with the three marinas, the submarine performing arts center and the gardens of phytopurification.
LILYPAD reaches a positive energetic balance with zero carbon emission by the integration of all the renewable energies (solar, thermal and photovoltaic energies, wind energy, hydraulic, tidal power station, osmotic energies, phytopurification, biomass), producing more energy than it consumes.
To adapt to the changing ocean flows resulting from the hydro climatic factors, LILYPAD makes direct reference to Jules Verne's literature, the alternative possibility of a multicultural floating Ecopolis whose metabolism would be in perfect symbiosis with the cycles of nature.