The Japanese architecture firm N-ARK gives us its vision of the urban planning of the future, when thousands and thousands of people will no longer have enough room on the floor of the cows to live.
Released in 1995, the film water world finds today a beautiful echo in the evolution of our climate. If it is not (yet) a question that our Earth will be entirely covered by oceans, some island countries could soon find themselves without a single square meter of available land. What are the possible solutions then?
A true city of the seas
Baptized Dogen City, the city imagined by N-ARK is not uninteresting. While other similar concepts have already been imagined in recent decades, the architecture firm offers a very personal vision, which tries to anchor itself in a less and less hypothetical future.
Here, we move away from the imagination of the megacities in which the majority of the world’s population lives. Dogen City would be a small town bounded by a habitable ring 1.58 km in diameter and 4 km in circumference. Within it, various autonomous structures would constitute the indispensable organs for the proper functioning of the city: facilities for food production, cemeteries and places of prayer, offices, hospitals, schools, parks, gymnasiums, telecommunication stations or still residential complexes.
This floating city could accommodate 10,000 permanent residents as well as 30,000 visitors at a time. Everyone would be protected from tsunamis and bad weather by the outer ring, which would act as a barrier against the elements. Remember that Dogen City is imagined in a country marked by natural disasters and sensitive to rising waters, like many large urban spaces on the Pacific coast.
A really credible project?
Such a set must be self-sufficient, and N-ARK seems to have thought of everything, combining urban agriculture, solar panels (which may come from the Moon), modern wind turbines and wastewater recycling systems. Dogen City will also need to have state-of-the-art medical equipment, capable of dealing with the epidemics of tomorrow.
In addition, the designers opted for the immersion of the data centers managing the entire complex at sea, so that they are naturally cooled. Finally, the future envisaged by Elon Musk has been taken into account: this floating city will be equipped with a rocket launch and landing site, like any city of more than 10,000 inhabitants in the next ten years, Of course.
Ultimately, if the N-ARK project is not unique, as it recalls other similar concepts, it has the merit of offering elements of response to the challenges of tomorrow. However, for centuries, humanity has sought to create perfect cities from scratch, adapted to their times, but above all imagined for the future. Mostly to no avail.
Indeed, throughout history, cities have been built organically, around points essential to their development such as rivers, mines, coastlines or commercial crossroads. Can floating cities like Dogen City really see the light of day while following the same dynamic, allowing them a sustainable future? We will have to wait several decades, even several years, to have the answer to this question…
Source : Geo, Interesting Engineering
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