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Forbes
Forbes
Lifestyle
Y-Jean Mun-Delsalle, Contributor

Architects Worldwide Invent Groundbreaking Waterborne Solutions To Climate Change, Part 4

Although one billion people worldwide live in slums, half of which are wet slums that are extremely vulnerable to flooding, programs in wet slums are not generally upgraded since investing in these illegal structures is risky, so Dutch architectural firm Waterstudio engineered flood-resistant City Apps, which use available space on water rather than on land. These waterborne structures built from standard sea-freight containers with solar panels on the roof and floating foundations of recycled plastic bottles suitable for installing and upgrading sanitation, electricity, water filtration, medical clinics, community kitchens, workshops, classrooms, housing and communication quickly add essential services to adapt to cities’ changing needs and can be moved easily to where they are needed most. The containers are fitted in the Netherlands with built-in walls and equipment, purpose-designed for the specific use, before being sent overseas and the floating platforms constructed onsite. They are not static but flexible, small-scale and instant solutions that are adjustable, reusable and relocatable from one slum to another so no investment is lost.

An example of a floating City App by Waterstudio to upgrade the living conditions of waterfront slums through small-scale instant solutions

Costing about $7,000 for one unit before functionality is added, floating City Apps will be leased to local entrepreneurs who will then provide the service to community members for a small fee. In Bangladesh, one of the world’s most densely-populated countries, where some areas are already slowly being eroded by rising seas and extreme floods can cover up to two-thirds of the nation, City Apps, mostly funded by a foundation Dutch architect Koen Olthuis, founder of Waterstudio, set up financed by Dutch partners, intend to bring services to the most affected areas of flood-prone slums. This will be followed by Kampala in Uganda. Olthuis explains, “In the end, it’s about creating a business model, an example that’s open source. Floating technology is not something very difficult. Everybody can get our information, see exactly how we make the foundations, how to make it comfortable and safe, how they can make money from it, and then can copy it. It is a recipe we want to spread and hope that people will use it, build on it and have an extra tool to upgrade life in their cities.”

The interior of a floating City App based on a standard sea-freight container, which can be added to a slum using the space on the water. Because of its flexibility and small size, it is suitable for installing and upgrading sanitation, housing and communication

Olthuis concludes, “We are in a very exciting moment in time where architects and urban planners have to rethink the way we live and use our resources. Many politicians and economists think that what we have now is a kind of stable end phase, but we are in a process where we have to come up with innovations, new solutions and new places that we can build and use. The city of the future, the blue city, is even denser than it is today, so these American cities where it takes an hour and a half to go from one side to another side are not the way we think that cities will operate in the future. They will grow denser at the center, but still have more flexibility. We have to look carefully at how space is being used, and that space can change functionality immediately if it’s on water. You can pop in or take out floating functions for different uses throughout the year: parks, offices, houses, entertainment, carparks. If you go one step further, cities that are close to each other, like 50 km or 100 km from each other, both next to water, could start to build and share big public functions. For instance, a theatre, museum or library could go from one city to another. So what you now see in the sharing industry with AirBnB or Uber would be brought to the next level where cities start to share. The role of the architect is to rethink life as we know it today and try to improve it. For water architects, we think that water can bring an extra dimension, freedom and logical elements to cities. A city is in constant evolution: from a normal city to a green city, a smart city and eventually a blue city, and that blue city should be better than all the cities before it. Water is the next frontier; it’s the next place where cities will start to expand, while improving livability, sustainability, safety and flexibility.”

Check back next week for Part 5 discussing how architect Mohammed Rezwan is changing the lives of those who live by the water in his home country, Bangladesh.

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