City on Water

City on Water – Thesis Sources (And Some Recommendations)

By: Jonathan Smith

        For this week’s final blog of the semester, I decided to share some of the more valuable sources that I have stumbled upon and have been guided to by other friends and professors. I think this will give some knowledge, (to those of you actually following this!), on what I am heading towards for my thesis next semester. Below are links that will guide you to each significant source, along with a corresponding summary I have provided for each one.

http://www.planetizen.com/node/58905

       This first article gives a brief overview of the World’s First Floating Village, in Glasgow. The village will include homes, offices, stores, restaurants, and an event venue. I think that there will be a great deal of similarities between my thesis project and what they are currently doing in Glasgow. I think the smaller village/ city will be more manageable.

http://www.bdonline.co.uk/5045050.article?origin=BDdaily

        This article outlines a possible project in London for a permanent floating village located at the Royal Victoria Docks in London. The project was initially intended to be a temporary structure, but has recently grown into a master plan that could leave room for further expansion onto the floating village. I think the solution that is being proposed here acts as backing to prove that aquatic based solutions in architecture are beginning to be explored more and more seriously.

http://www.arquitectum.com/index.php

         This link is from Arquitectum, an architecture competition website. Within this link, click on Neomad City (at the bottom left), and you should be able to view both a presentation and the results of a competition that was held for the design of A Water Village in Sharjah (DUBAI-SHARJAH 2012). The presentation and the top three chosen presentations should serve as good conceptual precedents for my thesis project. More information about the actual competition and specifics and be viewed here: http://www.deathbyarchitecture.com/viewCompetition.html?id=2232

http://homes.yahoo.com/news/floating-homes-of-the-future.html?page=all

        This article is a compilation of different futuristic proposals for water based architectural designs. I found this site rather early in my research, and the projects provided interested me enough that it helped me make my final decision for what to do my Architectural Thesis project on. The ideas and designs provided here rather highly conceptual, but I foresee my thesis project resulting somewhere in between a futuristic/conceptual design and a more realistic/near future one. For a similar, but more expansive list I also found, (they both mention the same projects, but not all are the same), then you can check this link: http://webecoist.momtastic.com/2009/12/07/real-life-water-world-12-futuristic-offshore-building-projects/

http://www.archdaily.com/288198/iba-dock-architech/

        This page goes into detail about Iba Dock. This is a project located Hamburg, Germany on a Port of the Elbe. Measuring 50-meters by 26-meters, Iba Dock is Germany’s largest floating building. It rests on a pontoon that is attached to pilings, where it will move with the tide daily (up to 3.5 meters up and down). This project should act as a solid precedent for my thesis. To view alternate information regarding Iba Dock, check here (probably best to translate with  first google unless you know German: http://www.iba-hamburg.de/themen-projekte/iba-dock/projekt/iba-dock.html

 And…. For this semester folks……  FIN