Maldives Floating City is the beginning of a new era in which Maldivians return to the water with resilient eco-friendly floating projects.
The Maldives has long been the picture-perfect paradise holiday destination, and this was especially true during the pandemic. Tourism returned to pre-pandemic levels in 2015, with 1.3 million tourists arriving, compared to 1.7 million visitors in 2019. And now, the world’s lowest-lying country could simply have a consistent service to the fact that water level is rising. The Maldives Floating City has just been approved for construction: 5,000 housing units linked together and connected to the floor of a 500-acre shallows, designed to preserve and enhance its natural and cultural ecosystem.
Whatever information you require about the Maldives Floating City
A 15-minute boat ride from Malé and the international airport, the project is based on an integrated tourist design and will include resorts, houses, stores, and dining establishments. It will be a car-free zone, with canals and natural white-sand roadways to be explored on foot or by bicycle, as well as electrical, noise-free buggies and mobility scooters.
International visitors can also obtain a home permit in conjunction with the purchase of a home. The first drifting housing block, which Bison is building, will almost certainly be carried to the lagoon and opened for public viewing in August, allowing people to get a sense of the look and feel of the residences. The modular city building and construction are scheduled to begin in January 2023 and will take approximately five years to complete.
The Maldives Floating City is a public-private partnership between Dutch Docklands and the island government. The owners of Dutch Docklands are designer Koen Olthuis and developer Paul van de Camp, and the job relies on drifting technology from the Netherlands, which has a centuries-old interaction in creating flood-resistant architecture.
Are climate-proof floating cities possible?
The design by Waterstudio was a finalist for the best Futura Project at the 2022 MIPIM Honors, also known as the Eastern Oscars for global advancement. Several variables influenced the design and urban planning, ranging from the forecast of sea-level rise over a 100-year period to supply and waste monitoring, surplus energy in the wise grid, and the shadows that its massive structure would undoubtedly cast on the seabed, potentially preventing aquatic life. According to the project website, the city’s grid is “a nature-based structure of roadways and also water canals resembling the lovely and dependable method in which actual brain coral is arranged,” and the city will also boost coral growth with man-made coral reefs banks attached to its underside, which will consequently provide a natural wave-reduction breaker.
With the threat of environmental change, there is a growing interest in drifting architecture as a sustainable option. While there are well-known examples such as the indigenously created reed islands on Lake Titicaca and also Manipur’s manmade tank farming ponds shaped from floating plant life, current innovations include Amsterdam’s drifting area of Waterbuurt, as well as drifting resorts such as Copenhagen’s Resort CPH Living and also France’s Off Paris Seine. If everything goes according to plan, the world will see its first floating city in 2027.
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Article by Bjorn Ingbrant
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