David

October 18, 2016  by

Blue21’s floating city at Dutch Design Week 22nd -30th October


What ideas do you have when it comes to designing a floating city? You can share them with us during the Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven from the 22nd to 30th of October. There our floating city design will be on display and open to feedback from our visitors.

Will you not be visiting the Dutch Design Week? Or have you obtained new insights since you have visited our exhibition?

Then you can share your ideas with us here. In doing so you will help us in further developing our vision and design for floating cities of the future. Thank you!

On Regeneration
Our floating city design is part of Regeneration, an exhibition curated by Transnatural.

Regeneration explores the possibilities of regenerating our current, ecosystems. The exhibition will show a variety of projects by artists and designers who deal with issues involved with this ecological regeneration and, simultaneously, they investigate newly possible resources derived from these regenerated ecosystems.

Transnatural composed and curates the exhibition and offers an ongoing cultural program on balancing nature and technology and represents an Art & Design Label. After the DDW the exhibition will travel home to Transnatural where you can visit it until April 28th 2017.

Projects and participants
Caravel / Ivan Henriques (BR), The Salt Project / Eric Geboers (NL), Interwoven / Diana Scherer (NL), The Floating City / Blue21 (NL), Post-Fishing / Inês Marques (PT), Mist Collecting Surface / Robyn Tayler Payne (UK), ReGen Villages / ReGen Labs (NL) & Effekt architects (DK)

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October 18, 2016  by

Hawaii surf is generating renewable energy

Hawaii is famous for its surfing and legendary waves that attract surfers from all over the world. The American state situated in the Pacific Ocean is testing how they can use these very waves to produce renewable energy that will power homes on the islands.

For this trial two wave turbine machines have been placed in the waters of the Kaneohe Bay. The machines, installed by the U.S. Navy, have been producing enough energy to power around a dozen homes, but the expectation is that future versions will be be able to supply hundreds of homes with renewable energy.

Upworthy.com posted an interesting article on the subject.

Image source:Northwest Energy Innovations

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October 11, 2016  by

Floating containers transformed into student housing in Denmark

The number of students is continually growing in many European cities, Denmark is no exception. In order to keep up with the rising number of new applicants, the city of Copenhagen is looking into options to be able to house the 24.000 student applicants without housing every year. Bjarke Ingels from architecture firm BIG designed Urban Rigger after entrepreneur Kim Loudrop came up with the idea.

Urban Rigger is a complex of stacked reclaimed shipping containers which have been transformed into 15 living spaces that have been situated around an internal courtyard. The structure sits in the harbor of Copenhagen and due to the use of solar power, hydro source heating and low-energy pumps, it is completely carbon neutral.

According to its architect, Urban Rigger can be replicated in other harbor cities with limited space for urban development. At present several requests have been received by Urban Rigger from North America and there are plans to create a unit in Sweden which means that more floating containers may be constructed in other harbor cities around the world.

Image source: WebUrbanist.com

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October 11, 2016  by

Blue21 gives keynote speech at Cadac Summit 2016

On the 29th of September Cadac Group and NedGraphics held their annual Cadac Summit for Construction, Government, Infrastructure and Civil Engineering. This edition the theme was Going solo is faster, but collaboration will take you further. Blue21 co-founder Bart Roeffen was invited to be one of the keynote speakers during this event.

In keeping with the theme Bart spoke about how collaboration has helped Blue21 take the first steps on their Blue Revolution. By seeking partners who they can work together with, and learn from their expertise, the realization of the first floating city in the world is now closer than ever before.

Image source: Cadac Group and NedGraphics

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October 11, 2016  by

Water Faculty in the Museum of Water Rotterdam

For three consecutive weekends Rotterdam was host to the Museum of Water, a traveling museum founded by British artist Amy Sharrocks which travels around the UK and Europe. Blue21’s Barbara Dal Bo Zanon was one of six scientists who participated in a Water Faculty. There water experts spoke about water conflicts, floating cities and the quest to find water on other planets. Under the guidance of Fransje Hooijmeijer, dean from the Technical University of Delft, the Water Faculty explored different aspects of water and how water can be applied in the future.

Image source: Museum of Water

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