floating city

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 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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September 23, 2016  by

Blue21 to participate in Regeneration exhibition

On the 30th of September Transnatural Art & Design will open the Regeneration exhibition at the Transnatural Gallery in Amsterdam. Artists and designers from all over the world will showcase various projects focussed on regenerating our current ecosystems while investigating new possibilities for future development.

Blue21’s ‘The Floating City’ will be one of the projects on display during Regeneration, which can be seen in Amsterdam until the 27th of April. Alongside the exhibition a side program will be organized consisting of talks, demonstrations and workshops on how we can maintain our natural environment. Regeneration will travel to Eindhoven in October where it will be part of the Dutch Design Week.

For more information on the Regeneration exhibition, its participants and opening hours check out Transnatural’s website.

Image: Joannette van der Veer (Transnatural 2016)

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September 21, 2016  by

French Polynesia Open to Seasteading Collaboration

Last week Blue21 was part of a delegation of the Seasteading Institute that went on a very promising exploratory mission in French Polynesia. The delegation was honoured to meet with President Édouard Fritch, a large part of his government and the mayors of Bora Bora and Makemo to discuss the development of sustainable floating islands.

“It would be wonderful if we could work with The Seasteading Institute to bring sustainable development and economic activity to French Polynesia,” the President told us through our translator. “Let’s create the future together,” he concluded.

Randolph Hencken, Executive Director of the Seasteading Institute: “We look forward to working with French Polynesia to develop floating island that will benefit our host country and our international community of seasteaders. With numerous protected waters where we could station the first pilot platforms, French Polynesia offers many optimal locations for seasteading from an engineering point of view.”

Joe Quirk, co-author with Patri Friedman of the forthcoming book, Seasteading: How Ocean Cities Will Change the World” adds to that: “Our sustainable modular platforms are designed by the Dutch engineering firm Blue21, who showcased their engineering ingenuity with the famed Floating Pavilion in Rotterdam.”

Former Minister of Tourism for French Polynesia and businessman Marc Collins is a supporter of the Seasteading Institue’s vision. “Polynesian culture has a long history of seafaring across the Pacific Ocean that will contribute to this ambitious project. More than most nations, our islands are impacted by rising sea levels, and resilient floating islands could be one tangible solution for us to maintain our populations anchored to their islands. For many Polynesians, leaving our islands is not an option.”

The Seasteading Institute will send a draft Memorandum of Understanding to the presidency this week.

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Photo Seasteading Delegation: Tom W. Bell, Egor Ryjikov, Marc Collins, Joe Quirk, Randolph Hencken, Nicolas Germineau, Greg Delaune and our engineer Bart Roeffen

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