Seattle Houseboats

I love this photo. It is from Westlake in Seattle. These are houseboats as opposed to houses on water. I am exploring how communities can live on water rather than individual houses themselves so I have not chosen the Seattle house boats as a case study, but in terms off aesthetics I think this looks amazing. I do appreciate the ability of the houseboats to moor to the piers and have the flexibly to power themselves. These are somethings I will look into outside my case studies.

Selected Case Studies

Kampong Ayer

Kampong Ayer is an area in Brunei's capital city of Bandar Seri Begawan. It is an an area built completely on water. Kampong Ayer is home to roughly 39000 residents. Although all the buildings are built on stilts it highlights a way of life on water. A step to realizing independent floating communities on water

Thesis Introduction Draft

Introduction

Literature Review Draft

Literature Review

Aesthetics and Environment

While doing reading for my literature review I came across this quote that I think explains quite well part of my own personal interests in design:

"Sacrificing immediate visual clarity and order may be a welcome price to pay for the somatic appeal of indeterminacy and discovery"

Berleant, A. (2005). Aesthetics and Environment: Variations on a Theme. Aldershot, England: Ashgate.

A Way to Think

“The world we have created today, as a result of our thinking thus far, has problems that cannot be solved by thinking the way we thought when we created them.”

-Albert Einstein

Representation Model

I made this model for a presentation about my potential design. Fairly simple. I liked the idea of individual elements functioning fine by themselves, and have the choice to do so, but when joined they form something so much better. These individual elements combine to form a whole, acting together to form a vibrant diverse community. This is something like what im wanting to achieve through my urban system.

Floating Villages

Like I explained in my proposal, I'm looking to traditional floating villages to develop an urban system for water living. My main focus is on villages in Vietnam and Cambodia, particularly Tonle Sap Lake. They are pretty beautiful places, heres a few photos.

Research Proposal

Piers Bowman Research Proposal

Why Build on Water?

In cities like Wellington, New Zealand, they are blocked by the coast in front of the city and behind the city are steep hills which make it difficult to expand and let the city grow. For cities looking to expand this greatly restricts the opportunities to do so. Cape town in South Africa has a similar situation.

With rising sea levels the front of the city is threatened, so doesn't it make sense to slowly move the front of the city onto the water making use of the largest open space for building in the world, the ocean.

Also a bonus for building on water in the coastal city is that normally these city centres are located around the waterfront, so by building on water there the city can achieve greater density in the CBD or waterfront area without overcrowding, mint!

70% of the world is covered in water, kinda makes sense to use some of it for building on.

Rising Sea Levels

So did you guys think that sea level rise was a problem for the future? Well its not. Have you heard of the Maldives?

Heres a bit of info about that Maldives,

The Maldives is the lowest country in the world, with a maximum natural ground level of only 2.3 metres (7 ft 7 in), with the average being only 1.5 metres (4 ft 11 in) above sea level, although in areas where construction exists, this has been increased to several metres. More than 80 per cent of the country's land, composed of coral islands scattered over an area about 850 km across the equator, is less than one metre above sea level (thanks to wikipedia).

As you can imagine even the smallest increase in water level change affects this country. In 2009 the new president, Mohamed Nasheed, issued the message that he was obliged by rising sea levels to buy land in Sri Lanka and relocate his people (Keuning & Olthuis 2010).

To help countries like this continue living we need to build on water!

Keuning, D. & Olthuis, K. (2010) Float: Building on water to Combat Urban Congestion and Climate Change. Frame, Amsterdam.

Research Aim

Best summarized my research is looking at -

Building on water to combat urban congestion and climate change.

To define 'building' I am not specifically looking at actually single house structures, more I am exploring how I can develop an urban system that enables an adaptive way of living on water, rather than applying traditional city urban grids from land to water.

My research aim is -

Can living on or within the ocean offer an adaptive way of life to combat urban congestion and the affect of global warming on the coastal city.