abandoned at sea

What happens when the rig made at enormous expense in the gulf of Mexico delivers its final barrel of crude and the company packs up and heads off to fairer pastures?  Make a luxury hotel say Morris Architects.  These are images that show some of their ideas which include floating pod condos and the refurbished rig.  It’s an extravagant idea:  living on a mechanical island with nothing but sea around you:  extravagant in terms of the extreme environment and too, in terms of its cost.

For a construction that is in the sea, this project is remarkably separated from it.  Perhaps it’s an American sensibility; a fear of the water, an inability to swim.  On the new rig hotel, you are either in your pod in the air with the sea way below or you are in the dive bell submerged below the water line.  There is a small marina, but aside from that no substantial connection between life on the rig and the water body that supports it:  I think a reminder of how we build, grounded in fear and without an understanding of genius locii – the spirit of the place.

narelle autio the place in between

Let me be there!  These are operatic  – a ballet in the sea.  I can almost taste the salt and hear the roar and muffled cries and splashes and most of all feel the power of the waves overtaking me.

From Stills Gallery —

Narelle Autio’s vibrant and award-winning images of Australian coastal life have won her impressive national and international acclaim. Since they were first exhibited at Stills Gallery in 2000, her vivid images have also captured the hearts and imaginations of viewers.

floating new orleans

I want to live in a sugarcube in the sea!! 

Beside the beauty of this image, here, finally, is a big view of the solution to the problem of New Orleans.  No half measures here.  However, I’d like to see how these floating pods come together.  I want to know how, if I need an extra egg for a cake half mixed, how I get to the neighbors.

Harvard Graduate School of Design students Kiduck Kim and Christian Stayner have made a Floating City that will “rise safely in an Archimedean liquid landscape.”