Written on June 17, 2008 – 8:49 am | by Bogdan Alex |
I don’t know if you’ve ever heard the song Year 3000 from Busted (later covered by the Jonas Bros). The song presents several teens time-traveling to the year 3000 and back, mentioning that “not much has changed, but they (the people living in those times) lived underwater. It seems that the guys made some research and they based those song lines on solid scientific facts. According to GIEC (Intergovernmental group on the evolution of the climate), the ocean level is expected to rise from 20 to 90 cm during the 21st Century with a status quo by 50 cm (as opposed to the mere 10 cm in the 20th Century).

Architect Vincent Callebaut has some ideas on how to survive the rising waters. He came up came with a cool design for a man-built mini-island that could serve as a luxurious future enclave for 50,000 inhabitants seeking refuge from rising waters due to global warming. Freshome reports that the water-lily-like construction is auto-sufficient and amphibious.

Vincent Callebaut even dubbed this project “Lilypad“aka “Floating Ecopolis for Climate Refugees”. The designer provided many pictures of how this building would look like and function. The upper part of the structure is covered in green walls and solar panel roofs, while the central portion features a palm oasis. The water-submersed portion serves as a bed for natural sea planktons and oceanic plants.

Vincent foresees that the project could be materialized by 2100.