The UK’s first floating padel tennis courts are set to open in Liverpool at Princes Dock, joining cities like Dubai, Miami, and Helsinki in bringing recreational activities onto the water.… Read more: Floating Sport Innovation Comes to the UK 🎾
The global energy landscape is undergoing a necessary and urgent transformation. As highlighted in The Star, achieving the energy trilemma—energy security, sustainability, and affordability—requires embracing major disruptions to traditional systems.… Read more: Essential Disruption in the Energy Sector
Russia’s Akademik Lomonosov, the world’s only operating floating nuclear power plant, has generated over 1 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity as it approaches its 5-year anniversary of commercial operation in Chukotka.… Read more: Russia’s floating nuclear power plant passes one billion kWh
Golar LNG has decided to cancel the floating liquefied natural gas (FLNG) vessel conversion for the Golar Gandria, following its sale for demolition in 2023. While this marks the end… Read more: Update on Golar Gandria FLNG Conversion Project
South Korean startup Ecopeace has introduced the AI-powered solar “Healing Boat,” combining advanced robotics, AI, and big data to clean lakes while enhancing eco-tourism experiences. Inspired by natural pebbles, the… Read more: Ecopeace introduce AI-powered solar “Healing Boat”
Exciting news for renewable energy in Africa! Zimbabwe has raised $250 million from Afreximbank to finance a groundbreaking 250 MW floating solar power plant at the Kariba Dam. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-12-09/zimbabwe-power-users-raise-250-million-for-floating-solar-plant
At the Society of Floating Solutions Singapore, we’re thrilled to see floating solar PV transforming the global energy landscape. By 2033, global capacity is projected to reach 77 GW, with… Read more: Floating Solar: Asia-Pacific Leads the Way!
Indonesia’s recent debate on renewable energy exports highlights the complexities in balancing national interests with international energy partnerships. 💡 Energy and Mineral Resources Minister Bahlil Lahadalia has called for a… Read more: Mixed signals risk RI missing out on renewable energy exports
Norway has earmarked $3.3 billion in subsidies for its first commercial floating wind projects, expected to kick off in 2025. This subsidy will support the development of three floating wind… Read more: Norway plans $3.3 billion floating wind subsidy cap
The American Bureau of Shipping (ABS) has launched the first comprehensive rules for floating nuclear power plants, enabling safe and standardized deployment in the maritime and offshore sectors 🌊🔋 Highlights:–… Read more: ABS sets requirements for floating nuclear power plants
As sea-level rise and land subsidence increasingly threaten coastal megacities, floating cities are emerging as a bold and sustainable adaptation strategy. 🔹 This insightful article by Assoc. Prof. Katherine Dafforn… Read more: If your city is sinking, why not make it float?
Floating theater Lyon on French television A floating theater dedicated to young audiences will emerge on the banks of the Rhône in Lyon.The construction of this new unusual cultural place… Read more: Floating theater Lyon on French television
Singapore explores tapping nuclear energy by 2050 SINGAPORE – Nuclear energy, once deemed unsuitable for Singapore, has been identified as a potential power source for the country by 2050 in… Read more: Singapore explores tapping nuclear energy by 2050
The project of the new Ferry Terminal is part of the redevelopment of the Tunis Lac Nord area. Commissioned by the Espace Nautique Services (ENS) Tunisian company, the proposal for the terminal consists of a multifunctional floating building on two levels with ticket office, facilities, café restaurant with terrace and a pier for boarding. Total area: 450 sq.m.
From an architectural point of view, the design was chosen to create a hybrid form structure, that blended the typical architecture of infrastructure on land and traditional houseboats. The designers wished to propose, according to the customer’s needs, a modern architecture, that was functional and at the same time particularly original.
In partnership with E.D.IN. S.r.l. SOCIETA’ DI INGEGNERIA, Rome.
The IRIDE 01 Floating Suite was designed to accommodate a comfortable en suite bedroom in 25 square metres. It is suitable for sheltered bays, tourist ports, marine parks, and lakes and it was designed as an annex for lakeside or riverside hotels to offer their guests a unique experience, as an alternative to the traditional accommodation.
Outdoor spaces and wide windows allow for contact with the environment outside, making it possible to appreciate the landscape to the full and enjoy a holiday with high standards of comfort in close contact with nature.
During the day the relationship between inside and outside may be adjusted to pleasure by means of special electronic window opacifiers.
Together with the French company H2orizon and the Accor Group hotel chain (Novotel), Torrisi & Procopio Architetti has proposed the Port de Paris the construction of a floating hotel of 75 suites near the Austerlitz station.
The hotel, 95 meters long and 17 wide, consists of modular elements assembled together that develops on two levels plus a level in the hull (total area: 4.330 sq.m). It represents a new concept of hotel where all rooms are 30 sq.m suites with a kitchenette allowing guests to stay in comfortable accommodation at low cost.
The new Marina District is situated on the San Jacinto River and it is of central importance in the Kingwood Marina development (The Herons Kingwood Marina). It includes two basins – Marina East and Marina West – with a total capacity of more than 700 berths, for boats up to 40 feet, and 220 platforms for jet skis.
The project has been conceived by following the most modern criteria regarding the design of marinas: it is universally accepted that a modern marina must offer much more than just berths and that other essential structures and floating solutions can add valuable amenities.
Wahya Jungle House is a two-storey condominium made up of two different sized flats, available in the two versions, on land and floating house.
The floating version is particularly suitable for floating residential villages where several units may be moored like a cluster both near the waterfront and offshore. It can be also provided with a semi-submerged annex located under the floating pontoon for observing the underwater landscape. The clusters can be reachable by footbridges or, if offshore, by boat, but either way each unit is independent from land as regards the water and electricity supply and sewerage.
The atoll nation of Maldives is creating an innovative floating city that mitigates the effects of climate change and stays on top of rising sea levels.
The Maldives Floating City is designed by Netherlands-based Dutch Docklands and will feature thousands of waterfront residences and services floating along a flexible, functional grid across a 200-hectare lagoon.
AARSLEFF BIZ Began production of 5 pieces of concrete floating pontoons in September 2018. Last pontoon was finished and set sail to Denmark in April 2019
5 pcs floating pontoons to produce
• Bottom deck thickness 25cm, area 220m2 per one Rigger
• External wall thickness 20cm
• Internal wall thickness 15cm
• Deck thickness 20cm
• Height: lower side 3,2m, upper side 3,62m
• Hull weight without deck – for lifting – 250t
• Hull total weight – 330t
An indirect consequence of the disruption to global maritime trade from the coronavirus pandemic is the potential rise of non-indigenous species and their spread. These days, vessels are anchored for unusually long periods.
Idle and waiting, vessels see the emergence of biofouling, resulting in the growth of ecosystems that can include a mix of alien and native species of microorganisms, algae, mollusks, worms, mussels, crustaceans, fish and others.
When global shipping traffic eventually starts to move again, it may become a vector for the spread of alien organisms.
By some accounts, French Polynesia is heaven on Earth. It’s a collection of 118 tropical islands and atolls spread across a wide expanse of the Pacific. (Perhaps you’ve heard of Tahiti.) And yet, thanks to erosion, land subsidence, and sea level rise, parts of this paradise are threatened with sinking beneath the waves.
“When we looked at it, the options were pretty bad,” said Marc Collins Chen, who in the 2000s was the minister of tourism. “One was to retreat. The other was to build large engineering public works, like dikes and seawalls.”
That’s the choice a lot of low-lying places are facing in the coming century. For some, like Miami or Bangladesh, retreat is at least possible. Island nations, Chen realized, had nowhere to turn and needed another option. Chen had one: “To have entire floating cities.”
Chen took that vision and founded a company called Oceanix to work out the logistics of permanent life at sea. In Oceanix’s vision, floating communities would produce their own electricity, produce their own food, and produce zero waste.
“In Asia three million people a week are migrating to cities,” Chen said. “Most of those cities are coastal and they are growing faster than they can grow infrastructure.”
The Mega-Float, a very large offshore floating structure, is regarded as material for structuring of social
capital in the new future. Experiments using an actual-scale model 1 000 m long were carrid out by Technological
Research Association of Mega-Float under Director-General Kentaro Aikawa, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries,
Ltd. (MHI) Senior Corporate Advisor. Examples of Mega-Float use include as an airport and as a rescue base
for disaster. MHI is conducting unique studies and development in antiwave performance, joining technology
for floating units, environmental assessment, very-long-term endurance, and the pursuit of total design by synthesizing respective technologies considered to be keys for realizing practical Mega-Float use.
This floating farm in the Netherlands is taking sustainability to a whole other water level.
The food industry is responsible for producing massive amounts of greenhouse gas emissions simply through transporting goods and produce into a city. In fact, one in four freight trucks on the highway is responsible for transporting food into urban areas.
Not only does this create excessive air pollution, it also means that cities could fall victim to food shortages during natural disasters and harsh weather conditions.
Peter and Minke van Wingerden were inspired to build a 3-story floating farm right in their Dutch city of Rotterdam after they found themselves in New York City following Hurricane Sandy back in 2012.
There is a whole lot of floating going on in the Netherlands. That is not surprising when you consider that 26% of the country is below sea level. But sometimes you have to wonder: is it a gimmick or is floating a serious way to address the challenges of sea level rise? Students participating in the summer intensive Penn in Berlin and Rotterdam Program this past June had a chance to figure that out for themselves.
For decades, houseboats have lined the canals of Amsterdam and other water-penetrated cities—floating, sure, but not quite what you would call floating architecture. The neighborhood of Ijburg was something different. Started in 2011, Ijburg is a cluster of 158 floating two- and three-story homes just minutes from Amsterdam’s Central Station. More exciting is the new development Schoonschip, also in Amsterdam. When completed in 2020, this will be the most sustainable floating community in all of Europe. With 500 solar panels, heat pumps, a communal smart grid, and innovative use of gray and black water, Schoonschip is a pioneer in socially organized sustainable living.
Singapore’s participation in the 2006 edition of the Offshore Technology Conference (OTC), the largest international offshore oil and gas exhibition, was organised by ASMI at the request of International Enterprise (IE) Singapore. Singapore made its inaugural appearance in OTC in 2005 in a national pavilion led by IE Singapore. The 2006 OTC was held from 1 to 4 May at the Reliant Centre in Houston, Texas in the USA.
The 4-day exhibition this year attracted more participation fuelled by the boom in the offshore oil and gas industry. Some 2,229 companies from more than 30 countries participated in OTC 2006, taking up a total exhibit space of 470,000 sq ft. This was an increase of 246 exhibitors compared to the year before.
Living with Water: Lessons from Singapore and Rotterdam documents the journey of two unique cities, Singapore and Rotterdam—one with too little water, and the other with too much water—in adapting to future climate change impacts. While the social, cultural, and physical nature of these cities could not be more different, Living with Water: Lessons from Singapore and Rotterdam captures key principles, insights and innovative solutions that threads through their respective adaptation strategies as they build for an uncertain future of sea level rise and intense rainfall.
Inspired by the strong and lightweight organic form of honeycombs, the Housing & Development Board created hexagonal modules which could join together in a compact manner to form “floating spaces” on water bodies.
The Floating Wetlands System is able to support the weight of plants, soil and maintenance workers, while staying buoyant and stable – even when it is exposed to waves caused by passing boats. The Floating Wetlands System intensifies greenery and improves biodiversity at Punggol Waterway, and also brings nature closer to the residents. These Floating Wetlands can also be found in Pekan Quarry Lake and Sensory Trail Pond of Pulau Ubin, Ngee Ann Polytechnic campus, and Sungei Punggol.
The United Nations just unveiled a concept for a floating city that can hold around 10,000 residents. The city is built to withstand natural disasters like floods, tsunamis, and hurricanes. The design comes from architect Bjarke Ingels and floating city builder Oceanix. At a roundtable on Wednesday, the UN said floating cities could help protect people from sea-level rise while addressing the lack of affordable housing in major cities.
Man builds island out of plastic bottles. Richart Sowa lives on top of what most people just toss away. He collected more than 125,000 plastic bottles that he found in the trash and put them into recycled fruit sacks beneath wood palettes to make his own island right in the Lagoon in Mexico. He now lives on the island or as he describes it “The Coolest Thing I’ve Ever Made”.
Group GSA has produced a proposal for an Olympic-size swimming pool floating on the Swan River in Perth that would be the first pool in the central city since the Perth City Baths were demolished in 1920.
The design calls for a simple, relocatable barge containing the pool, timber decking, and changing structures. The barge would be moored to a pontoon, itself containing a sun-deck, showers and access to the river. Offices would be located on shore, in a converted shipping container.
Floating cities could soon become a reality as planners try to come up with innovative ways to battle the space crunch. Could this happen in Singapore? Mr Lim Soon Heng, founder president of the Society of Floating Solutions and a fellow at the Institute of Maritime Engineering, Science & Technology, provided some answers.
Take a look at a variety of BioHaven Floating Islands and learn how they can naturally clean your water. You will be amazed at what they can do! To learn more about these floating wetlands, please go to our website at www.floatingislandsolutions.com.
Human habitations have changed form and style in congruence with the evolution of mankind. Our immediate challenge in terms of physical space due to rising shortage of land has led us once again to the threshold of redefining our dwelling. Here are some of the most interesting floating structures, a possible abode for our future generations
Dr. Abdullah Daou Chairman of Beirut International Marine and commerce and founder of The Advanced Engineering of the Floating Island Said ” I found that its true there are no rules and no theories to build floating islands, so I had to work 15 years to change the rules and that’s it, we have now an advanced engineering of the floating island were you can build resorts, naval basis, villas etc. And we are now at the final phase to build the first floating island in the history of mankind, “Jounieh Floating Island”.
Beirut International is currently operating in three main locations in Lebanon Kabrashmoun, Jounieh and Tripoli.
SINGAPORE: Urban life on floating structures at sea is no longer something more likely to be found in science fiction, with experts estimating that large scale platforms could be a reality in less than a decade.
This comes as floating homes, storage facilities and even parks have been mooted as the answer to Singapore’s continued quest for land.
“We have been building higher and higher for the last 20 (to) 30 years. For going deeper, there is a limit to how far can you can go,” said Mr Lim Soon Heng, President of the Society of Floating Solutions (Singapore).
A team of University of Queensland researchers will join forces with 40 other organisations to form a new cooperative research centre (CRC), set to improve Australian seafood and offshore renewable energy production.
The Blue Economy CRC is a $329 million research project, which will combine seafood, renewable energy and offshore engineering for the first time, underpinned by a $70 million cash investment from the Australian Federal Government.
Offshore Engineering Program Leader and UQ researcher Professor Chien Ming Wang said the funding would be delivered over 10 years to support innovative solutions and transform the way we utilised our oceans.
A team of civil engineers has invented and patented a “floating forest” they say is capable of reducing wind and wave damage during a natural disaster.
University of Queensland researcher Professor Chien Ming Wang said the invention could prevent beach erosion and protect coastal infrastructure and floating assets such as boats.
“Wind can cause significant damage to coastal communities and can be fatal,” he said.
“Engineers have already developed wave-breakers capable of reducing the height of waves, but there has been nothing until now to break the wind.
“We’re the first ones to place a windbreak on top of the floating breakwater structure.”
The structure consists of a concrete deck tilted upstream to allow a wave run-up, which will dissipate the wave’s energy, similar to the way a truck safety ramp can slow a speeding truck.
While Singapore may be looking to create space in the sky or underground, certain space is best created on the sea. Surrounded by 193 km of coastlines and dotted with over 60 islands, Singapore offers ample sea space for marine and storage facilities that require daily access to ships and tankers.
Funded by the Land and Liveability National Innovation Challenge (L2 NIC) under the Ministry of National Development and the National Research Foundation, NUS is developing the concept of Multi-Purpose Floating Structures (MPFS) in collaboration with JTC, SINTEF and Shimizu.
The joint-research aims to explore innovative solutions for creating useable space on the sea. Three floating concepts were studied by the research group.
00:21 – it’s a new way of creating a city it’s a
00:25 – it’s a dynamic city it’s not a static
00:27 – city a floating organization is a very
00:35 – good way to have flexible and climate
00:36 – robust urbanization in these vulnerable
00:38 – areas with almost half of the country
00:41 – below sea level the Netherlands is
00:43 – especially vulnerable to climate change
00:45 – in it for lady there is a long history
00:49 – of flooding events here going back as
00:51 – long as people can remember storming a
00:53 – hut in 1953 the Netherlands suffered its
00:57 – worst disaster in three hundred years
00:59 – when the dikes protecting the country
Located in the heart of Terengganu and spanning over 260sq km, Tasik Kenyir is the largest man-made lake in South East Asia. Once complete, the Cornerstone floating ferry terminal will become the gateway to exploring this vast lake and the 340 islands it contains. With a footprint of over 5,000sq m the Cornerstone floating ferry terminal consists of 6 pavilion buildings; The main terminal building which which has a seating capacity of 500 passengers, a ticketing building, VIP area, Banquet hall and two food and beverage outlets with alfresco dining.
In late 2016 the Cornerstone floating ferry terminal was proudly selected as one of the iconic projects that was presented in the Iconic Building & Structures seminar 2016 (IcoBUS) which is hosted by JKR and organised by ProJKRM to further exposure the construction of iconic buildings & structures and the use of advanced building techniques to the public and private agencies.
A floating island and apartments perched over roads and old buildings are just some of the ideas for how Singapore could overcome its land shortage, as the show Land Unlimited discovers.
Snøhetta, the architecture firm behind the 1989 library of Alexandria, Egypt, the Norwegian National Opera in Oslo, Norway, and the expansion of San Francisco’s MoMA, has completed Europe’s first underwater restaurant in Lindesnes, Norway.
Under is a semi-submerged restaurant situated at the Southernmost point of the Norwegian coastline. This unique location is also the confluence of briny and brackish water, sea storms from the North and South, and abundant marine species from sea to shore. As such, the restaurant also functions as a marine research center.
What are the pros and cons of this alternative to traditional settlement?
Urbanisation is often thought of as a land-based process. Increasingly, however, humans are venturing to the oceans, not just for travel and transport – but for settlement.
This is not as new as one might imagine. Maritime peoples through the ages have made a living from the sea, and settled not just in coastal areas but also on water. South-east Asia’s floating villages, from Indochina to the Malay peninsula, are examples.
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S’pore’s largest sea-based system will be in north, producing 6,388 MWh of energy yearly.
A floating solar panel system roughly the size of five football fields will soon come up near Singapore’s northern shores, in the Strait of Johor.
Developed by sustainable energy provider Sunseap Group, it is Singapore’s largest offshore floating solar panel system at about 5ha.
Sunseap said this will be one of the world’s largest sea-based floating photovoltaic systems. Most large-scale floating photovoltaic systems are built on freshwater ponds, lakes or reservoirs.
The solar panel system, which is expected to be operational next year, was announced at the 2018 Pro-Enterprise Panel-Singapore Business Federation Awards yesterday at Marina Bay Sands Expo and Convention Centre.
The platform will be able to generate 6,388 MWh of renewable energy annually, which is equivalent to powering about 1,250 four-room flats. The use of solar energy also means a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of about 2,600 tonnes every year over the next 25 years and beyond.