The New York City Office of Emergency Management (OEM) recently held a design competition titled “What if New York City“, whereby architects and city planners were asked: “what if NYC was hit by a Category 3 hurricane? What if the most densely residential city in the country loses hundreds of thousands of homes in a few hours? What if millions are left with nowhere to live, to work, or to go to school? What if subways flood, streets close, and whole neighbourhoods are submerged by up to 23 feet of ocean water and battered by 130 mile-per-hour winds? What if New Yorkers need a place to live during years of reconstruction?”
Basically OEM is asking what would happen if it was New York instead of New Orleans. Too harsh? Okay, what if Cloverfield really happens, we kill the monster and have to rebuild all that was destroyed. Too dumb. The average population density of most cities is 200 households per square acre, while trailer parks, the default provisional housing option, can accommodate only 10 families per square acre. The simple answer is to stack shipping containers, but this isn’t as sexy as airborne blimps, floating piers, or hexagonal structures that resemble honeycomb.
So your city has been battered and beaten by a devastating hurricane, and is decomposing in up to 23 feet of sludge. Based on this cheery scenario, a blimp is the last thing I would want to live in, however this is the general premise behind Cloud City. I suppose the designers did not consider that there could be a second hurricane, which would essentially blow these balloons half way to Kansas. Another submission employs the use of large-scale Lego bricks to create an infinite number of housing options in any neighborhood. A final notable entry uses an artificial robotic weaver, which creates web-like habitats out of a liquid-based fabric. It’s highly adaptive to any environment, which will certainly please our future mechanized spider queens. For a more in-depth look at all of the submissions, check out the complete gallery at OEM.