If Al Gore and scores of scientists are right, the high tides caused by global warming will swallow many low lying residential areas. There are very few urban design solutions that address this, and certainly none are as spectacular as this one. Vincent Callebaut’s Lilypad is a concept for a completely self-sufficient floating city, which provide shelter for future climate change refugees. Biomimicry was clearly the inspiration behind the design, as the Lilypad looks like a huge waterlily afloat in the ocean. Sustainable technologies including solar, wind, tidal, biomass are envisioned, as well as a titanium dioxide skin that would allow for the processing and absorption of CO2 in the atmosphere.

Each of these floating cities is designed to hold approximately 50,000 residents. A mixed terrain man-made landscape, provided by an artificial lagoon and three ridges, creates a diverse environment for the the dwellers. Each Lilypad is intended to be either near a coast, or floating around in the ocean, travelling from the equator to the northern seas, according to where the gulf stream takes it. No word on whether or not it could control it’s own movements like other ocean faring vessels. Save for the renderings and concept info, the project isn’t even close to happening anytime soon, but there is value in future forward designs like the Lilypad, and our previously featured Hydro-Net. They inspire creative solutions, and may actually provide a real solution to climate change.

It’s seems like it’s a long time since we featured something from the world of architecture, and even longer since we ventured into the oil-drunk land of Dubai. In the past while, we’ve shied away from featuring finds from the land of sand so that we have a good spread of innovative and creative projects from around the world. The time has come to venture back to Dubai, where Fisher’s Dynamic Architecture firm is creating a self-sufficient, sun and wind powered tower. The building has been named the Rotating Tower as it’s floors will be capable of rotating around the central axis. It will be continually in motion, changing shape and giving residents the ability to choose a new view at the touch of a button. Hence the form of the building will be constantly changing as each floor rotates separately giving the building a new profile with each turn.

According to Fisher, the Rotating Tower ensures a very high resistance to earthquakes as each floor rotates independently. Each floor, made up of 12 individual units, complete with plumbing, electric connections, air conditioning and so forth. These modular units will be fitted on the concrete core of the building at the central tower. The 59-floor building will be powered entirely by sun and wind energy. And, the architect claims that the building will generate 10 times more energy than required to power it, thus making it a positive energy building. Solar panels will be fitted on the roof to harness sunlight, and a total of 48 wind turbines will be sandwiched between the rotating floors, placed so that they are practically invisible. Each wind turbine could produce up to 0.3 megawatt of electricity, and it is estimated that 1,200,000 kilowatt-hours of energy would be generated every year.

This just in, the Borg have crash landed in San Francisco. Settle down Picard, put your phaser back on stun and go play a game of handball in holodeck. Last weekend marked the opening of San Francisco’s new Contemporary Jewish Museum, which the locals have been gawking at for months. We’re all for futuristic contemporary architecture, especially when it’s somewhere other than Dubai, but the images your looking at haven’t totally sold us. This addition to the red brick museum looks as though it does not blend into the surrounding skyscrapers, and the church located next door. Maybe this is a Xeno worshiping centre masquerading as a Jewish Museum. Conspiracy theorists, put on your triple layer tinfoil hats!

Back to the topic at hand. The outside is very slick, but perhaps a bit too bold for the neighbourhood. That said, at least you can really appreciate the interior without any sort of negative criticisms. The white ceiling amplifies the amount of light, which naturally enters into the space. At a glance, the ceiling actually reminds us of the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal at the ROM in Toronto. No details as to whether or not this new building meets any LEED standards, and I’m pretty sure I’d feel a lot different about the outside if the building was skinned in solar panels.

Nearly three years ago, New Orleans nearly drowned in the eye of Hurricane Katrina, which sparked widespread debate amongst architects and urban planners about how to best reconstruct the lost city. A myriad of options have surfaced ranging from rebuilding the levees to designing storm resistant structures to not rebuilding at all. Kiduck Kim and Christian Stayner, students at the Harvard Graduate School of Design have proposed a Floating City that will “rise safely in an Archimedean liquid landscape.” HC2 has covered floating homes in the past, but never on the scale of an entire city. Kim and Stayner’s concept re-imagines the city’s recourse to rising flood tides, welcoming in a once “unwanted guest.” Their proposal explains: “Housing plats and roads are marked by solar-powered lighting poles. Individual dwellings bob, tethered with RV-type umbilical cords through which potable water, electricity, sew-age, and telephone connections continue uninterrupted.”

Once the flood fades away, the city is redistributed in a new arrangement and “a postdiluvian landscape emerges. The city’s historic economic stratification is blurred. New soil de-posited by floodwater renews, regenerates, and reorganizes a city—by the very force threatening its existence.” It’s a beautiful vision, but the project strikes me as tenuous to the point of abstraction; there is an abundance of practical and social factors that won’t fit neatly into freely floating boxes. The implications of continuing to subject the poorest people to the ebb and flow of floodwaters are dubious at best. One crucial consideration relates to how we deal with displacement – wouldn’t a city founded upon free-floating entropy end up in chaos? A flourishing post-diluvian society is an idyllic notion, but a system of constant displacement may serve to fracture the very community it hopes to sustain. Still, it’s future-forward solutions such as this that push the hardest for progress, and they’re worth exploring.

Shipping containers are so yesterday, and the same thing goes for reality television. In a last ditch effort to save both of these passing trends, Belgium-based sculp(IT) has created a real life Truman Show. Architects Pieter Peerlings and Silvia Mertens recently completed a clever office, residence and studio for themselves, dubbed Antwerp’s narrowest house, located in the former red-light district. Peerlings and Mertens took a 2.4-metre wide space between two buildings, erected a steel skeleton that resembles a stack of shipping containers, and installed work, dining, relaxing and sleeping areas, plus a bath tub on the roof.

“A one-piece staircase connects the floors. The walls are all glass, allowing light in and creating a feel of space. In a nod to the area’s “exhibitionist” past, each “window” to the street has a black frame emphasizing the showcase or display aspect. The multi-color lighting scheme completes the seedy notion.” I may be the biggest exhibitionist in my home, but that’s not to say that I want put on a show for the whole neighbourhood to see. Even so, I think the idea of a rooftop bath under a starry night would be an amazing experience. Anyone know how to disconnect a bathtub?

Architectural success is a terrible beast to tame, especially when it comes to the Olympics. Although one may define success as the reaction to a radical new building design such as Beijing’s Birds Nest, this is only one facet of the problem. Once the big top comes down, and all the sprinters, triple jumpers and bobsledders leave for the next big competition, cities are left holding the bag. For example, Montreal was left with a gigantic debt thanks to their Olympic Stadium, which was so expensive to operate that it was put on moth balls after the games. Save for a few baseball seasons, and the odd monster truck event, officials actually believed that it was cheaper to just to keep the structure vacant and in tact, rather than fully demolish it. This is not an isolated incident, as many other cities have experienced similar blunders, however a solution could be on the horizon.

A new stadium proposed for the 2012 Olympics in London is being touted as the world’s first flat pack stadium. That’s not to say Ikea is now churning out Olympic stadiums. It shouldn’t come as a surprise, as this is coming from the same country responsible for the first temporary hotel built entirely out of shipping containers. Designed to be demountable, the structure would have very few fixed seats, while the remainder could be erected by using scaffolding and new “skin” materials to shelter the structure from the elements. The idea isn’t just a flash in the pan either, as London organizers are already speaking with hopeful candidates for the 2016 Olympics to see if they can get them on board to inherit/purchase the temporary stadium. It may be not as architecturally marvelous, but it could give a competitive edge to many smaller cities bidding against the splurging super centres.

What does one of the largest independently owned oil and gas companies do to turn over a more sustainable leaf? Well, in this case, EnCana hired architecture firm du jour Foster + Partners to design their new, environmentally sustainable HQ in Calgary. Dubbed The Bow, the new tower’s namesake is derived from its overall shape, as well as the breathtaking views it offers inhabitants of the Bow River. As expected from a Foster + Partners design, the form of this sustainable skyscraper follows some very green guidelines, but is nevertheless a green wash.

The first steel tower to be built in the home of the stampede, The Bow’s use of this core structural material reduces overall material use by 30%. Additional green features (often found in Foster + Partners’ designs) include a system of interior green spaces, and three sky gardens. These integrated green spaces will separate the commercial, residential, and retail spaces planned for occupancy following the building’s completion in 2010. The most pronounced green feature of the design is the building’s bow shaped tower which contains a south-facing atrium. Running the entire height of the façade, this passive solar space will absorb the sun’s energy to warm the tower in cold Calgary winters.

The mixed-use scheme of The Bow tower offers up a model of sustainable urban living without even leaving the premise. Even so, we suggest residents and visitors step outside in one of the cleanest cities in the world, and its outlying mountain areas known as a great ecotourist destination. The region has also claimed many of our friends and former classmates who are too busy drinking your milkshake (oil), and may never return to the heart of Canada.

Julien de Smedt architects and Aarhus-based CEBRA, in collaboration with the Dutch firm SeArch and French architect Louis Paillard recently won a competition to build a 25,000 sq/m housing complex in the new Aarhus Docklands development. The project will be developed by the Tækker Group and Brabrand Boligforening with an expected completion date of spring 2010. The Aarhus Harbour development provides a huge opportunity for Denmark’s second largest city to develop in a socially sustainable way by renovating its old, out-of-use container terminal. The area is meant to become a living city quarter, comprised of a multitude of cultural and social activities, a generous amount of workplaces, and of course, a highly mixed and diverse array of housing types.

The Iceberg Project seeks to locate itself within the goals of the overall city development. A third of the project’s 200 apartments will be set aside as affordable rental housing, aimed at integrating a diverse social profile into the new neighbourhood development. The project’s main obstacle is the density set up for the development, the desired square meters are in conflict with the specified site height restrictions and the overall intentions of providing ocean views along with good daylight conditions. The Iceberg negotiates this problem by “remaining far below the maximum heights at points and emerging above the magic upper limit at other locations. By creating these “peaks” and “canyons”, the project’s iconic strength is supplied by a generous amount of natural lighting and waterfront views”.