Floating ecopolis or Lilypad

It is also known as the name of lilypad (the highly ribbed leaf of Victoria water lilies). Ecopolis means small city and this concept has come for climate change refugees. As we know global sea levels predicted to rise significantly over the next century due to climate change, a lot of people living in low lying areas are expected to be displaced from their homes. Vincent Callebaut is a Belgian ecological architect propose this concept. It is completely self-sufficient floating city that would accommodate up to 50,000 people.

Design concept

It is designed as a  double skin of the floating “ecopolis” it means it will be made up of two part one part is below the water and the other one is above the water surface. the lower portion which is immersed in the water located on the center which will be worked as an artificial lagoon.

The upper portion will be constructed on three marinas and three mountains as you can see the picture.

the whole structure will be constructed of polyester fibers which are covered by a layer of titanium dioxide (TiO2), which would react with ultraviolet rays and absorb atmospheric pollution via a photocatalytic effect in the same way as the air-purifying concrete. TiO2 has low toxicity, less resistance, and less corrosion and has semiconductor properties. 

Amenities

It is an amphibious city without any roads and cars and the whole city is covered by plants housed in a suspended garden. A lilypad will float around the world as an independent and fully self-sustainable home. It has a lagoon at its center for soft water collection and purification of rainwater and this artificial lagoon is also entirely immersed, thus ballasting the city. It enables to live in the heart of the subaquatic depths. The multifunctional programming is based on three marinas and three mountains dedicated respectively to work, shops, and entertainment. The whole set is covered by a stratum of planted housing in suspended gardens and crossed by a network of streets and alleyways with an organic outline.

Energy

By only using renewable energies, this design has zero carbon emission and it produces more energy than it consumes.

Energy sources could include:

• Biomass
• Osmotic power
• Phytopurification                                
• Solar thermal
• Solar photovoltaic
• Tidal power
• Wind energy

Challenges

Entirely auto-sufficient, Lilypad takes up the four main challenges launched by the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) in March 2008 – climate, biodiversity, water, and health. It reached a positive energy balance with zero carbon emission by the integration of all the renewable energies (solar, thermal and photovoltaic energies, wind energy, hydraulic, tidal power station, osmotic energies, phytopurification, biomass) producing thus more energy than it consumes! A true biotope entirely recyclable, this floating Ecopolis tends towards positive eco-accountancy in oceanic ecosystems by producing and softening itself oxygen and electricity, by recycling the CO2and waste, by purifying and softening biologically used water and by integrating ecological niches, aquaculture fields and biotic corridors on and under its body to meet its own food needs. This means that it will be eco-friendly and will run on renewable energy. It will only float and move about with the currents and movement of the seas themselves. Neither the cost of the building the city nor the cost of living there has been revealed.

To reply to the mutation of the migratory flows coming from hydroclimatic factors. The Lilypad joins on the mode of anticipation particular to Jules Verne’s literature, the alternative possibility of a multicultural floating Ecopolis whose metabolism would be in perfect symbiosis with the cycles of nature. It will be one of the major challenges of the 21st Century to create an international convention inventing new means to accommodate environmental migrants by recognizing their rights and obligations. Political and social challenges apart urban sustainable development must, more than ever, enter in resonance with human sustainable development .

Why is it important?

The international scientific scene assets that a temperature elevation of 1°C will lead to water rising of 1 meter.

If the first meter is not very funny with more than 50 million of people affected in the developing countries, the situation is worse with the second one. Countries like Vietnam, Egypt, Bangladesh, Guyana or Bahamas will see their most inhabited places swamped at each flood and their most fertile fields devastated by the invasion of salt water damaging the local ecosystems. New York, Mumbai, Kolkata, Hô Chi Minh City, Shanghai, Miami, Lagos, Abidjan, Djakarta, Alexandria… not less than 250 million of climatic refugees and 9% of the GDP threatened if we do not build protections related to such a threat. It is the demonstration inflicted to reluctant spirits by a climatological study of the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) and that challenges the imagination of eco-conception .