Sea–levels continue to rise as the Great Eight countries continue to faff about at summit meetings and get nowhere on cutting CO2 emissions. But there is hope - rather than berate politicians, architect Vincent Callebaut has orchestrated a design project that radically addresses housing development for those left (literally) homeless by the big ice cube melt. Presenting Lilypad - a floating Ecopolis.

According to figures taken from the GIEC (an inter-governmental advice group on climate change http://www.ipcc.ch), for every 1°C rise in temperature there will follow a global water-level rise of one metre - bringing initial land losses in Uruguay, Egypt, the Netherlands and Bangladesh, that will cause more than 50 million people to be directly affected or displaced. On a longer timescale, New York, Bombay, Calcutta, Hô Chi Minh City, Shanghai, Miami and Lagos will all be effected - resulting a staggering total of 250 million potential climate refugees.

The Ecopolis is the vision of Belgian architect Callebaut, directly inspired by the real-life lilypad Amazonia Victoria Regia: like the veins on a leaf, a network of streets, boulevards and roads criss-crosses and connects the three marinas that make up the bulk of the lilypad. The floating city is built around a central submerged artificial lagoon that serves as a reservoir to collect rainwater for purification. Its double skin, made of polyester fibres covered by a layer of titanium dioxide allows it to process and absorb CO2 in the atmosphere, just like the real-life lilypad does. Furthermore, through a number of technologies (solar, wind, tidal, biomass), it is envisioned that the project would be able to produce it’s own energy.

Self-sufficient and greenhouse gas-absorbent, if the reality can get anywhere near the blueprint models then Callebaut may have created not only a viable answer to some of modern ecology’s most pressing  (if not surreal) problems, but also an extremely beautiful collection of housing developments that would be desirable even to neo-con land-lubbers.

Each of these floating cities is designed to hold around 50,000 people – which means that, if the calculations on my mobile phone are correct – it would require 5000 Lilypads to house the population. Governments have already been flirting with the idea of artificial islands: Dejima in Japan and Jumeirah in Dubai are two contemporary examples that have coupled outlandish design with (relative) efficiency. Yet whilst the completion date for Lilypad is 2100, it remains to be seen whether the public will be won over by more radical concepts such as Callebaut's. Certainly these structures wouldn't look out of place in Hollywood aquatic dystopias like Waterworld: we can only hope that the field of medicine makes similar advances to enable us to see them in person.

http://vincent.callebaut.org/