Architect proposes ocean habitats made from garbage and algae

These "oceanscrapers" would stretch about 3,000 feet beneath sea level and house 20,000 residents

Renderings of Vincent Callebaut's ocean habitats.
Renderings of Vincent Callebaut's ocean habitats.

Thinking way outside of the box and far into the future, Belgian architect Vincent Callebaut has proposed half-a-mile-tall “oceanscrapers” made of garbage and algae.

Callebaut sees environmentally harmful flotsam within the ocean as the building block for a new kind of structure. These so-called “oceanscrapers,” submerged 250-floor structures, would stretch about 3,000 feet beneath sea level and house 20,000 residents.

Best of all, they would be 3D-printed using algae and the discarded plastic that’s currently stewing in the Earth’s oceans.

The mixed-use aquatic developments would also contain offices, food gardens and laboratories, so residents wouldn’t need to set foot on dry land for anything.

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All of this would be contained in a winding structure with a diameter of 1,640 feet and that features walls made out of aragonite, a crystallized calcium carbonate.

Granted, all of this is being proposed via a fictionalized manifesto written from the viewpoint of a future resident of one of these oceanscrapers from the year 2065. But Callebaut even goes into detail about some of the units’ finishes.

“The apartments’ partitions are made of chitin that is also synthesized,” he writes, explaining the material is a “molecule making up the shell of crustaceans such as lobsters.”

And for the flooring? “We took inspiration from the antibacterial denticles of the Galapagos shark’s skin, thus eliminating the need for toxic detergents.” [BuzzBuzzHome] – TRD