Green Building Ideas: Citadel The First Sea-Floating Apartment

Rising sea level and flooding problems have been problem for Netherlands for ages. However, creative design called “New Water” by Koen Olthuis from Waterstudion in Netherlands, has giving the country an idea of how to fix the building to adapt the rising and falling tides problem.

This New Water concept fixes the problem by having an apartment complex that floats on the sea. This will be world’s first floating apartment complex, named “Citadel”.

Citadel is one of the green building ideas having the capability to use 25% less energy than a conventional land building.

The Citadel apartment complex will house 60 luxury apartment, a car park, a floating road to access the complex as well as boat docks. The residential part of the “New Water” complex, which tries to embrace Holland’s waterworld-ness instead of fighting it.

The green building ideas will be having a floating road to the mainland as well as plenty of boat docks for its 60 units. Apparently it’ll also be 25% more energy-efficient than an equivalent complex on land by using the surrounding water for cooling. It looks kind of crazy, but the sort of crazy that could actually work.

Olthuis is responsible for a number of floating residences around the world and he thinks that we should stop trying to contain water and learn to live with it. The New Water and the Citadel projects are an attempt to embrace water in the Netherlands, which is almost completely composed of wetlands.

With so many units built into such a small area, the housing complex will achieve a density of 30 units per acre of water, leaving more open water surrounding the structure. Each unit will have its own garden terrace as well as a view of the lake.

A high focus will be placed on energy efficiency inside the Citadel. Greenhouses are placed around the complex, and the water will act as a cooling source as it is pumped through submerged pipes. As the unit is surrounded by water, corrosion and maintenance are important issues to consider. As a result, aluminum will be used for the building facade, due to its long lifespan and ease of maintenance. The individual apartments are built from prefabricated modules. The Citadel will be situated on a shallow body of water, and in the future numerous buildings, complexes and residences will float on the water alongside it.

The only concern is, will this green building ideas stands through big waves? Or should it only stands through a small tides around the gulf?

[ Source: Gizmodo AU ; Inhabitat ]