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Eerste City App klaar voor inzet in sloppenwijk

Architectenweb, June 2014

De Stichting Floating City Apps presenteert de eerste concretisering van het City Apps-concept, bedacht door architect Koen Olthuis. De Communication App is een drijvende eenheid die in waterrijke sloppenwijken een sociale of educatieve rol kan spelen.

De City Apps zijn drijvende eenheden, gebaseerd op een standaard zeecontainer op een drijflichaam, en kunnen verschillende functies vervullen. De eenheden zijn door Koen Olthuis van architectenbureau Waterstudio.NLbedacht om op relatief eenvoudige manier de leefomstandigheden in sloppenwijken aan en op het water, zogenoemde wetslums, te verbeteren.

De Stichting Floating City Apps presenteert de eerste concretisering van het City Apps-concept, bedacht door architect Koen Olthuis. De Communication App is een drijvende eenheid die in waterrijke sloppenwijken een sociale of educatieve rol kan spelen.

Vorige maand is de Communication App met tablets en twee grotere beeldschermen getest door een schoolklas van 25 kleuters. Het digitale  klaslokaal functioneerde succesvol, volgens de Stichting Floating City Apps. De Communication App is nu klaar om te worden ingezet, wat waarschijnlijk binnenkort in de Filippijnen gaat gebeuren.

Drijvende functie-uitbreidingen

De City Apps zijn drijvende eenheden, gebaseerd op een standaard zeecontainer op een drijflichaam, en kunnen verschillende functies vervullen. De eenheden zijn door Koen Olthuis van architectenbureau Waterstudio.NL bedacht om op relatief eenvoudige manier de leefomstandigheden in sloppenwijken aan en op het water, zogenoemde wetslums, te verbeteren.

Olthuis vergelijkt de City App met de functie-uitbreiding van de smartphone. De sloppenwijk is de hardware; de installatie van City Apps voegt daaraan functies toe. Verschillende drijvende uitbreidingen kunnen de wetslum voorzien van energie, sanitaire voorzieningen, waterzuivering of een leslokaal.

De nu gerealiseerde Communication App dient als een sociaal en educatief platform. Tablets zijn verwerkt in wandmeubels, die zijn vervaardigd uit solid surface-materiaal, dat sterk en ongevoelig voor vocht en vuil is en kwalitatief fraai oogt. De Communication App geeft de bewoners van de sloppenwijk toegang tot internet en daarmee mogelijkheden als particulier ondernemerschap of leren in groepen.

Flexibel inzetbaar

Volgens de architect bieden de City Apps in het algemeen kleinschalige ‘bottom-up’ oplossingen , afgestemd op de behoeften in een specifieke wetslum. Daarbij zijn ze flexibel inzetbaar: er hoeven geen (al dan niet omvattende) projectplannen te worden ontwikkeld, maar er kunnen steeds aanpasbare en herbruikbare eenheden worden ingezet. Als ze niet meer nodig zijn, kunnen ze eenvoudig worden verplaatst naar een andere locatie.

Het idee is een uitwerking van de inzending App-grading Wet Slums, waarmee Waterstudio.NL in 2012 de Architecture & Sea Level Rise Award heeft gewonnen. Vorig jaar hebben Olthuis en Menno van der Marel de Stichting Floating City Apps opgericht om daadwerkelijke implementatie van de drijvende eenheden in wetslums wereldwijd te verwezenlijken.

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‘Bouwen op water biedt ongekende mogelijkheden’

Het hele Westland, Paul van Delft, May 2014

Bouwen op water biedt een heel nieuwe dimensie aan de bouwwereld. Na de uitvinding van de lift, die verticale bouw mogelijk maakte, vormt het water een bron van nieuwe mogelijkheden. Lang leek het er op dat in de architectuur alles allang bedacht en uitontwikkeld was, maar dat blijkt niet zo te zijn. Bouwen op water geeft flexibiliteit, is milieuvriendelijk, biedt bescherming tegen datzelfde water en opent ongekende ruimtelijke mogelijkheden. Architect Koen Olthuis, die met zijn Architectenbureau Waterstudio wereldwijd actief is met bouwen op water, vertelde leden van VNO-NCW Westland en Jong Management Westland erover.

Historie
Olthuis schetste kort de historie van het bouwen. Al eeuwenlang worden statische, niet-flexibele gebouwen gerealiseerd. Ze zijn niet verplaatsbaar en niet makkelijk aan te passen aan nieuwe wensen. Dat, terwijl ze wel geacht worden vele tientallen en soms honderden jaren mee te gaan. De wensen van de gebruikers veranderen in de loop der tijd. Dat geldt ook voor de omgeving: die kan ook veranderen. Bijvoorbeeld door overstromingen, door intensivering van ruimtegebruik, door milieu-eisen die worden gesteld, door bevolkingsontwikkelingen. Bouwen op water biedt voor al deze tendensen een oplossing. Olthuis liet voorbeelden zien van prachtige kleine en grote woningbouwprojecten op water, van groenvoorzieningen op boorplatforms om flora  en fauna te versterken, van stadsuitbreidingen op water. Of een drijvend conferentiecentrum dat van de ene stad naar de andere kan worden gesleept. Het meest aansprekende voorbeeld was misschien wel de woningbouw op de Maladiven. Vloedgolven zijn een grote bedreiging voor de inwoners van deze eilandengroep. De regering heeft zelfs evacuatieplannen klaarliggen voor álle inwoners. Olthuis werkt nu met de regering aan plannen voor drijvende woningen. Uit testen blijkt dat die veel stabieler en veiliger zijn tegen stijging van het waterpeil dan vaste woningen. In Westland waren ook vergevorderde plannen om waterwoningen te bouwen in het gebied tussen Naaldwijk en ’s-Gravenzande. Er was volop belangstelling, vooral voor de goedkopere woningen, maar het project is door de opdrachtgevers geschrapt toen de woningmarkt in heel Nederland inzakte. Hiermee heeft Westland de kans voorbij laten gaan om wereldwijd voortrekker te zijn op het gebied van bouwen op water en een oplossing voor lokale wateroverlast te bieden.

Floating City Apps
Koen Olthuis sloot af met een heel nieuw project: drijvende zeecontainers die gebruikt kunnen worden voor onder andere sanitaire voorzieningen, huisvesting of opleidingscentra voor kinderen uit sloppenwijken. Veel sloppenwijken liggen juist aan water. De wijken zijn overvol bebouwd. Bovendien zijn ze erg kwetsbaar voor overstromingen. De floating city apps zijn metalen zeecontainers met zonnepanelen op het dak. Ze kunnen makkelijk op een eenvoudige drijvende fundering geplaatst worden en zijn daarmee flexibel bruikbaar. In de – airconditioned en hufterproof – containers kunnen ook 20 computers geplaatst die kinderen zelf kunnen bedienen. Zo kunnen ze heel eenvoudig en in hun eigen tempo en in onderwerpen die hen interesseren de wereld ontdekken en zichzelf ontwikkelen. Een leerkracht kijkt op afstand mee en helpt hen waar nodig. Het eerste doel is om – samen met organisaties als Cordaid –  in 2017 meer dan duizend floating city apps vanuit Nederland te leasen naar gebieden wereldwijd. De  initiatiefnemers zijn op zoek naar partners.

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Think Dutch, Build on water

 

 

Think Dutch, Robert Thiemann, Jeroen Junte & David Keuning, Dec 2013

Think Dutch! does not make any fundamental distinction between design and architecture. The book groups together the work of the young creative generation into 16 chapters with titles such as “Build on Water”, “Celebrate Food”, “Don’t Create for Eternity” or “Get Educated”. It poses thought-provoking questions such as: “Does this design yield new insight?”, “When does it make sense to use bio-degradable materials in architecture?” and “How can we establish self-sufficient food chains?” It is this critical approach to creative work that has become integral to Dutch architecture and design in recent decades.

This book presents 476 diverse architectural and design projects and products, devised by some of the most creative contemporary minds in this field; all provide positive proof of cutting-edge thinking, and investment in sustainable futures, exciting ideas that are inspirational, leading the way towards a brighter future.

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Dutch firm says giant floating platforms could ease urban crowding

South China Morning Post,Jamie Carter, November 2013

There has been much debate on where land can be found to house a growing population in Hong Kong. For communities elsewhere, the need is even more pressing.

With global population density increasing and sea levels expected to rise by as much as 30cm by 2050, many coastal habitats will come under intense pressure. And the answer could be right on the horizon.

“In major cities there’s already a lack of space and the next logical step is to make use of water,” says Koen Olthuis, founder of Netherlands-based Waterstudio.nl and architect of multiple maritime projects.

“It’s just evolution – the elevator made vertical cities of skyscrapers possible, and water is the next step for letting cities grow and become more dense.”

More than two-thirds of the Netherlands is prone to flooding, and much of it is below sea-level, which gives its architects and engineers an unusual perspective on man’s relationship to water. While he stops short of proposing giant cities at sea, Olthuis thinks the definition of a city should be changing constantly.

Waterstudio.NL’s City Apps project tackles urban density and climate change. It was inspired by Olthuis’ belief that cities should be more flexible, and approached as a product.

“Smartphones all look the same but they are not, they are personalised with different apps,” he says. “We looked at cities and saw they have their own problems, and our floating City Apps simply add to the hardware of a city.”

Waterstudio’s first project is for the watery Korail slums of Dhaka, Bangladesh, where 70,000 people struggle to survive. Its solution – a small floating platform housing a school with 20 iPads fixed to the walls, intended to be used as an internet hub at night – has mostly been built in the Netherlands.

“In slums there are no rules – if you build a house it can be destroyed in a few months by the government rethinking that area, but if that happens then City Apps can be moved,” says Olthuis. “We’ve put the floating platform in Dhaka. We need 14,000 plastic PET bottles to keep one City App floating, so we got the local people to collect the bottles and paid them four to six cents each.”

The next City App – this time for sanitation – is planned for Bangkok.

A similar project comes from NLE, another Netherlands-based architectural practice, which has been working with the floating community of Makoko, near Lagos in Nigeria.

Around 100,000 people are thought to live here in stilt houses – largely as a result of massive urban sprawl – but the community lacks schools and infrastructure. NLE’s solution is a pyramid-shaped primary floating school built from local bamboo, which is intended as a community hub.

Such socially progressive projects are often spin-offs of lucrative contracts elsewhere. Waterstudio’s Five Lagoons Project, a joint-venture between Dutch Docklands and the government of the Maldives, will see an area of about 740 hectares supplied with luxury floating developments.

“We are going to develop five lagoons with different functions, including a resort, a conference hotel and a floating golf course,” says Olthuis, though the point of the star item – a luxury Ocean Flower resort of 185 villas – isn’t just to tempt tourists.

“By doing this we will learn how to make big green islands, and see how we can then make social housing on the water for local people,” says Olthuis.

His long-term goal is to help the 110,000 people in the Maldives’ capital city Malé, which is barely 1.5 metres above sea level and likely to be submerged in the next 85 years.

“You need this kind of expensive project to fund the future projects to help society,” Olthuis says.

Next up is Miami, where 17 floating developments will be built on a large lake. Floating communities aren’t always a response to rising sea levels in coastal communities. Non-profit organisation the Seasteading Institute wants to initiate an autonomous offshore community that pushes total freedom and encourages innovation and experimentation beyond the reach of governments.

“We’re looking for trailblazers,” says the organisation’s promotional video. “We believe humanity needs a new, blue frontier where we’re all free to explore new ways of living together.”

It claims “seasteaders” would only need the kind of money required to live in a big city. The institute is now attempting to raise money for its Floating City project on crowd-sourcing website Indiegogo, and doing fairly well – though it also needs a “host” country.

There’s a similar issue over at Freedom Ship International, a Florida-based company that is hoping to raise the US$11 billion needed to build the world’s largest vessel.

Designed as a mobile floating platform stretching over 1,600 metres, Freedom Ship – which could set sail renamed as the Global Friend Ship – is designed to host an entire city of up to 100,000.

Just under half that number will reside permanently on the ship, which will make its way slowly around the world’s coastal regions over three years.

As it moves, a fleet of ferries and small aircraft (there’s an airport on the roof) will take residents to shore – as tourists or businesspeople – and bring tourists onboard to visit the 2.7-million-tonne vessel’s casinos, restaurants and businesses. It will have schools, a hospital and a security force.

“It’s the first ever floating city,” says Roger Gooch, director and vice-president of Freedom Ship International, “but it’s too large to go into a port so it will also stay around 15 miles [24 kilometres] offshore in international waters.”

Freedom Ship is designed to let people get away from the normal restrictions of global geography and governments, he says.

There’s a similar reason behind another offshore entity called Blueseed. A purpose-built floating platform registered in the Bahamas but moored in international waters 22 kilometres from the shores of San Francisco, Blueseed is aimed at international entrepreneurs who can’t enter the US (Silicon Valley, in particular) to start companies because of restrictive visa issues.

Offering its occupants – all with a US business or travel visa – daily 30-minute ferry rides to the mainland as well as helicopter trips, Blueseed will begin life next year on a refitted cruise ship, progressing to the custom-built Blueseed Two floating city soon after.

But life at sea isn’t just restricted to land-based humans. Olthuis has a vision of a Sea Tree, a multi-storey floating structure similar to an oil rig that could be placed in rivers, lakes and oceans near densely populated cities.

“Instead of creating green areas in the city, make them on the water,” he says. “When nature starts to colonise a Sea Tree then birds, animals and insects will use it, too.”

Olthuis already has a way to pay for it. “I could see oil companies donating Sea Trees to cities in return for drilling rights,” he says.

A Sea Tree in Victoria Harbour? That really would give Hong Kong a new look.

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A visual log

cities@sea, Samuel David Bruce, October 2013

TRACY METZ, AMSTERDAM FRAMER, AND KOEN OLTHUIS

Here’s an excerpt of the match report Archie, my roommate from Glasgow wrote. I didn’t play because of the egg sized mound I grew on my forehead after getting knee’d in the head last weekend. I’m traveling quite a lot in October and I want to keep the limited mental capabilities I have working in ship shape. But still I got a shout-out!

The game started brightly for the Rotterdammers, within 5 minutes putting pressure on the men from Utrecht. The ball was snapped out inside the 22 from captain Mikey ‘12:30 SHARP’ Hornby to stand-off ‘Uncle’ Archie Pollock, pop-passing to new boy Sander Korel, who bashed his way through 3 defenders to crash down for 5 points. It was the first showing of a strong game from the young upstart Korel, who was to finish as joint man of the match. More points soon followed, as Dirk ‘here comes the hot stepper’ de Raaff ghosted by the Panther defense, breaking his side stepping virginity past one player in a particularly strong solo run. The step was so powerful however, that it damaged his tendons, and de Raaff will now be sidelined for several months, along with other notable injuries Pieter ‘we score more points, we win de game’ Joosse, Frank ‘crabhand’ Nijenhuis, ‘Bram the tram’ van den Pasch, and ‘so good they named him thrice’ Samuel David Bruce, who expertly donned the club bear mascot outfit and added at least 10 points to the score line.

On friday I took the train up to Amsterdam to meet Tracy Metz, a journalist who recently published a book called ‘Sweet and Salt: Water and the Dutch.’ The book is a beautiful artifact. It explains how the Netherlands’ manages its complex and dynamic relationship with water and points out what the rest of the world can learn from the Dutch. Alongside co-author Maartje van den Heuvel, Metz’s writing and use of photography, art-historical analysis, and architectural design shows how the Netherlands’ battle with both sweet (fresh) and salt water has evolved over the centuries.

Her book has put her into the global spotlight. She’s the spokesperson at water management conferences, a lecturer all over universities in the U.S., and a go-to for journalists and writers investigating these issues. Although she described herself as “no expert,” she certainly is.

Ms. Metz told me that she is shell-shocked about the success she’s had on her book. She hears her name called all over the place, but automatically thinks ‘who? me?’ We talked for an hour about the research I’ve done so far. She seemed to enjoy flipping through my sketchbook. Her lunch date at the end of my hour with her was with the Consul General of the United States in Amsterdam, Randy Berry. From the State Department: Mr. Berry’s career with the State Department has also taken him to postings in Bangladesh, Egypt, Uganda (twice), and South Africa, as well as Washington DC.  Mr. Berry holds a State Department Superior Honor Award, and is a nine-time Meritorious Honor Award recipient.  He speaks Spanish and Arabic. It was very cool to get to shake his hand and tell him about my Watson project. He told me he could connect me with some people in places I’m heading out to later on in the year.

Later on that Friday afternoon, I stumbled by a print shop. Reproductions of old maps of Amsterdam caught my eye. I went inside and started chatting with the shop owner, an Amsterdammer who has lived in the city his whole life. I never caught his name, but he started telling me some pretty interesting things–his hypotheses about why the Dutch are the way they are. Growing up, his Dad was a collector, so thats how he starting getting into collecting maps, prints, etchings, and other artworks that he now sells in his tiny little underground shop. He sells original works and reproductions. The shop owner seemed to be very knowledgable about Dutch history–probably because he knows a lot about the background behind the images he sells. These three things from our conversation stuck out–

1. Because of the North Sea fishery there was always a great abundance of fatty, fresh herring. The Dutch never had to worry about feeding themselves and could focus on other issues, like patching up and draining their deltaic landscape, building ships, making trading routes, and inventing technology. The fish set Dutch up on a platform for success.

2. Because of the nature of the delta landscape, survival required co-operation. The Dutch needed to work together, look each other in the eye, make compromises, quell their individual egos and work together to create a landscape that was habitable. They needed to use their collective talents. This essentially explains how the water boards began. Dikes were built by the farmers who would directly benefit from them. But as the systems for water management became more complex, they needed an overseeing body to govern. Nothing could be accomplished alone.

3. Because of the work required on the land, the Dutch were naturally tall and built…during the Roman ages, Cesar’s royal guards were often from the Netherlands because of their beastly stature.

It was a fun experience, getting some Dutch cultural history from a guy in a printshop.

oday I traveled to a suburb in between the Hague and Delft to meet an architect, Koen Olthius who exclusively builds on water. In 2007 he was #121 on Time’s list of the world’s most influential people. He was such a friendly, outgoing guy and instantly made me feel as though he was as interested to talk to me as I was to talk to him. Besides all the fascinating things he taught me about his work and how it has developed over time, I saw first hand how important it is to treat people you’re with with interest and kindness. My hour with Koen Olthius reminded me of this article here, where the author talks about his encounter with Wolverine (Hugh Jackman). In short, the author meets Hugh Jackman on the street and has a great first impression. Here’s the short of it:

In three minutes, Hugh Jackman turned me into a fan for life–but he didn’t sell me. He didn’t glad-hand me. He just gave me his full attention. He just acted as if, for those three minutes, I was the most important person in the world–even though he didn’t know me and has certainly forgotten me.

Just like a CEO, as an entertainer he is his “company,” and even though I’m sure it wasn’t his intention, I now see his “products” in a different, more positive light. 

That feeling totally occurred after my meeting with Mr. Olthius. When I got there, one of his colleagues gave me a free copy of his book, ‘Float!’ We sat down and talked, the whole time he explained things, he’d diagram what he was saying on architecture tracing paper so I have this long 8 foot string of tracing paper with a visual transcription of our conversation. It’s very cool.

I’ll say more about our conversation in the next post. But this is a fantastic overview of his vision. Great for anybody interested in urban issues and/or architecture!

His main point is to make cities more dynamic by opening up space up inside the city by building on a floating foundation. In doing so, he can combat a number of problems that arise from urban growth and climate change.

It was an absolute treat to talk to him!

Tomorrow, I’m back up to Amsterdam to meet a professor at the University of Amsterdam. Prof. Dr. Jeroen Aerts works at the Institute for Environmental Studies. He is a professor in the area of risk management, climate change, and water resources management.

I have a painting in the works of Tracy Metz, but I unfortunately ran out of paint and don’t think it’s worth it to spend money on more because I don’t to lug it around as I travel around Europe in October.

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Meet the man who builds things on water, from slum schools to $14 million villas

Quartz, Siraj Datoo, Aug 2013

Dutch architect Koen Olthuis specializes in building things that float. His structures, he concedes, use a similar technology to oil rigs. Yet Olthuis’s focus is elsewhere—on combating rising sea levels, floods, and a growing world population. As he outlined in a TEDx Warwick talk last year, the work he’s doing is quite literally putting land where there wasn’t any before.

Olthuis is the founder of architectural firm Waterstudio.NL, and as a native Dutchman, he often cites his own country’s history as inspiration. “In Holland, we have always been fighting against the water… 50% is under sea level,” he said in his talk. Yet he finds this ongoing battle with water “strange”, arguing that it makes the country susceptible to danger. “What if something breaks?” he said in a phone call with Quartz. His solution: “Why don’t we just use the water?”

His projects include designing homes in Holland, schools in slum neighborhoods in Bangladesh, “amphibious houses” in Colombia, a star-shaped conference center, and a 32-island golf course (with, yes, underwater glass tunnels linking the islands) in the Maldives. He’s also looking to sign a contract to design villas in Florida.

How does it work?

There are three main elements here. The floating base:

[It] is the same technology as we use in Holland. It’s made up of concrete caisson, boxes, a shoebox of concrete. We fill them with styrofoam. So you get unsinkable floating foundations.

And the bit on top?

The house itself is the same as a normal house, the same material. Then you want to figure out how to get water and electricity and remove sewage and use the same technology as cruise ships.

How it is anchored to the ground?

In Dubai, they just put sand into the water and made artificial islands. Once you put sand into the water, you can’t go back. We can go back after 150 years and there’s no damage to the habitat.

That’s impressive. So what do you do exactly?

[In the Maldives], these houses are connected to a floating boulevard… Those are connected to the sea bed with telescopic piles and as the boulevard rises up from sea level and the house rises up.

And all that means that if there’s a rise in the sea level, due to a flood or tsunami, the island will just rise?

Yes.

“We don’t believe in donating money,” he tells me. “It didn’t work in the history [sic] and it won’t work in the future.” When you give money to charity, he argues, you rarely know what impact it has had.

His response to this is the City Apps Foundation. Instead of donating money for food and aid, companies provide financing for “apps”—interchangeable, prefabricated units such as classrooms, social housing, first-aid stations, or even parking lots. Like the apps on a smartphone, they’re designed to be easy to install and launch with the minimum of fuss. After an initial free trial, schools, governments and local municipalities can lease specific “apps” for a monthly fee. The fees yield a return for the investors, and when the apps are no longer needed they can simply be packed away and assembled in another city. The foundation has raised funding from a number of Dutch companies, and Olthuis and his company provide the technology.

The foundation’s first major project is a school in a slum in Dhaka. Olthuis says that slums have specific problems that appeal to him—in particular their instability. At any moment “the government can say that we’ll take the slums out or landlords might kick them out,” so slum-dwellers tend not to invest in their communities.​

City Apps gives power to these neighborhoods, Olthuis argues, especially because they are often situated on the edge of water. In Dhaka, the school app will be a white container that stands out from the rest of the slum to create what Olthuis, perhaps inadvisedly, calls a “shock and awe effect”. The schools will contain iPads for use by the students, and women will use the space for evening classes. Within 12 weeks, the schools will have been built, transported to Dhaka, assembled and ready to use. If the community is forced to move, the school can move too with relative ease.​

Olthuis says there are two ways that the City Apps foundation is a better system for investors:

It provides accountability. Cameras inside the containers will allow investors in the project to show off the fruits of their social spending to clients or shareholders in real time.

Although the initial school app will be free, slum-dwellers will have to pay to lease extra apps, such as what Olthuis calls “functions” for sanitation (this could be anything from a toilet to a fully-fledged bathroom) — or even just the ability to print. If the slum no longer wants a specific “function”, it can be easily taken away and used elsewhere. Investors get money if more “apps” are leased

“[It’s] stupid that each [sic] four years, we build complete neighborhoods and then they leave it there.” And it kind of is. The British government spent almost £2 billion ($3.1 billion) on venues alone for the Olympics and Paralympics village for London’s 2012 games. Instead, Olthuis suggests, Olympic cities should lease floating stadiums and property. This could be assembled in advance of the games and packed away afterwards, and would be far cheaper than creating new stadiums and neighborhoods every four years. While it would certainly remove some of the sparkle around the event, it would cut a good deal of waste. In Britain, talk of how the OIympic venues could be used after the games has already faded away.

Work on the “ocean flower”, part of a project that will see 185 new floating villas, has already begun and the first villa will be inhabitable as soon as December this year. Americans, Chinese, Russians and even hotel operators have already forked out the $1 million cost per villa.

Olthuis has a contract with for 42 amillarah islands (private villas in the Maldivian language). These will be 2,500 sq. meters (26,910 sq. feet), and, at $12 million-$14 million, for the “stupidly rich”, Olthuis lets slip.

You can take a speedboat-taxi from the airport in 15 minutes or a three-person “U-boat” submarine will get you there in 40. (Russian president Vladimir Putin was seen modelling the five-person version.) Alternatively, spend three weeks learning how to maneuver a U-boat and a license is yours.

What if there was a hotel-cum-conference center in the middle of the ocean? Construction on this complex will begin towards the beginning of 2014 and with it come some interesting innovations. While a starfish has five “legs”, Olthuis’s company will build six. This means that if a section needs to be renovated, they could replace one leg with the spare (kept at the harbor) within three days instead of having to cordon off the area for months.

In his TEDx Warwick talk, Olthuis jokes that even if you’re on honeymoon in the Maldives, after a few days of glorious swimming, you kind of just want to play golf. And while the golf course might not be swarming with newly-weds, it might attract a new set of tourists from Russia and China.

Even if you’re not much of a golfer, it’s likely you’ll make a trip just to walk in the underground tunnels between the islands. And yes, the tunnel will be transparent.

Colombia has three big flood zones and every time there’s a flood, local municipalities have to pay a lot of money in compensation, according to Olthuis. To combat this, the local government has signed up Waterstudio.NL to build 1500 “amphibian” houses with a floating foundation.

So while the above photo depicts a floating house in a dry season, the house will simply rise in a wet season. While it’s a fairly simple concept, it has radical implications.​

Olthuis’s biggest impact so far has been in Holland, where a number of water villas have already been completed. With over 50% of the country below sea level, this provided the perfect playground for his concepts to become a reality

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