Buoyant Aquacology: Venetian Futures

Within this proposal, Venice would become a city protected from rising sea levels by great ringed barrier walls, with locks for access and trade. The Lagoon would become an arm of the sea, with new ecologies – and economies - supplanting those that have disappeared.

A shifting matrix, a net, of floating energy barges will produce hydrogen algae to be farmed for energy production, as well as a food and mineral source, while processing sewage from the cities and using it to grow new soil. Other barges will support hydroponic agriculture, fish hatcheries and solar collection cells.

The northern portion of the island of Murano will become an ecological preserve where tidal flats and marshlands will be manufactured for study and preservation of marine species in a state of continuous succession, evolving through managed dynamic ecological processes, and through interaction with the new forces of sea.

Individual floating vessels, controlled by a GPS information network, facilitate access to this new territory. These vessels take the form of transparent bubbles constructed of a chambered high performance skin, which allows unrestricted views of both the new life above and the cities submerged below the water line.