Design Your Own Marine Utopia in the Floating City Competition

Seasteading is an exciting new vision of building micro-utopias out at sea, leaving the traditional nation-state behind and forming libertarian communities where new economic, legal, and social systems can grow and thrive without governmental constraints. These new places come not only with their own stories about who founded them and what kind of new civilization they will be, but, like any good architecture, their forms would be directly related to these narratives [PDF].

2009 Best Picture Winner: Oasis of the Sea by Emerson Stepp. All images courtesy Seasteading Institute.

The Seasteading Institute is looking for architects to dream up some of these future seasteads. They have announced the “Floating City Project,” a competition to see who can come up with these new ways of living in international waters. There are many factors in this design problem, including food, work, internet, taxes, agriculture, industry, leisure, and co-habitation. The Floating City will mostly be stationary in coastal areas, but should be able to move through higher seas in the order to evade hurricanes or other threats.

2009 Personality Winner: Rendering Freedom — Anthony Ling.

The deadline for registration is May 28, and proposals must be submitted by June 1. According to the competition brief, “Your support creates opportunities for experimentation and innovation in the political sphere, and for personal freedom, which cannot be found anywhere else on earth.” Past winners have ranged from New Urbanism on the sea, to an adaptable port-city. Floating structures have been discussed recently, not only for the autonomy they have compared to land buildings, but also as a possible future in the case of climate change and rising sea-levels.

2009 Aesthetics Winner: SESU Seastead — Marko Järvela.

The competition winners will receive the following prizes: 1st Place – $1500
2nd Place – $1000
3rd Place – $500
People’s Choice – $500

The winners and special mentions will be published on The Seasteading Institute’s website and possibly in the forthcoming Seasteading Book to be published by Simon & Schuster in 2016. Learn more about the architectural design competition here.