OCEANIX Busan - a world first floating city

Designs for what’s being touted as the world’s first climate-resilient floating city have been unveiled. The project’s being developed by UN-Habitat, tech company OCEANIX and the Korean city of Busan. The architects are BIG and Samoo.

OCEANIX Busan is a series of interconnected platforms totalling 15.5 acres, which can accommodate 12,000 people. Each neighbourhood is designed to serve a specific purpose - living, research, and lodging. 

An aerial view of what the new city will look like. All images provided by OCEANIX/BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group.

The floating platforms connect to land with link-span bridges, framing the sheltered blue lagoon of floating recreation, art, and performance outposts. The low-rise buildings on each platform, defined by their soft lines, feature terraces for indoor-outdoor living activating the network of vibrant public spaces. 

Announcing the floating city UN-Habitat, whose purpose it is to promote socially and environmentally sustainable cities and human settlements, said OCEANIX Busan will organically transform and adapt over time based on the needs of Busan. 

The concept is based around floating platforms with wind-resistant low-rise buildings.

It has the potential to expand to accommodate more than 100,000 people. The floating platforms are accompanied by dozens of productive outposts and greenhouses. 

OCEANIX Busan has six integrated systems: zero waste and circular systems, closed loop water systems, food, net zero energy, innovative mobility, and coastal habitat regeneration. 

These interconnected systems will generate 100% of the required operational energy on site through floating and rooftop photovoltaic panels. Similarly, each neighbourhood will treat and replenish its own water, reduce and recycle resources, and provide innovative urban agriculture. 

Residents will share communal backyards.

UN-Habitat says the challenge the world is facing through climate change and land shortages is massive. Two out of every five people in the world live within 100 kilometres of the coast, and 90 percent of mega cities worldwide are vulnerable to rising sea levels. Flooding is destroying billions of dollars worth of infrastructure and forcing millions of climate refugees to leave their homes. With nowhere to expand, rapid urban population growth is pushing people closer to the water, driving housing costs to prohibitive levels, and squeezing the poorest families out, it says.

“Today is a pivotal milestone for all coastal cities and island nations on the frontlines of climate change. We are on track to delivering OCEANIX Busan and demonstrating that floating infrastructure can create new land for coastal cities looking for sustainable ways to expand onto the ocean, while adapting to sea level rise,” said the Chief Executive Officer of OCEANIX, Mr. Philipp Hofmann.

Each neighbourhood will have its own agriculture projects.

Busan is a port city of 3.4 million people, making it the second biggest in the Republic of Korea. Mayor Park Heong-joon has set an ambitious agenda, including turning Busan into a green smart city and launching a bid for World Expo 2030.

“I take seriously our commitment to the credo ‘The First to the Future’. We joined forces with UN-Habitat and OCEANIX to be the first to prototype and scale this audacious idea because our common future is at stake in the face of sea level rise and its devastating impact on coastal cities,” said Mayor Park Heong-joon.

Bjarke Ingels, Founder and Creative Director, BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group, says the modular maritime neighbourhood will be a prototype for sustainable and resilient cities. 

“As our first manifestation of this new form of waterborne urbanism, OCEANIX Busan will expand the city’s unique character and culture from dryland into the water around it. We believe OCEANIX’s floating platforms can be developed at scale to serve as the foundations for future resilient communities in the most vulnerable coastal locations on the frontlines of climate change,” Ingles says.