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Oceanix Floating City Prototype Sets Sail by 2025, and a Dream Comes True

This is a great way to get confirmation that, every once in a while, even the most impossible dream has a shot at becoming a reality. Oceanix, the utopian, futuristic and seemingly-impossible floating city, will be built.
Oceanix City is a floating city made of independent platforms, able to withstand Category 5 hurricanes 22 photos
Photo: Oceanix - BIG
Oceanix City is a floating city made of independent platforms, able to withstand Category 5 hurricanesOceanix City is a floating city made of independent platforms, able to withstand Category 5 hurricanesOceanix City is a floating city made of independent platforms, able to withstand Category 5 hurricanesOceanix City is a floating city made of independent platforms, able to withstand Category 5 hurricanesOceanix City is a floating city made of independent platforms, able to withstand Category 5 hurricanesOceanix City is a floating city made of independent platforms, able to withstand Category 5 hurricanesOceanix City is a floating city made of independent platforms, able to withstand Category 5 hurricanesOceanix City is a floating city made of independent platforms, able to withstand Category 5 hurricanesOceanix City is a floating city made of independent platforms, able to withstand Category 5 hurricanesOceanix City is a floating city made of independent platforms, able to withstand Category 5 hurricanesOceanix City is a floating city made of independent platforms, able to withstand Category 5 hurricanesOceanix City is a floating city made of independent platforms, able to withstand Category 5 hurricanesOceanix City is a floating city made of independent platforms, able to withstand Category 5 hurricanesOceanix City is a floating city made of independent platforms, able to withstand Category 5 hurricanesOceanix City is a floating city made of independent platforms, able to withstand Category 5 hurricanesOceanix City is a floating city made of independent platforms, able to withstand Category 5 hurricanesOceanix City is a floating city made of independent platforms, able to withstand Category 5 hurricanesOceanix City is a floating city made of independent platforms, able to withstand Category 5 hurricanesOceanix City is a floating city made of independent platforms, able to withstand Category 5 hurricanesOceanix City is a floating city made of independent platforms, able to withstand Category 5 hurricanesOceanix City is a floating city made of independent platforms, able to withstand Category 5 hurricanes
Oceanix has announced that it has joined forces with UN-Habitat and the Busan Metropolitan City of the Republic of Korea, and signed an agreement to build a prototype of the Oceanix City. It will be located off the coast of Busan, a city with 3.4 million residents that also happens to be one of the largest container handling ports in the world, due to its deep harbor and gentle tides. In other words, it is the perfect place to build a scaled-down version of the world’s first floating city.

Plans call for the prototype to set sail by 2025, which is perhaps the most startling part about the announcement. For a project of this scale, 2025 is the equivalent of “tomorrow.” On the downside, such a close deadline hints that the scale of the prototype will be minimal, serving more as a testbed for technology than anything else. The announcement was made in the second half of last month, but for whatever reason, it failed to get proper worldwide recognition until this week.

Make no mistake about it, if the plan goes through and the prototype is built, it will mark an important step toward building the city of tomorrow. We’re talking about the future being laid out brick by brick, and that’s no exaggeration.

Oceanix City is a floating city made of independent platforms, able to withstand Category 5 hurricanes
Photo: Oceanix - BIG
As we noted in a previous coverstory on Oceanix, the floating city has been designed by Bjarke Ingels’ prestigious BIG design firm as nothing short of a dream. It is a floating conglomeration of smaller platforms, linked together and each destined for different functionalities; a self-sustaining, closed-loop community that lives and thrives on the rising water that constantly threatens coastal towns.

Introduced as a concept in 2019, during a UN round-table discussion on the threats of rising water levels to coastal communities, Oceanix City gained international attention almost immediately. It proposed a very different future, but one that was doable nonetheless. As it turns out, Oceanix, a tech company, will actually try to see if their proposal lives up to the hype in a real-world scenario. “A key goal of the prototype is to cultivate a new generation of blue tech innovators, entrepreneurs, and researchers in Busan by creating a vibrant ecosystem through collaboration between international and local partners,” reads a press statement.

Should the concept get to see the light of day with all the functionality initially imagined for it, one Oceanix City could end up housing some 10,000 residents – and feeding them at the same time. A single platform can house and provide for only 300 residents, but link six of them together, and you have a village. Connect several village together, and you get a hexagonal city, with agricultural platforms on the outer limits, serving as buffer from high waves.

Housing in Oceanix will be in low-rise buildings made of fast-growing bamboo, and public spaces will be sheltered from the sun. Members of the self-sustaining community will have to have a plant-based diet, with resources coming directly from the agricultural platforms, managed under communal farming. This would be a sharing culture, but one adapted to the specific needs and traditions of the area where it’s built – or so Oceanix said at the time it presented the concept, imagining worldwide adoption for it.

Oceanix City is a floating city made of independent platforms, able to withstand Category 5 hurricanes
Photo: Oceanix - BIG
Energy would come from solar panels, but wind and tidal energy would also be generated. There would be a zero-waste policy, and each community would have fresh water autonomy, by harvesting rainwater and desalinization of sea water. There would be no cars on Oceanix, except for small EVs, and people would move around by foot or bicycle mostly.

Each buoyant platform would have a low center of gravity, to offer stability. Oceanix says the floating city would withstand Category 5 hurricanes, the strongest type there is, with winds of 157 mph (253 kph) or higher – but it doesn’t go specifics. It also promised housing in such a community would be affordable, because they wanted to offer a viable solution for the future, and not build yet another fancy “toy” for the world’s richest.

All this sounds like an environmentalist’s wildest dreams put on paper, together with the promise of making them true. We’ll know better what to make of that promise by 2025.

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 Download: Oceanix City prototype greenlit in South Korea (PDF)

About the author: Elena Gorgan
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Elena has been writing for a living since 2006 and, as a journalist, she has put her double major in English and Spanish to good use. She covers automotive and mobility topics like cars and bicycles, and she always knows the shows worth watching on Netflix and friends.
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