Water Capsule Homes Delivered by Airship in Architect's Vision
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CREDIT: Jay Stoughtenger |
If your house or apartment just got flooded by a hurricane's storm surge, a quake-triggered tsunami or a rising river that topped the levees, look no farther for a home than a water capsule carried by airship. The living space concept comes from Jay Stoughtenger, a U.S.-born architect working in Kuwait.
The capsule designs don't come with engineering specs, but it's clear that Stoughtenger is using the concept to stretch the idea of homes for flood refugees beyond tent towns and FEMA trailers. Inhabitat points out elements of his design such as solar panels on the roof to draw clean energy, reverse osmosis technology to convert salt water into fresh drinking water, and gray water recycling to filter dirty water .
Capsule dwellers have a dining area, kitchen, shower and an elevated bed to stay comfortable in a post-apocalyptic seascape. Two skylights and a floor window give views of both sky and sea to distract people from an otherwise gloomy world populated by gangs of Smokers and Kevin Costner.
Realistically, the likely cost of such kitted-out water capsules makes them look more viable as hotels for the wealthy rather than housing units for the poor, tired, huddled masses of flood refugees. But all the clean energy and clean water technologies included by the design have already found use in the developing world.
Similarly, Stoughtenger's vision of swarms of airships delivering the water capsules to perennially flooded countries isn't incredibly farfetched. For instance, Canadian company Discovery Air has bought a number of airships to deliver supplies to isolated towns far north in the Arctic Circle.
Such a concept could at least encourage practical thinking about what humans may need to live in a world beset by rising sea levels and a growing population that has crowded into flood-prone regions.
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