Throughout the world, our rivers and our drinking water is horribly polluted by industry, by waste both chemical and human. Vincent Callebaut Architects have envisioned a floating monument to green conscious urban living– one that not only traverses the rivers of our cities, but cleans their water in the process. The Physalia Amphibious Floating Garden uses a bio-filtration system to clean our rivers much like a typical aquarium filter, but in this case the filter itself is the garden on its surface. The Physalia is covered in four gardens, exterior and interior, that provide foliage and awareness to its visitors, while taking in water from the river below and filtering it before it returns. Sure, we may never see on of these beyond the rendering stage, but we appreciate the vision of Vincent Callebaut. [vincent callebaut architects via freshome]
From Vincent Callebaut Architects, this impressive project is meant to navigate through the rivers in Europe in order to clean water and make it drinkable. Its name comes from “Physalia physalis”, meaning “water bubble”. It is a project whose idea came from a major global issue which is the fact that one billion people nowadays don’t have access to drinking water. The giant bubble will actually be a floating garden, completely independent in terms of energy. It is said that the prototype will even make more energy than that consumed. Solar cells and a double pneumatic membrane will form the roof of the construction and similar technologies will be used in order to reach its energy goal. Inside there will be four amazing gardens called “Water”, “Earth”, “Fire” and “Air”. The giant Eco gadget, once built, will be present on the waters of Seine, Thames, Volga, Danube, Escaut. We do not know when this incredible looking structure will be let lose, however we are looking forward to it. -via
http://www.thecoolist.com/physalia-amphibious-floating-garden/
