Statement: The number of places where people’s life and property are seriously threatened by tsunamis and sea-level rise is increasing dramatically. Tsunami happens frequently in the sea area around Japan and Indonesia, and in the northeast Mediterranean,etc. As a tsunami hits the land, huge amounts of sea water rush to the coast, resulting in a temporary sharp rise of the sea level. The sea-level rise refers to the phenomenon that the sea level goes up due to global warming, iceberg melting, and expansion of the up layer of sea water. To date, the Tuvalu and the Maldives Islands have been endangered more greatly than other places.
Third Award| RTFA 2014 Awards
Category: Residential Concept
Participant Name: Liu Mengxi
Country: China
At the foot of a coastal mountain where tsunamis and sea-level rise are big threats, people there survive such disasters by establishing Flexible Floating Web System. In this system, the hexagonal prism of dwelling units pulley each other by three steel cables at an angle of 120 degree, and ultimately a whole network forms which connects the surrounding six cores of vertical transportation .Thus, the Floating Web can ensure each unit ample sunshine and good view, and it can involve into a certain scale by the connection of every two mesh sub-systems via sharing one core.
In the uppermost and lowermost part between the cores exist walkway structures connecting them, which can not only make the cores more stable, but also serve as lifesaving channels through which people living in the low webs can get to the upper webs when a catastrophe happens. The bottom parts of the cores are connected by bridges so that people can get to every unit.
When a disaster doesn’t come, people can get to the units by cores and bridges between them, everything goes as usual.When a tsunami or a sharp rise of the sea-level occurs, the dwelling units will float like lifesaving boats, and the original transportation bridges split up, which makes the steel cables extend intensively, resulting in the floating of the units below. When all the units arrange on the water surface in order, the steel board in the upper part of the units opens and rebuilds the connecting web among the units on the same plane.
The mutual assistant model formed in such a way renders people through the patio of the unit to conduct activities on the upper plane. As the Floating Web may be submerged by water, to ensure the temporary use in an emergency, every unit can be a single life boat floating by itself while the steel cables between two units are disconnected. After the disaster, the units, the traffic bridges and the steel cables can be recuperated and rearranged to recover the original state as the water drops. This feature of Floating Web System realizes the purpose of a sustainable development by recycling.
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