Be it the endless oceans of Waterworld, the desolate terrain of the Mad Max films or the neverending winter of Snowpiercer, Hollywood directors’ dystopian visions often seem bleak and involve sparse dialogue and ragged clothing.
Luckily, Belgian architect Vincent Callebaut has a future vision. And it’s glorious.
Callebaut’s concept calls for an underwater eco-village complete with labs, offices, hotels, athletic fields and farms as well as 250-floor “oceanscrapers” that descend to depths of up to 3,280 feet.
Callebaut, who won the International Architecture Award in 2014 for his Tao-Zhu Garden project and was nominated for a 2014 German Design Award for the Asian Cairns project, just shared the details of his vision for the underwater village in a fictional letter penned by a 15-year old Aequorea resident in 2050.
According to the translated letter, much of the village would be constructed from a composite material made from algae and garbage pulled from the “infamous soup of plastics” that formed in the oceans.
Three-dimensional printers would produce the repurposed material, a bioluminescent species of jellyfish species would provide light and the village’s 20,000 or so inhabitants would survive on food produced in gardens and orchards and drink desalinated water.
Granted, Callebaut’s design could just be pie in the sky (or, uh, ocean), but damn if it isn’t easy on the eyes.
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