Floating Web submitted by students from School of Architecture and Arts stood out among several hundreds of entries and won the third prize in the recently concluded “Re-thinking the Future Awards (RTF Awards)”.
As an international academic institution of architecture, RTF aims to build architectures that meets the present needs and fits in the demands of a more humanized and harmonious future. This is the third RTF Awards that has been held, rendering the most comprehensive award lists in the world, with 20 categories including commerce and accommodation.
Floating Web sheds light on oceanic disasters such as tsunami and rising sea levels that pose daunting challenges to the lives and properties of human beings and aims to put forward a creative solution by establishing a floating web. The floating web is a honeycomb-like web system in inverted-cone shape, ensuring the sunlight and vision of every household and providing emergent solution in case of rising sea levels. When the sea level rises, the units in the lower floors would float up successively forming a horizontal unit complex linked by steel plates on the top of the units, thus enabling the inhabitants to work on the roof. In case of a catastrophic tsunami when the water submerges the floating web, the horizontal unit complex will disintegrate into separate units to float on the sea. After the sea level lowers down to its normal level, the units, bridges and other parts like cables would be reassembled, accommodating the need for cyclic usage and sustainable development.