The Seasteading Institute, committed to the ongoing development of ocean communities, has just announced the winners of their first annual design content. Could people really end up living in these hypothetical off-shore communities?
The design contest had five categories: Overall, Best Picture, Aesthetics, Personality, and Community Choice. (The winners from each category are shown in this post in that particular order, so the first design up top is the Overall winner, the one to the right is Best Picture, and so on.) With prizes ranging from $250 to $1000, the design contest attracted both amateur and professional architects from around the world, as the winners hailed from such far-flung locales as Estonia, Hungary, Brazil, and Minnesota.
Seasteading, a term derived from combining “sea” and “homesteading”, is a general term given to the notion of either converting existing structures, such as old boats or disused oil rigs, or custom-building new ones to allow people to live in the middle of the ocean. Generally, this also includes the interrelated goal of establishing a sovereign state on the open seas, away from any existing governmental structures on dry land. Patri Friedman and Wayne Gramlich – whose 1998 article “Seasteading – Homesteading on the High Seas” is generally given credit for popularizing the term – founded the Seasteading Institute in 2008 in order to better organize the seasteading effort.
A lot more pictures can be found at – http://io9.com/5303443/seasteading-is-the-aquatic-answer-to-the-housing-crisis
