For the last fifteen years, Bay Area resident David Grassi has dreamed of one-day creating his own floating utopia.
Seascape One, Future Living Designed to Serve, Sail, Sustain
By Bill Picture
Published: August, 2006
For the last fifteen years, Bay Area resident David Grassi has dreamed of one-day creating his own floating utopia. Inspired by the all-in-one experience afforded by today’s cruise ship lines, Grassi’s Seascape One project is a floating community with thousands of luxurious rooms, miles of shopping arcades, urban piazzas, world-class cultural venues, recreational facilities and hundreds of acres of pristine green space, including parks, lakes and its own white-sand beaches.
Unlike a cruise ship, Seascape One will serve as both a destination and its own port of call. Seascape One will never dock, tooling around the Mediterranean Sea 365 days out of the year under the power of its own massive sail and cruising past the many cultural hotspots that dot this historic part of the world. At a total height of 3,000 feet, Seascape One will be the tallest habitable structure in the world, dwarfing even the Taipei 101 tower in Taiwan.
Another thing that sets Seascape One apart from its nearest cousin, the cruise ship, is that, while vacationers will be welcome aboard for shorter-term stays, this unique, car-free and totally green floating environment will serve as a year-round home for many of its passengers.
Only the very wealthy will be able to afford [to live on Seascape One] initially, says Grassi, a San Francisco-based contractor by trade. But I think that, one day, everyone will want to live like this. This is the direction that I see the world going in.
Seascape One will afford its residents and guests a multitude of amenities, from convention facilities and museums, to a world-class performing arts center and year-round indoor ski slopes.
Its own fleet of seaplanes and hydrofoils will allow Seascape One’s passengers to enjoy daytrips to nearby land destinations for business or pleasure.
But Grassi insists that the project’s most unique aspect is the unique living environment’s ability to adapt to suit the needs of each individual guest.
For instance, condominiums and hotel rooms will be able to be reconfigured using moveable pods. If a guest feels like working out, he or she will be able to call down to the front desk and order a fitness pod, which would then be attached, via an interior corridor, to his or her suite for as long as requested.
Living spaces will be totally interactive as well, with beds, tables and seating that will fold out from the walls, floor and ceiling at the touch of a button. Residents and guests will even be able to program room colors.
Seascape One will also be a self-sustainable habitat. Wind turbines, hydro turbines and millions of square feet of solar cells will provide electrical energy for guests and businesses, onboard desalination stations will provide fresh water, and recycled wastewater will be used to irrigate landscaped areas and hydroponic crops for food production. Grassi expects that the fully sustainable environment he envisions will serve as a model for future generations of developers.
Over the course of the last three years, Grassi has collaborated with a team of architects, designers and animators to flesh out his idea. Last year, with a proposal and pages of artist renderings to show to potential investors, Grassi began the arduous process of trying to raise money to pay for the project’s final design. The design process, he estimates, will cost between $3 million and $5 million, and take two or three years to complete.
Construction will then take another three to four years to complete, according to Grassi, and will cost several billion dollars. He proposes that a host country, probably Third World, provide seaside land on which to build a dry dock, where the floating island would be constructed. The dry dock could then be used to build more of these structures.
While Seascape One would be designed largely by American engineers, local skilled laborers would be employed for the construction phase of the project. Not only will this minimize construction costs for Seascape One’s creators, it will also provide huge economic benefits for the host country.
The word ‘outsourcing’ scares a lot of people, but the fact is, you can’t stop it, Grassi argues. And we would only be outsourcing menial tasks for the most part.
The final price tag, he estimates, will be in the ballpark of $27 billion.
We haven’t had any takers yet [in the United States], Grassi jokes. It’s funny, because these ideas seemed like common sense to all of us. But I’m starting to think that this project just seems too futuristic to the Donald Trump’s of the world.
Grassi is now seeking out investors in Asia, particularly China and India, whom he believes are more forward-thinking. Therefore, he suspects they will be more willing to take such a substantial financial leap of faith.
It’s a clean, sane, intelligent, green environment, designed totally for people, Grassi adds. I think that’s what architecture should be, for people. And someday it will be. So why not start that right now?
For more information about Seascape One, visit www.seascape1.com.
Images by permission, courtesy of David Grassi & Associates
