Floating pods to provide relief in urban slums

Although every nation is likely to be affected by a warming planet, it’s the world’s poor that will suffer the most from climate change.

Particularly susceptible to rising sea levels are those who live in wet slums, or poor, densely populated areas of a city located near the water. To counter the challenges that those living in these areas face everyday, one architectural studio has come up with a solution: floating city pods.

Waterstudio, the world’s leader in floating architecture, has designed moveable floating urban structures to provide spaces for food, shelter and sanitation in city slums. Called City Apps, the buoyant pods are designed to satisfy specific urban needs and to fill gaps in the city’s infrastructure.

Since the Apps will be moveable, they can be transferred from city to city depending on need.

“City Apps are envisioned as products instead of projects which makes them reusable as they can be easily moved elsewhere once they are not needed,” the firm states on its website. “In this approach, City Apps are leased out to the local community.”

The undertaking recently won the 2012 Architecture & Sea Level Rise Award and the studio is planning to use the prize money to build its first set of Apps in Korail Wet Slum in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Images: Waterstudio

[via Wired]

This post was originally published on Smartplanet.com