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Callebaut is no writer. “New biotechnological prototype of ecologic resilience dedicated to the nomadism and the urban ecology in the sea,” is how he describes the project — but he’s certainly a visionary. Lilypad, he says, “travels on the water line of the oceans, from the equator to the poles following the marine streams warm ascending of the Gulf Stream or cold descending of the Labrador.” It’s a mobile home of the aquatic variety.

 

The structure looks like a spaceship/houseboat, a saucer bobbing on the water with gardens blooming above it, but it’s really a floating city. The Lilypad, Callebaut says, can hold 50,000 people. It’s kind of like an atoll, with the flora and fauna inhabiting a “central lagoon of soft water.”

 

Yes, the comparisons to Noah are inevitable, and we may be reenacting that Biblical tale more than we know. Essentially, God was displeased with Man, who ate from the tree of knowledge, killed siblings, and generally wreaked havoc on his beautiful creation, the earth. So God decided to wipe it all out and start again, and he chose Noah to rescue the best specimens to populate the new world.

 

Which makes me wonder who and what would be allowed onto the Lilypad, a kind of ocean-centric biosphere? All those animals with no predators? Lime disease-toting deer on a sea-bound rig? And, hey, what happens when a tropical storm hits?

 

Callebaut is still working out the details. In the meantime, floating homes — yes, what used to be called houseboats —a re popular as ever, and other flood-prone countries are trying their own hands at water-top homes. Okay, they’re not cities, but in case of heavy rain, they’ll do.

 

Story by Lisa Selin Davis. This article originally appeared in Plenty in July 2008. Copyright Environ Press 2008