UA5_Final Floating Peace City - Aleksandra Kadziolka, Natalia Wolarek, Emily Jackson, Nerea Lopez Guzman, Sofia Garza

‘Floating Peace City’

Design Concept 

Our concept draws inspiration from the Dubai desert landscape, mainly the idea of using and manipulating the desert’s heat to create a habitable space for people to live in despite extreme temperatures. 

The action of heat rising in the desert lead to the idea of elevation, and the concept of a ‘hovering city’ was born. 

Elevated City

An elevated city has the advantage of being able to detach itself from society and the dangers that come with the greed for social hierarchy and conflict. 

The destruction and devastation caused by conflict and wars is huge. Thousands loose their lives and thousands more are forced to migrate, becoming displaced, as a result of war conflicts involving the United Arab Emirates and surrounding nations. 

The ‘Floating peace city’ is envisioned as a vertical mixed-use development to house the refugees that have been forced to flee their homes as a result of war. 

Our proposal provides a city free from the unjust social hierarchy and armed conflicts that these refugees may encounter on the ground. 

Structural Design 

The balloon stays elevated using a capped helium balloon at its zenith and solar powered propellers along a central axis. 

It is constructed with a lightweight steel frame with multiple platforms integrated along two transportation voids to create two separate Eastern and Western sectors, which extrude down from the central balloon. The platforms are bound by steel cables, which reinforce the structure in a lightweight design and provide stability to the floating form. The transportation voids are equipped with lightweight electric pulley systems that elevate and lower two ‘lifts’ which hold passengers and allow vertical transportation.

Water collection

The water source is collected from the droplets of water which condensate on the hydrophilic balloon material at night from the intense desert fog. The balloon’s conical shape is not only efficient for elevating the structure, it also maximises water collection at night due to the physics phenomenon called Laplace pressure gradient; where gathers at the tip of the
balloon, then flows down the slope to the base, where a gutter system collects the water and transports it throughout the structure. 

Internal Program 

There are 2 main transport networks within the structure which form ‘vertical streets’ to transport people within the structure, and to and from the city itself.

We designed the internal programme of the city according to the temperature map of the structure. 

In this way, the larger half of the structure has multiple levels which operate as the main living area of the inhabitants. The base is  for sleeping as it is the coolest area in the structure, and the central levels are skill development sectors with areas for school education, higher education and working spaces in a communal environment. The higher floors are spaces for community recreation to encourage the refugees to feel safe and comfortable.

The smaller half is programmed as a commercial sector with different ‘shops’ on each level for the refugees to get items such as food, drinks, clothes and recreational items. This sector will work as a ‘vertical shopping system’ where people can travel up and down the different shop levels through the central transportation network.

The top sector of the structure will house an Urban hot house that can provide food for the greater community. This sector of the structure is the hottest due to the nature of the balloon structure, so only food produce such as tomatoes, beans, greens, strawberries ect. can be grown there. 

With all needs met in the structure, the ‘Floating peace city’ will represent mankind’s far-sightedness in creating a new home for refugees. 

@ua5_radicalcities Aleksandra Kadziolka

Natalia Wolarek

Emily Jackson

Sofia Garza

Nerea Lopez Guzman