Featured White Papers
- Oct. 14th: Simplified IT with Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) (ZDNet)
- PCI DSS therapy for the smaller retailer (McAfee)
- The rise of Web commuting (Citrix Online)
Content provided in partnership with
Walking on water
Current Events, May 5, 2008
[2] DUBAI, United Arab Emirates -- Floods and rising sea levels are no problem for Paul van de Camp. The Dutch architect designs buildings that float! Floating homes, floating office towers, even floating prisons--he has ideas for all of them. A few of his designs, like the house below, have been built in the Netherlands. Now he's designing an entire community to float on the Persian Gulf. Oil-rich Dubai, in the Middle East, has a reputation for extreme designs. It has an indoor ski slope, dozens of artificial islands that form a giant palm tree in the gulf, and what soon will be the world's tallest building.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Van de Camp's chain of floating islands in the Persian Gulf will form Arabic letters that spell out lines of poetry [above]. Each island will be anchored to keep it in place, and pipes will bring in water and carry away waste. Van de Camp and his partner, Keon Olthuis, even plan a floating beach. "A really wide beach with palm trees on top of it," Olthuis tells National Public Radio. "But made of foam and concrete, with layers of white sand on top of it. You walk into the water and it feels exactly like a normal beach, but this whole island will go up and down with the fluctuation of the water." See more pictures at tinyurl.com/4lluwk.
COPYRIGHT 2008 Weekly Reader Corp.
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning
