My floating island community concept

I keep stumbling across ideas for floating homes like this project in Germany. These are not homes, which are suitable for living with water, they are just floating boxes.

Having lived on a boat for years I know something about what a sustainable lifestyle on the water looks like. A floating home is an island. It must be self-contained and self-sufficient, which means it must be able to supply it's own power and water and deal with waste as much as possible. It also must be able to move on its own when needed and so it must be boat-shaped and not built like a brick. In other words, it has to be a boat, not a box.

I like the idea of building a boat from a kit, one that would fit into a container. The dimensions would be 12 meters long with a twin hull providing a base, which would be approx 5 meters wide, offering at least 56 square meters of living space on one deck. A green roof as well as the superstructure would be used for rainwater harvesting and for gaining both thermal and PV energy as well as providing a terrace.

The design would be simple, modular and open to improvements thanks to the open source hardware concept. Materials would be a major consideration with reduce, reuse and recyle as the guiding principles. I took a great deal o inspiration from the BedZED project in England and am talking with them about this project.

Cost would be kept to a minimum with the basic modular design for 56 m2 being a maximum of 1,000 euros per square meter as a self-build unit delivered in a container. This would mean a living space costing just over 50,000 euros, much cheaper and far more flexible than any building could be.

The great advantage of such a design would be to enable people to set up home close to where they work. As no one is far from a waterway, this would be quite feasible. Even in places thought unlikely for such settlements such as the Industrial Ruhr valley in Germany, it is estimated that there is huge capacity in existing docks, canals and harbours.

A boat alone is not interesting though. My concept involves creating whole floating communities, which are self-sufficient and resilient. I am looking for partners and funding and have chosen Maastricht as an ideal project location as it is on the River Maas, is close to the RWTH Aachen and the University of Maastricht as well as offering potential moorings for such a pilot concept.

Finally a note about mobility on the water. Electric motors will soon come to dominate inland waterway transport. I see many advantages in establishing a network of battery switch stations along waterways, much like the system the is being tested by Better Place in Israel right now for electric cars.