🏙️ Future Cities: Floating or Sinking? 🌊

Dive-in Brief — why this week matters 🤿

🌊 Cities that float — UN-backed Oceanix Busan pitches climate resilience; Monaco’s Mareterra sells prestige at sea level. Same water, different story.

🤖 Bridges that whisper — Adventum’s clip-on sensors flag overloads and pinpoint concrete strength, keeping headlines calm and schedules moving.

♻️ Stone 2.0 — Cathedrals knew it first: Quarry blocks lock in -70 % CO₂ versus concrete. Net-zero starts at the rock face.

Ready? Let’s dive in.

 🌊 Floating Cities Are Coming. Who Are They For?

The race for space has reached the water. As cities become denser and coastlines come under threat, urban expansion is encroaching on the sea. It is not theory, it’s already happening.

Two headline projects lead the charge:

Oceanix Busan, the world’s first UN-backed floating city, aims to house 12,000 people on modular platforms powered by renewables. Self-sustaining, storm-resilient, and fully off-grid, it’s a bold bet on climate adaptation. Designed by BIG.

Mareterra Monaco, by contrast, is a high-profile land reclamation project. Six hectares of luxury residences, parks, and a marina have been added to one of the wealthiest strips of land on Earth. It’s pristine, elegant, and anything but accessible. Designed by Renzo Piano

Both challenge our idea of what building on water can look like. But they also expose the fine line between innovation and illusion.

Why it’s bold: 

• The Sea as the Next City:  Oceanix isn’t just about floating homes. It’s an attempt to rethink urbanism with modular systems, renewable loops, and flood resistance. Less Blade Runner, more Blue Planet.

• Prestige Rebranded as Progress:  Mareterra turns the Mediterranean into a design statement. Every curve, tree, and fountain is perfectly calculated. But when sustainability is reserved for billionaires, the message gets murky.

• Ecology Versus Ambition: These aren’t empty plots. They’re marine ecosystems. Every platform, anchor, and seawall has consequences. Busan’s model tries to tread lightly. Monaco’s digs deep, quite literally.

🎟️ Join us at CREtech London!

🤖 Sensor revolution: Adventum Tech

When the stakes on a building site are bigger than the cranes look, rework alone drains 9 – 20% of a project budget worldwide and stretches schedules by weeks. Meanwhile, more than 42 000 U.S. bridges are classed “poor” and need urgent repair; fixing or replacing them is a $69 billion-plus bill. Most of those costs pile up because tiny cracks, hidden stresses, or slow-curing concrete go unnoticed until it’s too late.

That’s why real-time job-site data matters: Sensors spot trouble while it’s still cheap to fix and flag when materials are genuinely ready, not just “safe enough.” We saw that future in action last week when Adventum’s Riga crew rolled into Oslo with a carry-on case of match-box devices that clip onto steel, concrete, or formwork and start talking within minutes.

• Bridges stay open and safe – live alerts on load, tilt, and vibration catch fatigue early, trimming maintenance bills by up to 25 % and cutting collapse risk.

• Towers rise faster – concrete-maturity readings pinpoint the exact moment each floor hits design strength; crews can strip formwork roughly a day sooner per pour, handing back almost three weeks on a 20-store schedule.

• Budgets breathe easier – every fault caught before the mix hardens turns a slice of that 9 – 20 % rework leak into margin.

♻️ Stone Making A Sustainable Comeback?

The idea of stone as a mainstream structural material is gaining momentum, and for good reason: it offers a remarkably low-carbon alternative to conventional construction materials like concrete and steel. A great recent example is Amin Taha’s 15 Clerkenwell Close in London. Stone’s natural properties and lifecycle emissions position it as a key player in the drive for sustainable, climate-friendly buildings.

What’s the breakthrough?

• Carbon Winner: Stone’s embodied carbon footprint is impressively low, often over 70% less CO2 per square meter than steel or concrete.

• Local Sourcing and Green Processing: The environmental benefits multiply when locally quarried. Studies show that British stone has a significantly lower carbon footprint than imported stone from countries like China, where transport and processing emissions balloon the total footprint.

• Durability and Circularity: Stone’s longevity means buildings last longer and require less frequent replacement or repair, reducing lifetime carbon emissions. Stone can be reclaimed and reused (spolia), extending its lifecycle and embodying circular economy principles.

Our Takeaway:
The “half a house” model shows that sustainability isn’t just about what you build, it’s about how you empower people to shape their own spaces. By building less, we can create homes that are more affordable, flexible, and truly fit for the future. It’s a blueprint for smarter, more resilient living.