I was reading about the “Swimming Cities” project, DIY rafts, two of which are in the photo below. They’re taking these on a tour around the northen end of the Adriatic Sea as an art project. Not only is it a fun piece of performance art, but it’s inspiring thinking about people taking junk and turning it into floating living spaces that they can travel the world in.
It got me thinking a bit about similar projects, like the various rafts built by Floating Neutrinos. The one below is “Son of Town Hall”, one of many that they’ve built or inspired, which they credit as the first scrap raft to cross the North Atlantic, an adventure that seems remarkably brave to undertake.
Another group that have been quite ambitious in their journey is the DIY raft below which looks a lot like a catamaran sailboat (but has a raft-type pontoons rather than a normal sailboat hull) called, appropriately, “Junk“. They’re sailing it across the Pacific right now. Check out their blog for many disturbing comments on plastic garbage they’ve pulled out of the ocean.
Finally, I think I must also mention the largely stationary “Spiral Island” project, which is a raft that serves as more of a DIY floating island off the coast of Mexico. Richi’s site is actually a Ning community not just promoting his own islands, but encouraging others to do the same.
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7 Comments
Makes me wonder if they’ll make a pass by the Great Pacific Garbage Patch to pick up a few additions to the boat.
Reminds me of a book, the true story of a group of guys who made a raft and sailed the Pacific in the 40′s. Kon-Tiki is the name of the book, and was the name of the amazing raft.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kon-Tiki
Yeah, Kon-Tiki would have been a good boat to include in some ways, thanks for thinking of that link.
I love that the cabin of Junk is a Cessna, although it’s got to be a bit tight to have friends over in. ;)
Sounds like something from Snowcrash.
i went crazy when i heard of the Swimming Cities project. anytime you want to build one, i’m in. (we can sail to england and see Roo!)
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