The Future of Floating Structures

Floating structures can be created to form the basis of any number of buildings - it's not just houseboats!.

Very Large Floating Structures (VLFs) can be created for structures such as floating bridges, piers, docks, floating airports, floating storage facilities, wind and solar power plants.

There has even been suggestion that Very Large Floating Structures could be used to create oceanic habitation in the form of floating cities and floating towns.

There are a number of categories of floating structures: the semi-submersible and pontoon. Pontoons are essentially a floating box, which are relatively inexpensive and easy to maintain. Semi-submersible structures are more capable of withstanding the conditions of open oceans and seas when waves can be relatively high.

Large pontoon floating structures are often referred to as mega-floats. The definition of a mega float is a pontoon that has one dimension which is longer than 60 metres. The largest offshore floating structure built to date is the floating runway constructed in Tokyo Bay.

In the future we could see floating structures making up entire floating cities.