Freedom Ship

Freedom Ship was a floating city project initially proposed in the late 1990s.[1] It was so named because of the "free" international lifestyle facilitated by a mobile ocean colony, though the project would not be a conventional ship, but rather a series of linked barges.

Freedom Ship
General information
TypeMixed use (casino, education, hotel, office and residential)
Height
Roof85 m (279 ft)
Technical details
Size1.8 km (5,906 ft) long, 250 m (820 ft) wide
Floor count25
Design and construction
ArchitectFreedom Cruise Line International
Other information
Number of rooms50,000 living units, 3,000 commercial units, 2,400 time-share units and 10,000 hotel units)
Website
http://www.freedomship.com

The Freedom Ship project envisioned a 1,800 metres (5,900 ft)-long integrated city[2] with condominium housing for 80,000 people,[2] a hospital, school system, hotel, casino, commercial and office occupancies, duty-free shopping and other facilities, large enough to require rapid transit. The complex would have circumnavigated the globe continuously, stopping regularly at ports of call.[3]

Construction

Freedom Ship International initially estimated the net cost for construction to be US$6 billion in 1999. However, by 2002, estimates had risen to US$11 billion.[3] A July 2008 press release explained the difficulty of obtaining reliable financial backing. In November 2013, the company announced that the project, now with an estimated price of US$10 billion, was being resurrected, though that construction had not yet begun. In 2016, the project affiliated with Kanethara Marine in India.[4]

A side view of the proposed Freedom Ship. The largest ship built in the world, the Seawise Giant, was approximately one-fourth of this length.

Similar projects

The basic idea had been published by Jules Verne in his novel Propeller Island. No technical details were given, but the book includes the idea of building a gigantic raft. The main aim of the project was saving taxes, as the Island would move around the world on an annual basis.

Other projects, such as the ResidenSea, have similarly attempted to create mobile communities, though they have conservatively limited themselves to the constraints of conventional shipbuilding. In regards to the economic flexibility and "freedom" created by such mobile settlements, these projects could be considered a realization of the avant-garde Walking City[5] concept from 1964, by British architect Ron Herron of the group Archigram. The Freedom Ship also served as the inspiration for (and is closely resembled by) the Libertania, a mobile ship depicted in Grant Morrison's comic book The Filth. In the 1950s, Buckminster Fuller also proposed "floating cities" approximately a mile wide that could accommodate up to 50,000 permanent inhabitants. Mike Wallace interviewed Buckminster Fuller on TV regarding this "floating cities" concept, which Fuller explained would free up land needed for agriculture and industrial uses.

See also

References
  1. Robert Trigaux, "Water World", sfgate.com, from St. Petersburg Times, 5 July 1999.
  2. Floating Cities at How Stuff Works; a discussion of floating cities using Freedom Ship as its example
  3. "Floating City". NPR Weekend Edition. 13 April 2002.
  4. http://www.freedomcruiseline.com/news.php
  5. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 14 December 2013. Retrieved 5 August 2013.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)

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