Floating Rooms

FLOATING ROOMS Without streets and vehicles, the uproar of wheels, the brutality of horses, and with its little winding ways where people crowd together, where voices sound as in the corridors of a house, where the human step circulates as if it skirted the angles of furniture and shoes never wear out, the place has the character of an immense collective apartment, in which Piazza San Marco is the most ornamented corner and palaces and churches, for the rest, play the part of great divans of repose, tables of entertainment, expanses of decoration.

From “THE ASPERN PAPERS” By Henry James, Macmillan and Co., 1888. Cap. IX

Venice is like an interior, an apartment consisting of corridors and living rooms: you always walk indoors, you’re never really out, outside is not even along the streets.

But this apartment lacks some rooms to be abreast of the times and to allow people to come back to life.

The “floating rooms” are floating islands that include over them new urban areas that project Venice into the future.

The “floating rooms” move across the lagoon, creating new parts of the city, new meeting places to live in, the city grows, the city becomes metropolis.

The islands can join together in mega-islands. They follow precise routes and touch the existing city in various landingplaces.

They are driven by electric motors and energy is obtained from sun and wind.

We want Venice repopulated by young people and so there will be islands for fun, relaxation, for outdoor games for children, islands with new shopping centers and islands where to till the soil.

Other islands will be used to provide power to the whole city by photovoltaic panels and wind turbines.

Here is a new Venice, the lagoon-city, a new part of town with a very low environmental impact that joins light to the beautiful historic untouchable city.