Soak City continues and develops the investigations made at the Venice Biennale of 2004 when we devised a series of semi vegetated structures for East London. The scenario is now set to a London that is largely underwater as a result of global warming. Our design response is first made by the building of solid, dense ‘blockhouses’ that can situate a new city.

Followed by a series of hybrid stacks that can contain versions of our ‘Venice’ typologies that deliberately cross-pollinate between the categories of apartment/workshop/refuge/clinic/studio/random occupancy space and can drift in and out- and sometimes drift across the soggy land of piles.

There are the gurgling remnants of the earlier London and a stageby-stage progression of the stacks and connecting bridges. The progressive disappearance of dry land causes a major problem: the land needed for agriculture is lacking: hydroponics garden are multiplying and we even see the emerging of artificial floating island of earth, specially designed for farming. Moreover, a number of devices are invented, such as flying artificial clouds that collect water, and distribute it to the surrounding buildings.