For thousands of years cities have been the manifestation of humankind’s artistry, imagination, and instinct to succeed. They embody our strong social desires and longing to create grand masterpieces. London, Constantinople, Paris, New York, Ancient Rome, and Tokyo have been just a few of the dazzling trophies mankind has built. But there have been many cases in which someone’s vision for a better, more efficient, or more fantastic city collapsed into a heap of broken dreams.
Triton City
Buckminster Fuller was a brilliant visionary, scientist, environmentalist, and philosopher who, in the 1960s, developed a bold design. It was dubbed Triton City and was intended to be a floating utopia for up to 5,000 residents. His giant, floating city was designed to encourage people to share resources and conserve energy.
Fuller was initially commissioned by a wealthy Japanese patron to design a floating city for Tokyo Bay. He died in 1966, but astoundingly enough, the United States Department of Urban Development commissioned Fuller for further design and analysis. His designs called for the city to: be resistant to tsunamis, provide the most possible outside living, desalinate the very water that it would float in for consumption, give privacy to each residence, and incorporate a tetrahedronal shape which provides the most surface area with the least amount of volume. Everything from education to
