AQUAVILLE PROJECT (Burt, 1969)

The Aquaville – An experimental undersea habitat of a research community, represented Israel in the category of Architecture & Urban design, in the 6-th-Bienale of Paris, 1969.
Shaped like a gigantic sponge structure, resting on the sea floor (~ – 80m) and rising above the sea level, the Aquaville was conceived as a continuous hyperbolical reinforced concrete shell structure, relating to an ‘infinite cubic poly-hyparic surface’ (subdividing space between two complementary cubic space networks), with one of the spaces accommodating the living-working environment.
The Periodic Sponge Surface geometry was chosen for its estimated hydrodynamic and structural performance characteristics as a shell structure, due to the nature and degree of its curvature and spatial bonding and its internal continuous space and the modular nature of the configuration.