A Study on Architectural Planning of Submerged Floating Underwater Habitat Complex as a Sustainable Living Space

Abstract

This underwater architectural planning is a conceptual and multidisciplinary approach to display various technological, industrial and legislative environments that are most relevant for making a submerged living space come true, and rearrange them in consideration and initial analyses on planning submerged oceanic spatial utilization over the continental shelf of Korean peninsula for permanent human occupancy. And as the result of search for most realistic and sustainable oceanic facility on the continental shelf of Korea Strait (Namhae), a specific architectural plan of submerged floating habitat modules within a P2G hydrogen power plant (SBHPP) at the nominee site of South Brother point, near South Brother Island, Busan across the range of installation water depth between 37 and 86 meters is presented. While the demand on coastal living spaces have been high ever since, urban waterfronts have evolved as one of the most-highly populated or utilized areas among world cities. Such expansion of oceanic spatial utilization includes human residences of fixed and floating types and both permanent on-the-water-surface and temporary under-the-water-surface living space. The main objective of the current planning however, is of a permanent and submerged-floating habitat complex of 1000 cubic meters and a semi-mobile habitat module of 500 cubic meters, which connects the complex and the water surface, inside the perimeter of 100MW hydrogen power plant equipped with six units of submerged floating gas storages and electrolyser compartments, and two units of electrical substations connected to land electric grids. For the planning of SBHPP, design requirements of both the autonomy and the sustainability of the system are taken into consideration to develop an autonomous and permanently stationary oceanic facility that acknowledges climate neutrality. The full relevance of the SBHPP’s systemic locality and lifecycle-assessed self-sustainability has integrated into the planning by being connected to the land electric power grids and the logistic routes for resources from Busan and Geoje. As a very early research attempt on planning a submerged habitat for permanent occupancy, the limits of current research are apparent without design and fabrication standards, regulatory guidelines, or objective means for evaluating the performance developed models. To bring about a future of reliable underwater architecture for permanent human occupancy, the study concludes that the modeled living space system of SBHPP should be required to be aware of climate neutrality in both architecture and utilization methodology.