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A floating concrete structure with a shopping mall and a parkhouse inside. Was built in Spain and towed to Monaco to create a dock for cruiseships.

Size: Loa 352m / Height 30m / Beam 30m /

175.000 tons

Draft: 12m

Cost :  150 millon Euro

Cost per cubic meter construction:  320 Euro

Technology: concrete honeycomb structure.

Monaco breakwater video:

http://concretesubmarine.activeboard.com/t45832478/monaco-breakwater-video/

 . .

It can attend to 4 cruiseships at a time - two on the outer pier, two on the inner pier. A parking lot, and a shopping mall are located inside the hollow structure. It has not only shown that it can operate as pier connected to land, but it also has shown that it can float and survive in the high seas, when it was towed from the building site in Spain to its final location in Monaco.

For seasteading purpose 2 floating docks of that size in a triangular configuration would create a floating island with a calm water harbor compareable to the Khalifa port development.

The potential use of such structures is pointet  out in the ramform base thread in the floating concrete platform section of this portal.

A video of the making of the Monaco Breakwater is available here

As it is obvious from the picture above the building site is a "standard concrete building site" where concrete works of the same nature (and cost) as in other civil engineering projects (tunnels, dams, bridges, skyscrappers) are performed.

This leads to the conclusion that as long as the structure is as big as a building you can build it with standard civil engineering building techniques, that cranc out living space cubic meters at the same price as concrete building in land based construction sites.

So as a general rule of the thumb living space cubc meters floating on the ocean should not come to higher prices than living space cubic meters built on land.

On contrary a "concrete box" like the Monaco Breakwater does not need a expensive building lot on a city waterfront space and moving heavy items on the water is much easier than doing it on land - these are two factors that should render living space cubic meters on the water even more economic than living space cubic meters on land.

The key point is that you need to go away from "naval steel building techniques" and come to "civil engineering concrete building techniques" to bring the living space cost of sea based housing to the same level as land based housing is offering it.

Constructions like the Monaco Breakwater, The Rion Antirion Bridge Pylons, Nkossa, make it pretty obvious that you can apply off the shelve concrete construction in the high seas  -  performing the same giant box shapes, cylinder shapes, that concrete engineering is used to build on land in floating status at sea.

So the interesting question left is - how small could you go ? Could you build something like a floating family house in concrete ?

To find out more about small floating concrete structures check here:

http://concretesubmarine.activeboard.com/t46019347/small-honeycomb-floating-concrete-structures-in-cartagena/

The answer is, that you can build floating honeycomb and shell structures with wall thickness (of the shell and the cells) of not more than 5cm in tropical marine ambient that have a maintenance free service life of 200 years.

This service life allows to think about "permanent marine construction with real estate quality". 

Reading List:

Basic Concrete Engineering for Builders with CDROM / Design of Concrete Structures / Strength Design for Reinforced - Concrete Hydraulic Structures Engineering Manual on CD / Design of Offshore Concrete Structures / Construction of Marine and Offshore Structures, Second Edition (Civil Engineering - Advisors) / The Dock Manual: Designing/Building/Maintaining / Theory and Design of Concrete Shells / Thin Shell Concrete Structures / design procedures of reinforced concrete shell structures (JGJT 22-98) / Understanding Structures / Concrete Planet: The Strange and Fascinating Story of the World's Most Common Man-made Material / Concrete Construction Manual (Construction Manuals (englisch)) / Large Wind Turbines: Design and Economics / Dynamics of Offshore Structures / Offshore Technology in Civil Engineering / Design of Offshore Concrete Structures / Concrete in the Marine Environment (Modern Concrete Technology)

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Construction of a typical off the shelve floating wharf