The tessellated, pod-based toroidal structure with a habitable scale and a hexagonal interior grid , a novel concept that provides the backdrop for this story
Aboard the drifting toroidal Seashellter, 160 pioneers embarked on a year-long journey riding the graceful sweep of the Atlantic’s Canary Current. This modular ring-shaped habitat, assembled from plasticrete pods, was more than a vessel—it was a floating microcosm of sustainable living, a testament to human ingenuity and resilience.
As the structure gently slipped away from the western coast of Europe, the cool, nutrient-rich waters of the Canary Current cradled it southward along the northwest coast of Africa. The current, known for its steady flow and marine bounty, brought with it a rhythm of life that shaped the community’s days. The upwelling waters supported abundant fish populations, and the settlers developed a small aquaponics system integrated into the pods, harvesting fresh seafood and greens in harmony with the ocean’s natural cycles.
The Seashellter’s tessellated hexagonal pods, arranged in terraced layers around the torus, provided private living spaces, communal gardens, and research labs. The open center of the ring framed the vast Atlantic sky, a constant reminder of the vastness surrounding them. Solar panels embedded on the pod surfaces captured the abundant sunlight, while wind turbines harnessed the coastal breezes, powering life aboard without fossil fuels.
Throughout the voyage, the community embraced a protopian spirit—continuously improving their living systems, sharing knowledge, and adapting to the ocean’s moods. They held daily gatherings on the upper terraces, exchanging stories and ideas, while children learned about marine ecology through real-time observations of the rich ecosystems flourishing beneath their floating home.
As the Seashellter rounded the Cape Verde Peninsula, the current shifted westward, carrying the structure across the open ocean toward the Caribbean. The journey was not without challenges: occasional storms tested the dome’s resilience, but the plasticrete pods’ durability and modular design allowed quick repairs and reconfigurations.
After nearly twelve months, the Seashellter completed its circuit of the Atlantic current system, arriving near the Caribbean with a thriving, self-sufficient community aboard. Their voyage was a beacon of what humanity could achieve—living lightly on the planet, turning plastic waste into shelter, and harmonizing with the ocean’s ancient rhythms.
This floating torus was more than a home; it was a prototype of future oceanic habitats, a moving testament to circular economy principles and climate resilience, and a hopeful glimpse into a sustainable future carried by the currents of change.
As the Seashellter torus—a floating, modular ring of hexagonal pods—drifted from the coast of Europe, it entered the Canary Current, beginning its protopian Atlantic journey. The current swept it southward along the northwest African coast, then westward across the open ocean, eventually guiding it toward the Caribbean. But the real transformation began as the structure approached the eastern United States, where the Gulf Stream’s powerful embrace awaited.
The Expansion: Eastern USA and the Gulf Stream
As the Seashellter neared the Florida Straits, the Gulf Stream—one of the fastest and most voluminous currents on Earth—picked up the torus, accelerating it northward along the U.S. coastline. Here, the community of 160 pioneers saw new opportunities. Coastal cities, inspired by the success and resilience of the floating habitat, began to contribute additional pods. These new modules, fabricated from locally collected plastic waste and heated sand using the plasticrete process, were delivered by support vessels and seamlessly integrated into the growing ring.
The Process of Growth
• Docking and Integration:
Support boats ferried new pods from shore, where local teams had assembled them. The Seashellter’s modular design allowed for the rapid attachment of pods, expanding the torus outward and upward in terraced layers.
• Community Exchange:
Each port—Miami, Charleston, Norfolk, New York—became a celebration. Local residents, engineers, and artists visited the floating city, sharing knowledge and innovations. Some even joined the journey, while others sent messages and gifts embedded in the pods.
• Evolving Ecosystem:
As the structure expanded, new spaces emerged: additional gardens, classrooms, workshops, and even floating art galleries. The hexagonal tessellation grew more intricate, with each new pod contributing to the living mosaic.
Life Along the Gulf Stream
The Gulf Stream’s warmth and speed (averaging 6.4 km/h, with bursts up to 9 km/h) brought a dynamic energy to the community. The water teemed with marine life, and the Seashellter’s aquaponics and fishing systems flourished. Residents observed dolphins, turtles, and migratory birds, integrating their findings into citizen science projects.
The Symbolism of Growth
With every added pod, the Seashellter became a living symbol of circularity and cooperation. The journey up the eastern seaboard was not just a passage through space, but a story of collaborative expansion—each coastal community leaving its mark on the structure, and the structure, in turn, inspiring new visions for oceanic living.
Completing the Circuit
By the time the Seashellter reached the latitude of Newfoundland, the ring had grown both in size and spirit. The expanded torus, now home to new faces and ideas, veered east with the North Atlantic Current, ready to complete its loop and perhaps begin another—each revolution an opportunity for renewal, innovation, and connection across the Atlantic world.
As the sun rose over the Atlantic, the Seashellter torus—an enormous floating ring of hexagonal pods—drifted steadily within the embrace of the Canary Current. On board, 160 people from every corner of the Atlantic world lived, worked, and dreamed together, their home a living experiment in circular design and oceanic resilience. As the Seashellter approached the eastern United States, coastal communities rallied to contribute. Barges towed freshly built pods out to the floating ring, where divers and engineers attached them from underneath, expanding the torus layer by layer. The process was seamless: each pod locked into the tessellated pattern, forming terraces that spiraled down and outward, creating new living quarters, gardens, and communal spaces.
Amina, a teacher from Casablanca, watched as the community grew—not just in numbers, but in spirit. Each new pod brought stories, innovations, and gifts from the shore. Children learned about the science of currents and the art of cooperation, while elders shared wisdom from their homelands. The open center of the ring became a gathering place for music, debate, and celebration, framed by the geometric beauty of the green hexagonal grid beneath their feet.
As the torus was swept northward by the Gulf Stream, the journey became a living chronicle of adaptation and hope. Storms tested the structure, but the modular design allowed for quick repairs. Solar panels and wind turbines powered the habitat, while aquaponics systems and ocean fishing sustained the community.
By the time the Seashellter reached the waters off Newfoundland, it had doubled in size. The floating city was now a mosaic of cultures and innovations, a testament to what could be achieved when waste was transformed into shelter and strangers became neighbors. As the current carried them eastward once more, the people of the Seashellter looked to the horizon, ready for the next chapter of their journey—a living, growing symbol of a future shaped by ingenuity and shared purpose.
With most of the structure underwater, the Seashellter achieves a low center of gravity and a high degree of buoyancy. The weight of the water displaced by the submerged portion creates a strong upward force (buoyant force), which stabilizes the entire ring and resists tipping or rolling in waves. This design principle is used in floating vessels and offshore platforms to ensure that even in rough seas, the structure remains upright and secure. The broad, submerged base means that any tilting causes the center of buoyancy to shift, generating a righting moment that restores equilibrium, making the structure inherently stable even with variable loads or during storms.
Ecosystem Creation:
The extensive underwater surface of the hexagonal pods acts as an artificial reef, providing habitat complexity similar to natural rocky outcrops or coral formations. The variation in surface geometry—ridges, crevices, and the tessellated arrangement—offers attachment points for marine organisms such as barnacles, mussels, algae, and corals. Over time, these surfaces become colonized, attracting small fish, crustaceans, and other marine life. The structure thus fosters a thriving ecosystem beneath the waves, enhancing local biodiversity and supporting food webs. Floating structures like this have been shown to create living reefs, benefiting both pelagic (open water) and benthic (sea floor) habitats.
Environmental Benefits:
By providing shade and shelter, the submerged pods can help moderate water temperature and offer refuge for fish and invertebrates. Plant roots and biofilms growing on the underwater surfaces can also help filter and improve water quality, while the structure itself breaks up open water, reducing wave energy and potentially protecting nearby coastlines from erosion.
In summary, the design—where two-thirds of the Seashellter is submerged—ensures exceptional stability in the open ocean and transforms the structure into a dynamic, life-supporting artificial reef, benefiting both its human inhabitants and the surrounding marine environment.
Vertical Expansion During Transit
As the Seashellter drifts through different ocean currents—from the Canary Current southward along Africa’s coast to the Gulf Stream along the eastern United States—new hexagonal pods are manufactured on land using plasticrete and towed out to be attached beneath the existing structure. This process of continuous vertical expansion transforms the torus from a simple two-layer ring into a multi-tiered underwater city with potentially dozens of layers extending deep below the surface.
The manufacturing process involves wrapping single-use plastic film and bag waste around permanent forms, then encasing them in heated sand to create the durable plasticrete pods. Each new layer is attached from underneath by divers and engineers, allowing the structure to grow organically without disrupting life on the upper levels. This modular approach enables the Seashellter to expand its capacity from the initial 160 residents to potentially thousands as it completes its Atlantic circuit.
Underwater Ecosystem Development
With two-thirds or more of the structure submerged, the extensive underwater layers create a complex three-dimensional habitat that functions as a massive artificial reef system. The tessellated hexagonal pods provide varied surface geometries—ridges, crevices, and interconnected chambers—that offer ideal attachment points for marine organisms including barnacles, mussels, algae, and potentially coral formations.
Each underwater tier develops its own distinct ecosystem based on depth, light penetration, and water pressure. The upper submerged layers (0-50 meters) support photosynthetic organisms and attract fish species that depend on sunlight, while deeper tiers (50-200 meters) develop chemosynthetic communities and provide habitat for deep-water species. This vertical stratification creates a living column of biodiversity that moves with the currents, potentially serving as a mobile corridor for marine species migration.
Structural Advantages of Deep Layering
The multi-layered underwater configuration provides exceptional hydrostatic stability through several mechanisms:
Low Center of Gravity: With multiple heavy layers below the waterline, the structure maintains an extremely low center of gravity, making it virtually impossible to capsize even in severe weather conditions.
Distributed Buoyancy: Each layer can be equipped with ballast chambers that can be flooded or emptied to adjust buoyancy and trim. This allows precise control over the structure’s position in the water column and enables it to ride out storms by partially submerging.
Wave Energy Dissipation: The multiple underwater layers break up wave energy at different depths, reducing the impact of surface waves on the structure and creating calmer conditions for the inhabited upper levels.
Adaptive Infrastructure
As the Seashellter accumulates layers during its journey, it develops specialized zones at different depths:
Surface Layers (0-5 meters): Living quarters, communal spaces, and solar collection systems that require direct sunlight and air access.
Shallow Submersible Layers (5-20 meters): Aquaponics systems, research laboratories, and manufacturing facilities that benefit from natural light but are protected from surface weather.
Deep Submersible Layers (20-100+ meters): Ballast and stability systems, deep-sea research facilities, and pressure-resistant storage areas that provide the structural foundation for the entire habitat.
Environmental Benefits
The multi-layered design transforms the Seashellter into a moving marine protected area that provides numerous environmental services:
• Habitat Creation: Each layer supports different marine communities, creating a vertical ecosystem that enhances local biodiversity wherever the structure travels.
• Water Filtration: Biofilms and marine growth on the underwater surfaces help filter and improve water quality as the structure moves through different ocean regions.
• Carbon Sequestration: The plasticrete construction locks plastic waste into permanent form while supporting marine organisms that sequester carbon through shell and tissue formation.
• Coastal Protection: When operating near coastlines, the structure’s size and underwater mass can help moderate wave energy and provide some protection from storm surge.
Conclusion
The complete Seashellter concept—with its many underwater layers extending far below the visible surface—represents a paradigm shift in floating habitat design. By growing vertically downward as it journeys through the Atlantic current system, this innovative structure transforms from a simple floating ring into a complex, multi-tiered marine ecosystem that provides sustainable housing, scientific research capabilities, and significant ecological benefits. The result is a self-expanding oceanic city that serves as both a home for human communities and a traveling sanctuary for marine life, demonstrating the potential for truly symbiotic relationships between human habitation and ocean ecosystems.
• Each pod is manufactured on land using an innovative process that wraps intact single-use plastic film and bag waste around a permanent form, then encases it in heated sand. The result is a solid, durable plasticrete shell.
• Completed pods are towed out to the floating structure and attached from underneath by ropes and other simple tether lines locking seamlessly into the tessellated hexagonal pattern.
Structural and Ecological Benefits:
• With the majority of the structure’s mass below the waterline, the Seashellter achieves exceptional stability, resisting waves and wind.
• The expanding, multi-layered underwater section provides extensive surface area for marine life, functioning as a dynamic artificial reef and supporting diverse ecosystems at different depths.
• The stepped, outward-flaring design ensures that as the structure grows, it not only increases capacity for residents but also maximizes ecological impact and ocean stability.
This approach allows the Seashellter to transform from a modest floating ring into a vast, multi-tiered, horizontally and vertically expanding ocean habitat—each layer a tessellated network of six-sided pods, each pod a permanent solution for plastic waste and a building block for regenerative ocean living.