San Francisco 2108, A Hydro-Net City of the Future

IwamotoScott Architecture recently won the $10,000 grand prize for their entry in the The History Channel’s City of the Future contest where they envisioned what San Francisco might look like in 2108. Their winning entry was a Hydro-Net concept that includes a “Geothermal Mushroom” at located on the top of Bernal Hill and a “Fog Flower” on Ocean Beach. Here’s their full series of Hydro-Net concept illustrations.

Symbiotic and multi-scalar, SF HYDRO-NET is an occupiable infrastructure that organizes critical flows of the city. HYDRO-NET provides an underground arterial traffic network for hydrogen-fueled hover-cars, while simultaneously collecting, storing and distributing water and power tapped from existing aquifer and geothermal sources beneath San Francisco. A new aquaculture zone with ponds of algae and forests of sinuous housing towers reoccupy Baylands inundated by rising sea levels. Hydrogen fuel is produced by the algae, and is stored and distributed within the nanotube wall structure of HYDRO-NET’s robotically-drilled tunnels. At key waterfront and neighborhood locales, HYDRO-NET emerges to form linkages between the terrestrial and subterranean worlds. Here new architectures bloom as opportunistic urban caves and outcroppings, fostering new social spaces and densified urban forms, fed by the resources and connectivity provided by HYDRO-NET. These locally responsive and distributed nodes and tendrils facilitate both the preservation and organic evolution of San Francisco.

illustrations by IwamotoScott Architecture