Admares, the Finnish company behind the project, reached a deal last month to build the temporary lodging. Chief Executive Mikael Hedberg got the idea for Admares, which specializes in floating buildings and modular construction, during his time in the shipbuilding industry and running a company to build floating housing for oil workers.
“That’s when I thought, why only do it for the oil industry; why not go for the whole real-estate market’?” Mr. Hedberg said.
Each hotel in Qatar will be four stories high with 101 rooms. They will be assembled from steel and then float in the Persian Gulf. It isn’t clear what would happen to the properties after the World Cup, which will last about a month.
More developers are building waterborne structures. Floating buildings can alleviate housing shortages in major cities at a time when land is scarce and restrictive zoning makes it hard to build up, said Koen Olthuis, whose Netherlands-based architecture firm Waterstudio specializes in floating structures.
For flood-prone cities like Miami, structures that rise and sink with the sea offer an alternative to waterfront construction that looks increasingly vulnerable to rising sea levels. “Climate change has definitely helped us spread our designs and ideas,” Mr. Olthuis said.
So far, most of these structures are little more than elaborate houseboats. But some firms are working on multistory office, hotel and apartment buildings that could extend congested cities into the ocean.
In Rotterdam’s harbor, developer RED Company is building a 54,000-square-foot, three-story, wooden, floating office building. The project, which will serve as the new headquarters of the Global Center on Adaptation, will be energy-neutral and feature solar panels and a floating swimming pool, according to the company.
GCA helps countries, companies and organizations to adapt to climate change. The center’s CEO Patrick Verkooijen said that Rotterdam is threatened by rising sea levels and that the “completely self sufficient floating office is one of many examples of how we must adapt to the realities of climate change to ensure our infrastructure is not only resilient but future proof.”
Dirk Jan Schaap, a real-estate developer at RED, said the company is currently building the floating concrete base off-site. Once it is on the water, contractors will build the office on the platform as if it is a plot of land. Completion is expected for October. Mr. Schaap said RED has a permit to keep the office at its planned site for at least 10 years. After that, the building could float on to a different spot.
Technology isn’t an issue. Giant oil rigs prove that floating buildings can be hundreds of feet tall and stable enough to withstand storms and avoid seasickness, proponents of floating real estate say.
But the lack of regulations has been an obstacle. Many cities don’t have clear guidelines for waterborne properties, making builders vulnerable to potential fines and lawsuits. Money is another concern. It is still unclear how investors will value these properties.
While floating hotels and offices are still rare, floating homes are already fairly common in the Netherlands, a country with a long history of reclaiming land from the ocean. The Seattle area also has numerous houseboats. Nicolas Derouin is trying to bring the model to Miami. Last year, his company Arkup unveiled a 4,300-square-foot floating house that he claims can withstand category-four hurricanes.
When a storm nears, it can retreat to shallow waters, plant four steel rods into the ground and lift itself above the waves via hydraulic mechanism. The house, dubbed livable yacht, is on the market for $4.5 million. Mr. Derouin said he hopes that once cities settle on laws and property-tax rules for floating homes, buyers will have an easier time getting financing. Eventually he wants to branch out to floating resorts and floating communities.
ome hope the trend will ultimately lead to floating cities. The Seasteading Institute advocates for communities in international waters as “startup societies” that can make up their own rules. It was founded by investor Peter Thiel and Patri Friedman, the grandson of Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman.
Blue Frontiers, a company co-founded by members of the institute, started working on a floating island in French Polynesia in 2016. But in 2018, an election stirred up acrimony against the project, said the institute’s president, Joe Quirk. Now, he said, the floating island is “stalled indefinitely" and the institute is looking for a new place to host its seasteads.