New Atlantis is utopia; a vertical city designed by Adam Dayem, as a shelter for I-Kiribati people who refused to become refugees of climate change and decided to remain in their city in shallow water of South Pacific, above what used to be South Tarawa. The new vertical habitat proposal is situated in the open ocean, with the foundations anchored into the earth, 20 feet under. It is year 2100 and the emerging structure is funded by donations of Chinese government who chose to give away billions of Yuan to island nations disappearing under rising oceans rather than enforcing carbon reduction measures.

Physically cut-off and isolated, this vertical city is highly networked as any metropolitan high-rise and as such it is a significant base of information and operations.

Largely self-sustaining, elaborate vertical structure of New Atlantis is comfortable substitute for their lost homes, but ex-I-Kiribati consider themselves exiles and mourn for their lost culture. Structurally challenging, the development is conceived in twist of two sets of vertical elements, intertwining with each other. First set – primary vertical building structure contains the circulation cores and is constructed from lightweight fiber reinforced concrete. The other set hold the floor-plates, containing residential spaces and is wrapped in translucent lexan.

The self-sustaining structure doesn’t incorporate traditional climate control system that would require high energy consumption, over building’s generation capacity. As it is not necessary to warm the South Pacific climate, interior spaces are mostly only partially enclosed while the wind and rain infiltration is encouraged.