New Atlantis rises from the waves

10.03.35: NEW ATLANTIS has emerged from the foam after a decade of building in the shallow seas between Japan and Korea.

It is the most ambitious offshore construction project ever seen.

The colonising of the seas began with airports: as air traffic became busier, artificial islands were built to site ever grander airports, as at Hong Kong and Osaka in Japan in the last century.

Then, human pressure on land led to plans for skyscraper cities rising from the sea. As long ago as 1990, Shin Takamatsu, a Japanese architect, designed what he called Future Port City in Tokyo Bay, a series of then futuristic towers based