Having trouble deciding between a luxury yacht and a waterfront resort for your next vacation? Then this floating hotel, created by Serbian yacht designers Salt & Water, is your answer. The hotel design, which recently won the 2015 Millennium Yacht Design Awards, allows visitors to check into their own personal Catamaran apartment units, which can be detached from the floating hotel and sailed away. The Catamaran apartments each feature a living room, kitchen, bathroom, and upstairs sleeping area, floor-to-ceiling windows as well as an open-air front deck. The oddly shaped yacht rooms are designed to move slowly through the inland waters of landlocked Serbia, allowing visitors to enjoy uninterrupted views of the natural beauty around them. According to the designers, the apartments "can be considered as frames of the nature, connecting the guests with the water and the sky and isolating them from everyday stresses." When guests tire of the solitude of their private yacht pods, they can return to the central structure of the floating hotel, which contains the reception area, a restaurant, an events hall, offices and a cafe. There is also a "flying bridge" and a beach platform for swimming, sunbathing, and enjoying a cocktail by the water. Though it's just a concept at the moment, Salt & Water describe the hotel as "a perfect solution for tourism without any violation of the natural harmony of the place itself."

Koen Olthuis and Dutch Docklands have announced a new project: a five-star floating hotel off the coast of Norway named the Krystall. Reminiscent of their Maldives development the Greenstar, this cold-climate sister project will take the form of a six-pointed ice crystal. As with Dutch Docklands' other floating structures the development will be low-impact, and it's designed to "blend in with the "winter environment" between the most beautiful fjords." The Krystall will float offshore from the northern city of Tromso, located within the Arctic Circle. Designed to be completely self-supporting and self-sustainable, the hotel will have a diameter of 120 meters, and facilities will include 86 guest rooms, conference rooms, and spa and wellness facilities. It's also billed as a perfect spot for viewing the Northern Lights due to its glass roof. The five-star luxury and spectacular nature of the project is aimed at attracting wealthy visitors from Japan, Russia and Europe. As Olthuis told CNN, "In the hotel, you'll float through hallways lined with cool, futuristic blue shapes, recline by a fireplace faced in transparent bricks resembling ice blocks and sleep in rooms tricked out in minimalist, winter-themed designs." But true to Olthuis's green principles, the design is not just about the aesthetics. To be built in dry dock and then positioned in place, the hotel will not leave a lasting footprint on its location. "That's the only way to bring a hotel to such a precious and beautiful marine environment," he says. Floating structures are a pragmatic design concern for the development company, as they ameliorate the risks to coastal properties associated with rising sea levels. As Olthuis explains, "We live in a dynamic world where static buildings do not bring us the needed flexibility. Building on water brings us new space for expansion, safety against floods and flexibility to adjust developments without demolition whenever needed." The hotel is set to open in December 2016.

Faced with rising sea levels, would you consider a move onto the water? Soon, a community of Londoners will have exactly that option. DRMM Architects has won the Royal Docks competition to design England's first floating village. London Mayor Boris Johnson revealed a consortium including Carillion Igloo Genesis and Buro Happold who will together transform 60 thousand square meters of water just east of the Emirates Airline. Floating villages are a new idea for the UK, but already popular in Europe, especially in Holland where designers have long considered sea levels in relation to housing and city planning. The Royal Docks scheme borrows expertise developed at the floating prefab village of Ijburg near Amsterdam. In Scotland two schemes are already planned, including a solar powered floating community for Edinburgh and a £30 million development directly adjacent to the Glasgow Science Center. The water site at the Royal Victoria Dock, just east of the Emirates Airline, will be transformed into a community with 50 custom-built homes, plus restaurants, bars and offices. There will also be a blue-water square framed by a market square, a floating cornice and an events space. Plans for additional facilities, such as a lido and ice rink, were also proposed as part of the bid. The winning scheme will be 100% floating with the walkways, residential and non-residential units anchored in place using a series of piles located within the dock and connected to the dock by bridges. Future inhabitants will be able to play a part in the design of their property. Chris Brown, director of Carillion Igloo Genesis said: "Living in a floating home you've helped to design is a dream lots of us have. By combining the floating home experience of our Dutch collaborators with our custom built business we hope to make these dreams come true in Royal Victoria Dock... East London's place on the tourist trail is growing fast. It's about to be joined by Europe's largest floating village, with floating markets, creative workspace, events and watersports." Alex de Rijke of DRMM recently presented his studies on floating villages to the Venice architecture biennale. The prefabricated floating water-homes will use the same type of concrete foundations that are already in use at the Ijburg development in Holland. The construction of the homes - including the bases - will be carried out off-site and then transported by water to site. The scheme is due to enter the formal planning process with Newham council in Spring 2015, and it is expected to address the need for affordable housing to avoid opposition from local authorities and residents.

The world's first floating city is soon to become a reality. The US$ 10 billion Freedom Ship will be big enough to fit 50,000 residents, 30,000 visitors, schools, a hospital, parks and even an airport. Since the vessel will be too large to enter any port, it will simply sail from country to country in two-year cycles. The mile-long floating city is nearing start of construction, according to Florida-based Freedom Ship International Inc. It will boast 25 floors of activities, schools, hospitals, art galleries, shops, parks, casinos, an aquarium and a small airport on the roof with a runway for smaller private and commercial aircrafts. The company is currently trying to raise the US$10 billion needed to make this huge project a reality. The company's vice-president said that they are just US$1 billion short of the amount necessary for construction to start. Once completed, the ship will be 1370 meters long-four times longer than the famous Queen Mary II. The large floating structure would be powered by solar panels and Aeolic energy while navigating international waters. The city would spend most of the year-around 70 percent of the time-anchored off major cities.

It sounds at best far-fetched and at worst frightening, at least at first, but this unique water-based energy station is already under construction and is designed to (safely) generate power and fresh water to over 200,000 people. The Akademik Lomonosov is being built at a submarine construction facility and is set to launch before 2020. While it is set to be stationed offshore, it opens up a new world of possibilities for fueling remote settlements, temporary outposts, research stations or floating cities. The vessel will produce an impressive 70 megawatts of electricity - more than enough to support a mid-sized city. It will also desalinate ocean water to increase regional freshwater supplies. With the world wondering about the fate of the Fukushima plant in Japan, following its fateful impact by a tsunami and subsequent fallout, it seems like a strange time to be working on projects where water meats nuclear power. Still, in this case the uranium is far less enriched and of the same type being used in Russian icebreakers already. The power plant is a project of LLC Baltiysky Zavod Shipbuilding, a St. Petersburg division of United Shipbuilding Corporation (USC).