In the future, water and its “by-product” hydrogen will play a vital role in any city’s infrastructure. That’s if the design from Californian Architects Iwamotoscott, for the History Channel’s City of the Future competition is anything to go by.
The competition asked architects to envision and design a city 100 years from now.Iwamotoscott's concept and design for "Hydro-Net" came first in the San Francisco section of the competition. They are now up against the winners from EDAW/Praxis 3/BNIM/Metcalf and Eddy (Atlanta) and Beyer Blinder Belle (Washington). The voting by the public ends Monday, April 28th. All competitors had only one week to envision what their city might look like in 100 years, a mere 3 hours to construct their models, and just 15 minutes to present their vision to the judging panel.If this sounds unbelievable, have a look at our slide show. Here you can see their model and Iwamotoscott’s plans for Hydro-Net, as real as they can be at the moment anyway.

What is Hydro-Net City?

By taking into account the natural evolution of San Francisco, HYDRO -NET actually takes advantage of the rising water levels of the Californian coastline.
A whole new “Aquaculture zone” will be used to grow algae, which in turn will produce the hydrogen fuel used to power the city. This fuel is then stored and distributed through a series of underground tunnels made from “nanotube wall structures”. Tests have shown that carbon nanotubes, 50,000 times narrower than a human hair, can be a promising material for hydrogen storage. Out of this new watery city, emerge tall sinuous towers, where the algae is stored to produce hydrogen.
Traffic consists of hydrogen-fuelled hover –cars, which travel underneath the city. These cars also collect, store and distribute the water and power tapped from liquid and geothermal sources beneath San Francisco.