Hotelier at Sea

[Image: Courtesy of Morris Architects].

Could nearly 4000 oil rigs soon to be decommissioned in the Gulf of Mexico be retrofitted into an American Dubai of offshore luxury hotels?
If so, would that really be a good idea?

[Image: Courtesy of Morris Architects].

Either way, Morris Architects has proposed exactly that:

There are approximately 4,000 oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico varying in size, depth and mobility that will be decommissioned within the next century. If a deck on one of these rigs is about 20,000 square feet, then there is potentially 80 million square feet of programmable space just off the coast of the United States. The current method for rig removal is explosion, which costs millions of dollars and destroys massive amounts of aquatic life. What if these rigs were recommissioned as exclusive resort islands? Could the Gulf be America’s “Dubai” and the rig the artificial island on which to build it? This project examines the possibilities of creating a self-sufficient, eco-friendly high-end resort experience in our own backyard – the Gulf of Mexico.

According to Curbed LA, the hotel rooms themselves "are pre-fabricated, designed to be transported out to the rig as a standard cargo container."

[Images: The rooms arrive by ship – before sliding open to form individual cabinettes. Courtesy of Morris Architects].

Once there, a new world of luxury interiors unfolds above the continental shelf – apparently an ideal environment in which groups of semi-nude women can watch James Bond films.

[Image: Courtesy of Morris Architects].

Of course, if the real Dubai is any model for what might actually happen with such a resort, then we'll probably see dozens of oil rigs partially converted to luxury hotels only then to be abandoned by their construction crews and investors. As the lands of southern Louisiana continue to disappear into the Gulf, heavily armed refugees on fishing boats will move out to sea, recolonizing the derelict structures. There will be campfires at night, burning driftwood, and specialty gardens.
Within four or five decades of inconsistent contact, the Library of Congress sends out a new, 21st century Alan Lomax to visit those thriving offshore subcultures and record their folk songs and oral histories.

[Image: Courtesy of Morris Architects].

He discovers a sort of new Kalevala, written by dwellers of empty structures at sea, somewhere between creation myth and national folk history. The Kalevala of Abandoned Oil Rigs.
Alas, it turns out to be a latter day Ossian – that is, he just makes the whole thing up.

[Image: Courtesy of Morris Architects].

Or, of course, the economy will recover, this plan will work, and within a decade you'll be suntanning on a platform in the Gulf of Mexico, reading Self.

(Via Curbed LA, with thanks to David Donald).