Freischärler, founded by Noël Schardt and Bjøern Muendner, proposes the United Plastic Nation, an ever-growing, floating city that collects and recycles plastic from the oceans. The project imagines a self-sufficient structure built with 3D-printed materials and produced by a swarm of robotic drones. The city would be sustained with food grown in vertical aquaponic farms, water and waste that is cycled through closed systems, and energy produced by waves.

Freischärler‘s United Plastic Nation, the winning entry of LA+ Magazine’s island competition (issue #7 Imagination Edition) for which it was initially developed, grows both horizontally and vertically along a New York-like grid, forming an unsinkable iceberg structure.

Divided into residential, industrial, recreational and commercial zones, the ever-growing city passes by all continents, connecting regions of poverty with those of wealth and prosperity. Occupying international waters, the United Plastic Nation is bound by no national laws, thus functioning as a tax haven that can easily generate revenue.

Questioning the concept of the nation state, which defines itself by exclusion of the outside via borders and citizenship, this island is instead by default inclusive, borderless and part of all continents, where anyone can be become citizen, “a society of true urban nomads is born, not moving from city to city but by moving their city themselves,” notes Freischärler.

The concept brings about an interesting take on the future of the world’s cities and how they may need to change their design and function to support and over-populated and unsustainable globe.