Monaco, the smallest country in the world after the city of Vatican, has no longer space available to expand. Thirty years ago Monaco regained one seventh of its territory over the sea. Which other nation has done so ? Today, given the depth of its surrounding seabed, Monaco must imperatively consider the most advanced offshore technolgies to create artificial islands in order to give Monaco the maximum possible expansion area.
Fig.1
INTRODUCTION
The concept of an offshore artificial island, located close to the dike of Fontvieille, the latest Monegasque district won from the sea, results from a reflection over the urbanization of our territory, which identifies itself with the city of Monaco. Today, no further real estate development is possible on land.
Already 30 year ago, in order to create a new 22 hectares development area after back filling, it was decided to build a dike, a kilometer long in 40 meter of water depth off Fontvieille.
Today, this reclaimed area is fully built and the need for additional space is there again. Expanding further the Fontvieille's district toward water depth rapidly increasing to 60/80 meters is not feasible, therefore the concept of an island-based tower becomes attractive. We believe the solution of the future is to create space on multiple levels rather than horizontally.
Several international architects have considered Island projects at various locations around Monaco, particularly Mr.Kikutake, a Japanese architect specalist in "marine cities".
Our project, at this particular location in front of Fontvieille, calls upon well established offshore technologies and is, in our opinion, fitting very well within the typology of this unique location.
Lessons learnt from the construction of the Fontvieille dike
As already mentioned the Fontvieille dike was built on a berm of rock dumped on the seabed, over which reinforced concrete caissons were placed (Fig.2). The caissons fabricated in Genoa (Italy), some 150 km from Monaco, were surface-towed to location and flooded in place (Fig.3).
We were involved in the project at the time, and our main task was to adapt the Italian structural design of the caisson to French norms and standards.
We like to emphasise that, having been involved with this project since its inception and for over 30 years, we have learnt a few lessons and drawn some conclusions:
1. At the time we had difficulties with the concept that after building such a dike the enclosed water behind still had to be back filled to provide a constructible area.
