Arch(e)type, an international architecture practice, has shown a concept for a 250-metre residential tower arranged around a vertical deep-water pool. The project, called 101M, went on display at the A-Fest architecture festival in Moscow.
It appeared at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art as a model in stainless steel, with light glowing inside the pool shaft. The studio developed the scheme with freediving world champion Alexey Molchanov and with Molchanovs, the freediving equipment and training company he co-founded.
At the centre of the building sits a column of water 101 metres deep. That figure comes from a record set by Molchanov's mother, Natalia Molchanova, who became the first woman to pass 100 metres on one breath. Deep Dive Dubai, the deepest pool built so far, sinks 60 metres underground. The column in 101M is longer and runs upward, through the building.
Its massing takes cues from the International Space Station: modules holding a freediving centre, a research laboratory, offices and apartments dock onto a central volume.
"Contemporary architecture is used to growing upward, and skyscrapers have long been the conventional symbol of ambition," said Daria Belyakova, founder of Arch(e)type. "101M proposes the opposite vector: depth. Here, architecture turns inward, toward the place where a person is left alone with themselves, with the pressure of the water and with silence."
The depth of the pool would let freedivers train at record levels throughout the year, without waiting on the season or on conditions in open water. It could also reproduce neutral buoyancy, a state close to weightlessness. A hydro-lab for cosmonaut training would sit inside the building and stay open to the public.
The scheme works as a closed engineering loop. Rainwater, meltwater and greywater collected from the apartments would pass through filtration and go back into circulation, topping up the pool. Solar panels are built into the facade and wind turbines stand on the roof. A single floor is set aside as a self-sufficient laboratory for life-support technology, aimed at places that lack external infrastructure, from Arctic stations to remote settlements.
