Former Facebook and PayPal employee Chris
Robinson is two years into an epic backyard project rising behind his home in
Palo Alto: a structure dubbed the Tsunamiball.
A veteran of Silicon Valley with no
nautical or construction experience, Robinsin met his wife in Fukushima
and, after seeing the disaster unfold, set to work trying to solve the issue of
tsunami-proof architecture.
His capsule is 22-foot-long, 10-foot-wide,
8.5-foot-high and built of plywood and epoxy, envisioned in Adobe Illustrator,
vetted by engineers then slowly constructed by hand. The inspiration? Seaworthy
escape pods and spherical treehouses.
So far he has finished most of the hull but
still needs to add buoyant insulation, a structural keel
and an electric motor fueled by solar batteries. While his own
California home is unlikely to ever go underwater (at least not literally),
Robison plans to test the seaworthiness of his creation in the nearby Pacific
Ocean, and then perhaps rent the place out on AirBNB. Maybe it can also serve
as a prototype for a new kind of disaster-resistant design for coastal areas.
