New Maritime Development: Towards the Theory and Practice of Transformable Area Systems

The recent expansion in floating city structures has underscored the future potential of maritime and port-side developments for industry, housing, and other land uses. Transformable Area Systems (TASs) can play a key role in such sustainable coastal and maritime construction and have a major impact on how factories are planned and implemented. This article explains the basics of the TAS concept and assesses its potential in the context of marine developments. The article concludes that the increased modularity of TAS developments significantly enhances the potential to integrate and disintegrate individual objects and structures, and that TAS-based factories can offer new possibilities with regard to pre-producible, pre-testable, reusable, exchangeable, and scalable objects and structures. However, their application in practice is restricted at present by a lack of awareness and the large initial investment that is required. However, the cost-benefit equation for TASs is likely to re-balance in favour of net benefits, and will lead to more developments like those currently being constructed in the cash-rich nations of the Middle East. TASs have the potential to contribute to the improved functioning, sustainability, and future viability of factories and other structures, and their onward development, in maritime areas.