by Richard Ng
Photo: Lazzarini Design Studio
The idea of the world living on the back of a giant turtle is a recurring theme present in many ancient mythologies. But for Italy-based Lazzarini Design Studio, best known for their truly outlandish yacht concepts, this idea might soon be reality – if they can find anyone willing to fork up US$8 billion (about S$11 billion) to construct their concept ‘terayacht’, a behemoth of a structure.
Spanning 550m in length if realised, the turtle-shaped Pangeos will be the biggest structure ever built – and more than three times longer than the world’s current biggest yacht, the 180m gigayacht Azzam.
That’s probably why the Italians refer to their conceptual stallion as a terayacht, a term which doesn’t even have a commonly agreed upon definition.
The Pangeos, named after the supercontinent that existed millions of years ago before the shifting of tectonic plates created the earth, will comprise hotels, shopping centres, parks, ships, and airports along with a host of other facilities needed to keep some 60,000 guests happy and healthy in the middle of the ocean. Saudi Arabia is one of the countries that have been named as a potential location.
What to expect in the Pangeos terayacht
Credit: Lazzarini Design Studio
These facilities will be housed in the main ‘shell’ area, which purportedly comes with 30,000 steel cells beneath the hull as redundancies to render the Pangeos unsinkable. The upper shell zone will be dedicated for passengers lucky enough to own, well, flying cars (another concept that’s yet to take off in a big way).
It cruises along at a sedate five knots by way of nine electric engines, powered by solar power and other clean energy sources onboard. According to the company, the turtle’s large front ‘flippers’ will also collect energy from the breaking of the waves, allowing the Pangeos to stay in perpetual motion without those nasty emissions.
It also comes with a sprawling shipyard for the terayacht’s residents to park their yachts and superyachts after making trips on the waves.
Anyone else who’s interested (but maybe doesn’t have billions lying around) can instead purchase a virtual space on the superstructure as an NFT (non-fungible token), which would also work as a property deposit should the Pangeos ever be constructed.
