Floating Paris gym uses human energy to sail down the Seine River

Imagine your gym workout didn’t just fuel your day, but also helped fuel a boat down a river.

Well, this is the idea behind the floating gym, designed by Italian architects Carlo Ratti Associati.

The Paris Navigating Gym will be powered down the Seine River by human energy, as people exercise.

The glass bubble design ensures that gym-goers get a good look at the Eiffel Tower as they toil away.

The “human-powered Gym Boat” is 20 metres long, and can hold up to 45 people. It features bikes and cross trainers, and displays realtime information about the Seine’s environmental conditions.

This is how it's put together:

The exercise machines are linked to an inverter, which convert the pedal power into electricity. This energy powers the device, and the energy generated by the system (machine and user) then power the gym boat. Like this:

Carlo Ratti, founder of the architecture firm behind the scheme, said:

The Paris Navigating Gym investigates the potential of harnessing human power.

It’s fascinating to see how the energy generated by a workout at the gym can actually help to propel a boat. It provides one with a tangible experience of what lies behind the often abstract notion of ‘electric power'.

Best of all – the gym will be open-top in summer.

HT InHabitat

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