Above the street level in any city floats an untapped resource. This airspace—the void above the road and between buildings—is, for several practical reasons, unused. Surprisingly, a science-backed design proposal suggests that this empty void doesn’t have to just sit empty. Instead, the air above the street could be turned into an entirely new kind of building plane.

Named Oversky, the project proposes a series of semifloating structures that could fill in this unused aerial space. Based on the same technology that allows zeppelins to float, these modular structures would combine into an occupiable cluster of rooms in the sky, connected to adjacent buildings or other fixed structures to enable access. Developed by architect Andreas Tjeldflaat of the firm Framlab, the project is an attempt to show how the urban void dozens of feet above the street can be reimagined. “The formed ‘cloudscape’ serves as a new kind of public space,” Tjeldflaat writes in an email.

Tjeldflaat describes it as a speculative infrastructural system based on proven technologies, including the use of enclosed carbon fiber cells of lighter-than-air and inert helium, enabling the modules to maintain a rigid structure and hover like tiny inflammable airships. Combined into Tetris-like amalgamations, these floating modules could act like individual rooms, offices, or storefronts in the sky.

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