Water World: Artist Imagines Man’s Habitat Post Ice Thaw

The photographic series imagines the world’s most famous buildings drowned in seawater – 300m higher than present levels.

Francois Ronsiaux, 40, from Paris, was inspired to create the project after the South East Asian tsunami in 2004, which killed 230,000 people.

The artist envisioned what would happen if ice sheets in the north and south melted, predicting a devastating rise in ocean levels.

In Mr Ronsiaux’s vision of the future, the world would have no borders with the rise in water flooding New York, London and Paris.

He said: “[The project] for me was a chance to redraw [cities], transform them, to make them inconsistent in their current geopolitical situation and make people think about the fragility of their living areas.”

As well as picturing famous landmarks such as the Willis Tower in Chicago and Angkor Wat ruins in Cambodia, deep underwater, Francois also imagined carnivals and motorways on the bottom of the ocean.

And Times Square in New York, which is normally filled with tourists and vendors, is eerily empty.

Francois added: “United Land represents an instant of time where activity and movement are halted and human effort is subjected to contemplation.

“Symbolising man’s loss of control of the environment, water becomes a regulating vector replacing man’s habitat following a hypothetical ice thaw.”