Flagship Subsea Habitat
A five-module residence of steel and cast acrylic, set into a living coral reef and kept at the pressure of the air you left.
The Habitat
Two transparent wings for living and sleeping wrap a patch of coral at ten to fifteen metres. A steel centre holds the kitchen, a dining island and a cylindrical library. Machinery and the dive centre sit in their own modules, so the living spaces are glass, sea and light.
Surface Pressure
No saturation and no decompression on the way up: a free swim to the surface is always open through any of three hatches. No pier, no buoy, no umbilical. Guests arrive by an unpowered transfer bell at surface pressure, so anyone can descend, and a ten-metre support vessel calls once a fortnight with power, oxygen, fresh water and a waste run.
Five Modules, Two Junctions
Each module is nine metres long and 3.25 metres across. The two wings are virgin cast acrylic with a hundred-millimetre wall and a flat two-hundred-millimetre end viewport. The centre and service modules are pressure-vessel steel, fabricated to PD 5500 with full radiography and a three-layer marine coating. Every module seals independently and carries its own life support.
Inside the Glass
Liquifer, the Vienna studio that designs interiors for spacecraft, treats each wing as a small three-dimensional landscape: suspended nets, multi-level platforms and Japanese-inspired convertible furniture in the common room; three private cabins at three heights in the sleeping module. The reef is on every side, including underneath.
The Reefscape
Sculpted fairings over the steel, an artificial reef, a reef temple, gardens, hydrophone soundscapes and camera arms that guests steer from inside. Wastewater leaves sterilised and polished. Impact is monitored continuously and is designed to stay below that of ordinary scuba diving.
Traction
This is not a concept. The archive holds a shipyard quotation, a sourced acrylic supply, complete life-support balances, prototype data and a field trial.
A Lloyd's-certified Glasgow yard (EN 1090 EXC 4) quoted the first steel module package with full radiography and marine coatings, sixteen weeks from purchase order. Quote from April 2023; re-quote before it goes in front of money.
A CO₂ scrubber prototype was built and instrument-tested against the target atmosphere setpoints, logging thousands of data points across its blower and bed-depth envelope in January 2023.
A three-day underwater solar trial measured panel yield at 5, 8 and 11 metres in March 2023 and set the solar contribution in the power architecture.
The Invitation
PRISM does not sell nights and is not priced against hotels. It is a patron's commission in the tradition of observatories and opera houses: an art-filled room in a living reef where artists, scientists, philosophers and storytellers come to slow down, be transformed by awe, and make work that carries the ocean back to the surface.
What the patron buys is the certainty that it gets built: submarine and spacecraft engineers, a Lloyd's-certified yard ready to cut steel, the class rules on the table and the operating playbook drafted. PRISM is the deluxe model that proves the platform; further commissions follow from it.
Seabed · 15 m · The engineering under the glass
We build underwater habitats. PRISM is our deluxe model: a five-module subsea residence of steel and cast acrylic, set into a living coral reef at 10 to 15 metres, kept at surface pressure, and run with no pier, no buoy, and no umbilical to shore. It hosts five residents for two weeks or twenty-five guests for a long weekend, with the reef itself as the view from every room.
Since the 1960s dozens of habitats have been built; today only two remain in operation worldwide, and every commercial underwater hotel or restaurant is a fixed structure reached by stairwell. PRISM is designed as the first true luxury habitat of the modern era: surface-independent, decompression-free, and roughly twice the living area of Aquarius Reef Base, the largest working habitat today. Falling costs in cast acrylic and lithium storage make a build possible now that was not possible a decade ago, and the field is moving again: 2026 sees the first new American habitat in forty years reach the water in the Florida Keys, backed by nine figures of private capital.
The Habitat
Engineering & Safety
Technical Dossier
| Cabin pressure | 1 ATM ± 1.7% |
| Oxygen | 21% · alarms 17–23% |
| CO₂ | < 1,000 ppm · alarm 2,000 |
| Humidity | < 50% RH |
| Seabed O₂ bank | 132,000 L · 150% margin |
Deployment: each module is ballasted to a tonne or two of positive buoyancy, delivered by semi-submersible barge, and winched down onto a pre-set seabed foundation. No dockside crane lifts, no dynamic-positioning fleet.
Traction
Team
Shanee StopnitzkyFounder · programme lead, siting & environment
Adam KrellensteinCo-founder · budget & operations
Paul MoorhouseChief engineer · veteran submarine engineer
Edwin ChiuEngineer · formerly SpaceX
Carl BoyerEngineer · Pisces VI deep submersible
Pierre BeltranEngineer · Pisces VI deep submersible
Linz WilburCore teamCapital Plan
Use of Funds · Tranche One
| Item | US $M |
|---|---|
| First steel module: fabrication, welding & NDT | 1.20 |
| Engineering closure & classification review | 0.90 |
| Life support & energy systems, full-scale qualification | 0.90 |
| Cast-acrylic wing module & viewports | 0.80 |
| Transfer bell & airlock development | 0.60 |
| Integration, harbour trials & crew procedures | 0.60 |
| Siting, permitting & environmental baseline | 0.50 |
| Team & programme reserve | 0.50 |
| Total | 6.00 |
Calibration against the field
A staged $25M programme for 65 m² of surface-independent, 1 ATM reef residence sits well inside this field's cost envelope.
The Invitation
PRISM does not sell nights and is not priced against hotels. It is a patron's commission in the tradition of observatories and opera houses: an art-filled room in a living reef where artists, scientists, philosophers, and storytellers come to slow down, be transformed by awe, and make work that carries the ocean back to the surface. Residencies and a planned documentary series give the habitat a cultural reach far beyond the few who descend.
The reef sets the terms. The exterior is engineered as new coral substrate, with a sculptural reef temple, gardens, and hydrophone soundscapes; wastewater leaves sterilised and polished; impact is monitored continuously and designed to stay below that of ordinary scuba diving.
What the patron buys is the certainty that it gets built. This firm has the submarine and spacecraft engineers, a Lloyd's-certified yard ready to cut steel, the class rules on the table, and the operating playbook drafted. PRISM is the deluxe model that proves the platform; further commissions follow from it.
