Oil Rigs The Next Dubai?

There's been some recent speculation about what to do with 4,000 abandoned oil rigs in the Mexican gulf. The traditional approach is to blow up the rigs, which costs millions in explosives and safety measures, as well as being highly detrimental to the surrounding sea life. Morris Architects offers an alternative solution:

If a deck on one of these rigs is about 20,000 square feet, then there is potentially 80 million square feet of programmable space just off the coast of the United States...

What if these rigs were recommissioned as exclusive resort islands? Could the Gulf be America’s “Dubai” and the rig the artificial island on which to build it? This project examines the possibilities of creating a self-sufficient, eco-friendly high-end resort experience in our own backyard – the Gulf of Mexico.

(H/T: BLDBLOG)

The rooms would be pre-fabricated and stacked, cargo-container-style, on large ships and assembled on the rigs at sea. It's currently unclear whether the project will take off or not, but the idea of potentially bolstering Mexican and U.S. tourism is welcome suggestion in this economic climate.