1. Floating Prison, New York City

There's a good reason NYC's Vernon C. Bain Correctional Center is nicknamed "The Boat." The prison is a floating barge.

Since 1992, the 47,326-ton mobile incarceration center has been part of the city's Rikers Island jail complex. It was built in New Orleans and hauled up the eastern seaboard to its current location off the Bronx in Long Island Sound. Created to reduce overcrowding in New York City's prisons, "The Boat" features 16 dorms and 100 jail cells, as well as a library, gym, and outdoor recreation area for prisoners, It can house up to 870 inmates at a time. At 625-feet long and 125-feet wide this flatbed vessel has also been deemed the largest operational prison ship in the world by the Guinness Book of World Records.

Despite the aquatic surroundings, there still have been at least four escape attempts.

2. Floating Supermarket, Southern India

Kerala, in southwest India, is home to nearly 600 miles of interconnected rivers, inlets, lakes, and canals, and home to thousands of inhabitants, many of whom earn their livelihood from fishing. It's a pain for them to come to the mainland to go shopping, so local supermarket chain Triveni has created floating superstores that come to them. The floating Triveni Superstore in Kundara is a 1,000-square foot boat crafted of anti-corrosive, steel-reinforced cement. It's basically a traveling department store that sells everything from perfume to home refrigerators to health drinks—all at reduced rates.

The stores alert villagers beforehand of their planned arrival. Only 20 people can be on board at a time, which includes the floating market's four salespersons and its driver.

3. Floating Movie Theater, Thailand

German Architect Ole Scheeren designed and built Archipelago Cinema for Thailand's 2012 Film on the Rocks Yao Noi Festival. He constructed the modular theater out of the area's recycled floating lobster farms—wood platforms on tire floats that could be assembled to make a large, raft-like seating area. Guests arrived to the off-shore cinema (which featured a separate floating screen) via boat.

When the festival was through, Scheeren dismantled the theater and donated it to a local community, where it could be refigured as a playground.

4. Floating School, Nigeria

Situated in a lagoon off of Lagos, the Makoko Floating School provides much-needed educational facilities and meeting space for Makoko, a former fishing village prone to flooding. Nigerian architecture studio NLÉ developed the three-story triangular structure, whose A-frame bamboo skeleton provides stability in heavy winds and storms. Local residents helped construct it. The school is approximately 33 feet tall, with a base made of 16 wooden modules, each containing 16 recycled plastic barrels. The empty barrels allow the school to float and to adapt to rising waters to keep from flooding.

5. Floating Hotel, Norway

Norway's Krystall Hotel will be your perfect destination for viewing for the Northern Lights when it opens in late 2016. Shaped like a snowflake, the 86-room luxury space will float in the waters off the northern city of Tromsø and feature glass roofs for easy 24-hour viewing. Dutch Docklands (the same company designing the Maldives' floating golf course) is in charge of the design, which features a large base for stability as well as springs and cables to keep the structure from wavering in high waves and storms.

According to popularmechanics.com. Source of photos: internet