If a destructive hurricane were to strike the city, displaced New Yorkers could find themselves bunking in floating apartments, hexagonal pods, or shipping containers with inflatable walls.

The three structures were among 10 winners of a city competition seeking proposals for urban housing designs that could be used to shelter residents after a disaster. The winners will receive $10,000 to develop their ideas further, and prototypes of selected designs may be built in the future, city officials said yesterday.

During a presentation of the winning designs at the city’s Office of Emergency Management in Brooklyn, Mayor Bloomberg said the winners “balanced poetry with pragmatism.”

He noted that the city needed to look for alternative housing solutions because the trailers the Federal Emergency Management Agency uses to shelter displaced residents would not work in New York, as the city is too dense and the trailers too large.

“I think we really are the only city of any size that I know of that’s really tried to do something about this and address the issue before we need it, not when we need it,” he said.

The jury examining the 117 submissions from 30 countries considered the capacity of the housing proposals, the time it would take to install them, and their accessibility, livability, sustainability, and cost. Entrants were told to create a plan to house 38,000 families living in a fictional neighborhood along the water that had been hit by a hurricane.

It’s unclear how the city would use these plans. Mr. Bloomberg said he’s not sure what the next step would be once a final winner or two is selected. He said it is unlikely the city would build large numbers of housing structures and store them in advance of an unknown disaster.