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Category Archives: RS1. Emergent Territories
para.CITY
Urban loop system
By: Moises Gamus & Michael Harrison
Uncontrolled urban growth has caused social deterioration and environmental disequilibrium, especially in emergent global economies. Resource scarcity has set an urgent agenda to switch to renewable energetic resources and more efficient ways to distribute them.
Current models of urban planning have the limitation of extending the cities sideways, whereas this research explores the possibility of releasing the city from the ground condition, creating an infrastructural framework that can be adapted to different built environments.
The geometric surface is based on Barcelona´s Eixample grid to test the first logics of this system, since the urban fabric is already ordered and repetitive. Eventually, the urban system will attempt to adapt to more complex (uncontrolled) urban landscapes.
Resources are prioritized in the morphology of this neighbourhood, setting up cyclic loops of energy, water and waste.
Based on the geometry of a hyperbolic paraboloid, the neighbourhood is arranged as a compact and integrated urban system whitin itself. Such geometry can be applied to various environments (weather conditions, urban fabric, local restrictions…). A logic of emergence based on the repetition and manipulation of a modular system.
Based on solar analysis and program distribution, the masterplan is setup according to proximity relationships.
The location of program along the site responds to time/distance relationships. All programs are connected through a green landscape, which serves as farm fields, interaction spaces and at the southern tip a solar collector field.
The residential clusters operate as adaptable modules, where the basic unit is defined as 5 x 3 meters section, varying in depth to adapt to different building configurations. Each building will change height and depth according to light penetration and visibility studies. Each module has a circulation and mechanical systems´ core, optimizing both supply and recollection of resources/disposals, providing thus the infrastructural loop to create closed cycles.
Residential circulations become another possibility for human interaction: a system of staircases and pathways connecting each residential unit to the whole. Different levels of permeability are achieved through the use of screens and voids, allowing for light access and intimacy. Below rests the city…. the old city.
Milling the desert
Geometry
As the city is located in an arid climate, conditions in the surface can be really strong. In order to avoit that, the city is created underground, so that a fresh microclimate can be created. Desalinating sea water and filtrating solar exposure, food production can be guaranteed.
The geometry of the city is created from a rectangle. There is a public attraction point in each one of the vertices:
V1: Industry / Water purification / Waste management
V2: Primary + secundary education / Leisure
V3: Administration / University / Cultural
V4: Market / Sports centre / Hospital
There is an external conection that reaches the exterior from each vertice, working as public space as well as conection.
C1: Sea: Desalinization plat / Auditorium
C2: Car parking / Solar-eolic tower
C3: Train station / Solar eolic tower
C4: Pedestrian access
Housing and tertiary working (offices & shops) are located near and in between these nodes. Meanwhile, fields for food production are located around the city, creating a green ring that also works as a big park.
By general law, housing and offices will be always profit two opposite orientations (north-south, east-west) in order to have good ventilation. In addition, facades work as shadow devices and the fact of being underground avoids direct sun exposure and high temperatures.
Energy production
Sun radiation heatens the air below the glass-skin, which acts as a big hot air colector. Hot air is lighter than cold air, so it goes up the chimney. After reaching the turbines, kinetic energy is created, which will be transformed into electric energy thanks to an alternator. After this use, clean air is expelled again to the atmosphere.
These two towers also act like transport conections, because they work as a train station and a car-parking. People will change scale in this nodes, to get down and enter in the city scale.
Secondary energy will be produced using waves energy, biomass energy and from burning the waste that canot be neither reused or recycled.
Transport
The aim of the transportation system is to have some external conections in the edges of the city, that will act as main scale-changing nodes. This avoids private transportation issues, as the compacity allows easy movement walking or by bicycle. However, a radial transportation ring is conceived to make goods, food or people transportation easier.
The Future of Suburbs – analysis (2)
This project asks to design a system for a city for 10,000 people in 30 hectares. Even though we are not dealing with a specific site, there is a relationship that is established between the proposed site, the existing Downtown and the country. The goal of 10,000 people will be met within the specified area, but the project will unequivocally address questions that deal with relationships that happen outside of the specified area of the site.
Horizontal relationships:
Vertical relationships:
- All buildings will be on pilotis in order to lift the new construction above the existing houses so that they can become stores, museums, offices and government buildings.
- Public gardens will be sandwiched between the new residences and will be of two kids: open and closed to the environment (depending on the specific climate conditions). In both cases they will act as interior courtyards, letting in Sun light throughout the year. They will extend vertically becoming green walls.
- The new residences will be located on top of the pilotis. Each apartment will have a view to an interior garden.
30ha site. design sketches
Next Round…
using these initial sketch diagrams and rules – we have taken a more precise subject to drive the project design. Maintaining the programmatic relationships in our initial investigations, we have decided to use use 3 key factors to drive the layout/ design. Hydrology (collection, filtration, retention, and re-use) Mobility, Programmatic Diversity. Together they are moulded together with a inverted topography where citizens can easily move through the neighbourhood, and building typologies incorporating multiple ground planes.
Hydrological System: Using artificial wetlands, solar aquatic biofiltration greenhouses, rainwater harvesting, green roofs, and reed beds to create an ”ecosystem” that embodies the idea of collection, filtration, retention, and re-use.
Guidelines: 2nd round for the outline of the design guidelines. Emphasis in optimizing the hydrological system and integrating it with the urban morphology
Density/ Zoning: Percentages of site to be used for the various functions (cultivated, built, natural)
Plans: Using the guidelines, a series of plans were generated to understand the diverse schemes possible for the site.
Plan: General layout of the plan we are planning to use to for the site. Taken from the series of options outlined above
Early sketch perspective: Adding all the ecological systems and basic geometry, we generated a perspective viewed from a wetland park
Early sketch perspective: After generating the sketch image – is this what we want? is this our goal? Image used a basis to critique and reconsider our own objectives for the urban scheme
Geometric Study: Going down in scale, we are investigating the idea of inverted topography and how it can help us layout a more dynamic design that incorporates the issues of mobility, programmatic diversity and ecology all in one.
Posted in RS1. Emergent Territories Tagged design, Hydrology, mobility, programmatic diversity, sketches Leave a comment
Generic Symbiosis
Having too much people in a limited territory becomes a problem of density. In this case, however, the opposite happens: a vast and generic field, no topographic constrains; 10,000 people in 300 ha. How to occupy the territory? How to give value to every part of the land? And, most importantly, how to generate human interaction?
As guiding principles, we believe all energy in the neighborhood should come from renewable resources. Also, people interaction is a key issue, insisting on the possibility of human interaction as a justice and responsability detonators: THE POSSIBILTY OF DEMOCRATIC SPACE; through occupying the public space, people will feel commited to their neighbourhood and among themselves.
Given all the activities that happen in a city/neighborhood according to the Hyperhabitat research, our aim is to accommodate those that have a closer relationship (space, time) in an inner belt, generating a more concentrated and dense center. Such strategy would allow more open space for food production and green areas in general.
Since the pedestrian is the main subject of this neighborhood, each activity is accommodated in a walking distance (400-800 m). Different walking patterns are studied to establish the most efficient one.
Studying the daily, weekly and monthly typical schedules, there appear to be gaps and time losses that could be better used for leisure/personal time. Technology has brought a new time distribution, where flexibility and simultaneity set up new figures: Working possibility while riding public transport, sending/receiving data in a portable device releases the limitations of an office space/schedule.
As a first and schematic approach, we set up a geometry around which some of the program could start to develop, offering always the most amount of green space and a low scale, horizontal configuration. Buildings would be from 4 to 8 stories, with commercial spaces on the ground floor to have activity all day long.
By proposing closed loop cycles for energy, water and waste, we attempt to create a self sufficient community, as well as an efficient and low carbon emission masterplan.
Going back to the first Garden-City theorists (Ebenezer Howard, Le Corbusier, Buckminster Fuller, Jane Jacobs, Lewis Mumford…), how much of the ideas and abstactions could now be applied? Technology and social behaviours have shifted, environmental values are now a key issue in any political agenda. What can we recover from those first pioneers? Where to take it even further?
A place designed FOR the people. Avoid car circulation and parking. The urban fabric is composed of elevated pathways that create multilayered connectivity… interaction.
People going to the park VS. The patk giong to the people.
Underground possibilities for vehicular circulation, releasing the ground space for pedestrian use. Overlay of networks.
What if a water body (river, channel…) could connect visually and phisically all the neighborhood, serving as a transportation network, energy resource, weather improving device and irrigation system? Water is a primal source of life, why not celebrate it?
Setting up urban programs, looking for the appropiate relationships in terms of proximities, orientation, interconnectivity. Land use is not limited to one activity. One program dissolves into the other, creating a more flexible and dynamic environment.
Posted in RS1. Emergent Territories Tagged democratic, energy, garden city, generic, green, symbiosis Leave a comment
The Future of Suburbs – analysis (1)
Suburbs can be divided into three distinct areas: Green Pockets, Roads/Infrastructure, and Built Residential.
Ideas to pursue:
- Green pockets currently divided up into small private backyards will be joined and converted into communal green pockets that will serve as public recreational parks and, where possible, local farm land where some of the food for the community will be grown.
- Roads/infrastructure area currently takes up too much space of the site. Bike paths will be created in some of the smaller roads, contributing to the overall green area. Public transit (trains) systems will be implemented on the major roads, operating mostly to and from the Downtown and the areas of suburbs that are even further away
- Built residential area will highly densified, with the idea of keeping as much as possible of the existing structure, from an environmental point of view (construction uses up a lot of energy), an economical perspective ( demolishing costs money already), and a historical mind set (it will stimulate a local identity and remind the population of their past, while at the same time creating a new, unique typology)
Posted in RS1. Emergent Territories Tagged built residential, future, green pockets, roads/infrastructure, suburbs Leave a comment