Urban Neighbourhood

Summer Over Downtown Montreal

With spring upon us its nice to remember what Montreal is like in the summer some times. Place Ville Marie, the Sun Life Building, the Cathedrale Marie Reine Du Monde, the Queen Elizabeth hotel, Gare Centrale and the Canadian National Railways building make up the view.

Visions of An Organic Future

What if we lived in a green future? Cities that didn’t just have green space, but cities that were green space. Trees and plants make up the structure of the city instead of concrete and plastics.

Luc Schuiten thinks up cities using Archiborescence – the designs are cities that are grown and tended. Prairie parks, houses that hide under leaves, and skyscraper trees.

The Vegetal City is conceived as a progression in time and space, through Luc Schuiten’s eye. It takes us on the path of this thoughts about Mother Nature’s presence as a model of a new way of building named by him “archiborescence”.

For three decades, this eco-visionary has been imagining and realizing homes, urban landscapes, cities… inspired by all he has been able to observe in natural environments.

The website opens the door to a harmonious future, possible through the modifications of our behaviours in our living environments. Nature is no longer considered as an inexhaustible manna from heaven but rather as an ally, likely to cooperate in edification of a long lasting society.

Insula do vaso fálico / virtual roman insula

3d virtual reconstruction of the roman insula in the roman city of Conimbriga (Portugal). Más información: http://italicaromana.blogspot.com

The Rebirth of Fenwick Tower

Fenwick tower is getting an overhaul, the structure has been a part of the Halifax skyline since 1971 when the vision was to live in airy luxury, but the developer ran into financial difficulties.  A tower inspired by Le Corbusier that became the punching bag for the argument against development and intensification in downtown Halifax.

The website of its new owner Templeton Properties tells the tale:

Fenwick Tower is like no other building in Halifax.  The history of the building has become so rich that the building itself is talked about like an old friend. Fenwick Tower is an icon in the true sense of the word. Like many icons, the lines between truth and fiction have blurred to create a legendary story that is bigger than life and becomes a proud part of your living experience.

A web cam, a Wikipedia page, and being the subject of many news stories, Fenwick is a modern piece of Halifax’s history and culture.

From when the doors opened in 1971, the legend of Fenwick began.  Originally designed as a luxury apartment building, the developer faced financial problems halfway into the project and was forced to sell.

Dalhousie University purchased the incomplete building, finished the development, and offered Fenwick Place apartments to mature and married students, a better alternative to dorm-living. For 38 years Fenwick served as home to thousands of students, many who have moved on to become the leaders in our community.

n 2009 Templeton Properties purchased Fenwick Place and, following the community’s lead, officially re-named it Fenwick Tower.  Finally, Fenwick Tower has come full circle and will be open to the public as it was originally intended.

The developer used dotmocracy which bills itself as a large group decision making  process, and it looks like it turned out some pretty great ideas.

Dotmocracy is an established facilitation method for collecting and prioritizing ideas among a large number of people.

It is an equal opportunity & participatory group decision-making process.

Participants write down ideas and apply dots under each idea to show which ones they prefer. The final result is a graph-like visual representation of the group’s collective preferences.

We’re pleased to share our vision for Fenwick Tower, and exciting plans for the future redevelopment of this landmark structure in the heart of Halifax.

Since its opening in 1971, Fenwick Tower has gained an iconic status as the tallest building within Atlantic Canada. With this redevelopment initiative we will transition both the existing tower and adjacent lands to align with the future development standards of the Halifax Regional Municipality. The Result being a revitalised urban community.

The design of the new tower adds a glass shell to the existing tower and fills in the property at street level with an addition that reshapes the building address Fenwick Street instead of standing back from it the way that it does now. There will be two additional 10 and 8 story buildings added so to give the building a less sudden effect on the skyline and intensify the property. Another major design element is the new pedestrian corridor that meanders around the bases of the three buildings creating a meandering walkway that encourages you to explore. Restaurants, shops and public art. The vision is for a network of local businesses and to connect the neighbourhoods that encircle the property.

Shineh Dong From Across the Teahwa

View across the foot bridge over the Teahwa River in Ulsan (울산) South Korea looking towards old downtown. Towards the new Exordium mixed commercial residential towers. Photo by Jason Teal. www.jasonteale.com

Propping Up the Past

Retaining bars hold up the facade of a historic property in Halifax NS at 1576 Barrington St. in Halifax NS.

A View From a Wave: The Aqua Tower

This spring ‘Aqua’ an 82 story mixed-use residential tower in the Lakeshore East development in downtown Chicago will open for business. The tower can be found on the 200 block of North Columbus drive in an area that is pretty dense with other skyscrapers.

The building itself is a relatively simple glass box structure that isn’t much to shout about, however the building is wrapped with a series of balconies that flow in and out of the tower similar to waves and the striated limestone outcroppings that are often found in the topography of the Great Lakes region. The Architect Jeanne Gang, cited the the limestone as an inspiration for the balconies.

In some case the balconies stretch out as far as 12 feet from the building itself to allow residents to capture views of the city around and below them. While designed to look good and differentiate the building from the other glass boxes the balconies were refined to maximize solar shading.

The building also has a number of other efficient features that include rainwater collection systems and energy efficient lighting. The tower base also has a green roof.

In an increasingly dense city like Chicago, views from a new tower must be negotiated between existing buildings. Aqua tower considers criteria such as views, solar shading and function to derive a vertical system of contours that gives the structure its sculptural form. Its vertical topography is defined by its outdoor terraces that gradually change in plan over the length of the tower. These terraces offer a strong connection to the outdoors and allow inhabitants to occupy the building facade and city simultaneously. S

The roof terraces added an extra element of complication to construction. As each wave is different, so too is each floor plate in the tower. (what you didn’t think that they just stuck them on did you?) This made the construction process more complicated then your standard glass box. The building has also had some other economic complications, originally Strategic Hotels & Resorts was to have been a major tenant with a plan to purchase 15 floors in the building to expand the neighbouring Fairmont Hotel across the street, but the good ol recession put a stop to that and the company cancelled its contact in 2008. Sales of the residential properties have good good however and on the Aqua website there are only about 23 residential units up for sale. S

Architect: STUDIO GANG ARCHITECTS
Architect of Record: Loewenberg & Associates
Owner: Magellan Development
Program: Hotel and Residential High-rise with retail and commercial spaces
Size: 1.9 m SF including parking, 823 feet high

Robo Building

Spotted at an Art show in Seoul, a concept for the next big piece of starchitecture. Photo by Nathan Hudon

The Story Of New Songdo

The City of New Songdo or Songdo New City as it is known in Korea is the country’s bid to take city building into the future. City officials say that it will be a “compact, smart and green city,” at a press conference covered by The Korean Herald. Songdo is being built on reclaimed land in the western port city of Incheon, which is currently known more for the international airport, (which incidentally is rated one of the best in the world to fly through, and I can attest to from experience) S. New Songdo wants to change that and become known as a compact sustainable city that provides all necessary services in close proximity.

To achieve this goal the city will have facilities for business, health care, education, leisure, shopping and high tech industries all within a five kilometre radius. In the central city, residents will use bicycles or public transportation rather than cars to get around according to city officials, of course the six lane roads that form the block structure of the city and my experience with living in ‘green Ulsan’ (and its massive petrochemical complex) makes me wonder just how likely this assertion will be.

“(In the compact city,) all functions are located within the city center, unlike conventional cities which have a business complex in the center and the residential area in the suburbs,” Incheon Mayor Ahn Sang-soo said.

New Songdo residents may work in the 68-floor Northeast Asia Trade Tower that should be completed this year, or the 151-floor Incheon Tower set to to be completed in 2014. The city has a Central Park, which is Korea’s first park to have a seawater filled canal. Student in the city will go to “Songdo Global Campus,” which will host foreign universities like North Carolina State University and the State University of New York.

Incheon University Campus Proposal

The city is being wired by Cisco and will set up to allow residents to communicate through a variety of wired and wireless portals and devices based on ubiquitous computing technologies.

“The ‘smart’ city means a city equipped with ‘ubiquitous’ infrastructure that manages and control the city’s functions automatically at an optimal time. This enables the cost-effective management of the city,” Ahn said.

To learn more about New Songdo check out the article in The Korean Herald, or if you are interested in taking a look at the housing and office space options in New Songdo Check out our article on The Prau, or on The # First World. You can also take a look at what they are doing with container architecture.

A 100 million square foot new city on 1,500 acres. S

The Homerizon

Looking like something out of Star Trek or some other futuristic vision the Homerizon stands 80 feet high, is off the grid and has solar panals, windmills, radiant floors, wind turbines and a cool aerodynamic shape that helps it to capture the breeze. The Homerizon is the brainchild of inventor Jean-Pierre Désmarais who sees it as a way that is easier then you think to get off the grid.  Of course at the moment that ease comes with a price tag of $3.5 to $5 million but lets not worry about that. The Homerzion.

The Pirate Ride

An entrepreneur prepares to unload his pirate ride from the back of his truck on the streets of downtown Seoul. Photo by Nathan Hudon