Concept art by Doug Williams

A look at ways that people are suggesting that we make our cities better.

Brookings

April 14, 2010 —

Host: Why the focus on metros?

Bruce Katz: Metropolitan areas in the United States and here in Europe really concentrate all the assets that drive prosperity and will drive economic recovery. So the top 100 metropolitan areas in the United States — these are the big cities and the suburbs that surround them — sit on only 12 percent of the land mass, they house two-thirds of the population, they generate about three-quarters of the gross domestic product.

But when it comes to the assets that drive prosperity, they’re about 94 percent of venture capital in the United States, they’ve got all the talented workers, those with graduate degrees, the engineers, the scientists. They’re our freight hubs, rail and air, and they have that quality of place that really attracts, particularly, the younger generation. So they pack a really powerful punch. But the United States tends to think of itself as a network of small towns. It really doesn’t think of itself as a powerful metro nation. So to a large extent the country nor the states, because we are a union of states still in many respects, don’t really leverage the assets in these places. Take me to the article

Project for Public Spaces

Transformative Times: Earth Day 1970, Placemaking, and Sustainability Today

40 years ago this week, I coordinated the first Earth Day celebration in New York City. The city had never seen anything like it.

We were laying the groundwork for a new way of looking at the world—expanding the public’s thinking beyond the limited vision that characterized fields like industry, economics, science and politics to embrace a much larger view of the whole planet.

Earth Day transformed New York—literally. To draw attention to protecting the environment in cities, we turned Fifth Avenue into a “place” by eliminating traffic from 59^th Street to Union Square.  People poured out of offices and apartments to walk down the middle of the most important street in New York on a beautiful spring day. (This was five years before I founded Project for Public Spaces, but you can see the idea was already germinating.)

It was a lot of fun for everyone, but also a potent symbol that this new movement could bring great, positive changes to our lives.  And ideas born on the first Earth Day are beginning to come to fruition today, with the closing of portions of Broadway and the New York City Summer Streets Program which PPS helped bring about.

Union Square Park was the site of the main Earth Day celebration with an enormous stage set up for speakers, prayers and music. Booths promoting ecological awareness spread throughout the park. Bliss and the promise of a better world were in the air, along with whiffs of pot in a few isolated corners.

On Sunday March 8th 2010 Jeremy Dean made New york City history by taking his converted Hummer entitled Futurama out for a spin. Entering Central park in New York at 69th St. and Central Park West (at the old Tavern on the Green location) Dean had his hand crafted vehicle pulled by two white horse aptly named Duke and Diesel.

Dean has taken a gas guzzling 8 mile-per-gallon HUMMER H2, a symbol of extravagance, and converted it into a working horse drawn cart. Dean has pimped it out with silver chrome, working LED lights and a booming audio and video system. He calls this piece the CEO Stagecoach.

Location View: Jeremy Dean, CEO Stagecoach, Central Park, New York, NY. 2010
videographer Gareth Paul Cox, editor Diego del Sol
video courtesy of {CTS} creative thriftshop, New York.

to view more on this project please visit: http://www.creativethriftshop.com

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 Lilypad concept

I have always been a fan of looking towards the future, and I especially love looking at the future, or potential future of Cities, enter the Lilypad, brainchild of  Vincent Callebaut Architectures, the Lilypad is a design for an auto-sufficient amphibious city.  The designer takes the view that we humans are not going to be able to get our act together fast enough to stop the impending Climate Crisis. According to more conservative forecasts of the GIEC (Intergovernmental group on the evolution of the climate) the ocean is likely to rise by about a meter in the 21st century, leaving approximately 50 million people to be evacuated from the low lying areas that will be affected.

Lilypad in harbour

Lilypad, a prototype of auto-sufficient amphibious city

Whereas the Netherlands and the United Arabic Emirates « fatten » their beach with billion of euros to build their short-living polders and their protective dams for a decade, the project «Lilypad» deals with a tenable solution to the water rising! Actually, facing the worldwide ecological crisis, this floating Ecopolis has the double objective not only to widen sustainabely in offshore the territories of the most developed countries such as the Monaco principality but above all to grant the housing of future climatic refugees of he next submerged ultra-marine territories such as the Polynesian atolls. New biotechnological prototype of ecologic resilience dedicated to the nomadism and the urban ecology in the sea, Lilypad travels on the water line of the oceans, from the equator to the poles following the marine streams warm ascending of the Gulf Stream or cold descending of the Labrador.

It is a true amphibian half aquatic and half terrestrial city, able to accommodate 50,000 inhabitants and inviting the biodiversity to develop its fauna and flora around a central lagoon of soft water collecting and purifying the rain waters. This artificial lagoon is entirely immersed ballasting thus the city. It enables to live in the heart of the subaquatic depths. The multifunctional programming is based on three marinas and three mountains dedicated respectively to the work, the shops and the entertainments. The whole set is covered by a stratum of planted housing in suspended gardens and crossed by a network of streets and alleyways with organic outline. The goal is to create a harmonious coexistence of the couple Human / Nature and to explore new modes of living the sea by building with fluidity collective spaces in proximity, overwhelming spaces of social inclusion suitable to the meeting of all the inhabitants – denizen or foreign-born, recent or old, young or aged people.

The floating structure in « branches » of the Ecopolis is directly inspired of the highly ribbed leave of the great lilypad of Amazonia Victoria Regia increased 250 times. Coming from the family of Nympheas, this aquatic plant with exceptional plasticity was discovered by the German botanist Thaddeaus Haenke and dedicated to the Queen Victoria of England in the 19th Century. The double skin is made of polyester fibres covered by a layer of titanium dioxide (TiO2) like an anatase which by reacting to the ultraviolet rays enable to absorb the atmospheric pollution by photocatalytic effect. Entirely autosufficient, Lilypad takes up the four main challenges launched by the OECD in March 2008: climate, biodiversity, water and health. It reached a positive energetic balance with zero carbone emission by the integration of all the renewable energies (solar, thermal and photovoltaic energies, wind energy, hydraulic, tidal power station, osmotic energies, phytopurification, biomass) producing thus durably more energy that it consumes! True biotope entirely recyclable, this floating Ecopolis tends thus towards the positive eco-accountancy of the building in the oceanic ecosystems by producing and softening itself the oxygen and the electricity, by recycling the CO2 and the waste, by purifying and softening biologically the used waters and by integrating ecological niches, aquaculture fields and biotic corridors on and under its body to meet its own food needs.

To reply to the mutation of the migratory flows coming from the hydroclimatic factors, Lilypad join thus on the mode of anticipation particular to the Jules Verne’s literature, the alternative possibility of a multicultural floating Ecopolis whose metabolism would be in perfect symbiosis with the cycles of the nature. It will be one of the major challenges of the 21st Century to create an international convention inventing new special means to accommodate the environmental migrants by recognizing their rights and obligations. Political and social challenge, the urban sustainable development must more than ever enter in resonance worldly with the human sustainable development!

The Danish architectural firm 3XN is designing a pavillion for the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art with the intent to show cutting edge possibilities at the meeting point between sustainable and intelligent materials. The resulting pavilion is built of bio composites and has integrated intelligence that interacts with its users and surroundings.

Sustainability does not equal architectural compromise

The pavilion is called ‘Learning from Nature’ and everything about the pavilion is literally inspired by nature itself: The biological cycle of nature is the fundamental basis for the shape, the materials and the dynamic energy generation. The pavilion is shaped as a Moebius band to symbolize the biological cycle; and the properties of the construction are very like those of nature – for example, the pavilion has a coating of nanoparticles that helps clean the surfaces and clean the air. Additionally, the pavilion is built of biodegradable materials; and as for energy, the pavilion is 100 percent self-sufficient.

Kim Herforth Nielsen, Principal of 3XN, comments on the project:

– The Pavilion has given us the opportunity to showcase the possibilities which exist in building with sustainable and intelligent materials. Our objective has been to show that Green Architecture can be dynamic and active.  We often think that we need to minimize use of resources at all costs. Instead of focusing on consuming the least amount of energy, we need to focus on producing and using energy and materials in a more intelligent way than is the case today.

The development of the pavilion is a natural continuation of 3XNs extensive focus on new technologies and materials; a focus that led to the establishment of a unique in-house Research & Development unit in 2007. Since then, 3XN has built an international reputation as one of the most visionary and ambitious architecture firms in the field.

’Learning from Nature’ can be seen at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark, until October.

Rubleovo-Arkhangelskoe represents a new town, which will be built 2 km away from the northwestern part of Moscow. This project is the largest both in Russia and Europe. It envisages construction of the residential units for more than 100.000 people, occupying the territory with the total area of 430 ha.

http://www.icube3d.co.uk

http://www.cmi-development.ru/en/pub/proekti/ryblevo-arhangelskoe.html

Ground Level At Festival Sation

So if you are a regular you potentially noticed that its been a while since I’ve done any real posting. Lately I have been concentrating most of my efforts on a studio project I have been working on. We’ve (My Group and I) been putting together a proposal for the implementation of a Light Rail Transit (LRT) line down Avenue Du Parc in Montreal and I have been working on a lot of the 3D images.

I’ve also been working over theories on density and its measurements in preparation to discuss potential thesis topics with my adviser in the next couple of weeks and have been finding the concept of density a bit of a quandary when it applies to Urban planning. I mean sure we all think of density in terms of the number of people within a certain area, but is that really an adequate measure for density. Highly built downtown areas can end up measured as having very low density if you have a downtown area that few people actually live in.

Should building volumes be our measure of density? what is the total amount of built space within a certain area, and how much volume does it take up? This could certainly give a better view on what density feels like to the pedestrian, but then there is the issue of neighbourhoods with similar volumes but much higher population levels. Take a small apartment building in Korea and a building here in Canada, in Korea there are likely to be twice as many people in the building.

Until now density has been a fairly loose measurement, it has been ok for statistical purposes and when considered as an abstract number but as we move into a future where compact and efficient cities are the new goal, we are going to need to take a closer look at this measurement.

Critical looks at the future of city building.

The Washington Post

In Va., Vision of Suburbia at a Crossroads

Targeting Cul-de-Sacs, Rules Now Require Through Streets in New Subdivisions

Virginia is taking aim at one of the most enduring symbols of suburbia: the cul-de-sac.

“Cul-de-sacs are the safest places in America to live,” said Mike Toalson, executive vice president of the Home Builders Association of Virginia, which opposes the new rules. “The first lots sold are often on the cul-de-sacs because they are safe.” As for developments with single entrances and exits, Toalson said, such configurations ensure that all traffic is local, neighbors watch out for each other and speeds are kept down. “Crooks look for multiple exits.”

Prince William County residents Brian and Donna Goff chose to raise their children in a cul-de-sac life. They live on Vixen Court, one of seven cul-de-sacs in Bridlewood Manor, a subdivision in Bristow. “You’ve got a family atmosphere. It stays quiet here,” said Brian Goff, 42. The couple, who have two young children, have lived in the cul-de-sac for nine years.

The changes come as cash-strapped states and localities can no longer afford the inexorable widening of secondary roads that are overburdened with traffic from the subdivisions, strip malls, schools and office buildings that feed into them. The system forces drivers to enter these traffic-choked roads to go even 50 yards or so to the neighborhood coffeehouse or elementary school. North Carolina and Portland, Ore., are moving on similar fronts.  Read More.

NYTimes

Reinventing America’s Cities: The Time Is Now

THE country has fallen on hard times, but those of us who love cities know we have been living in the dark ages for a while now. We know that turning things around will take more than just pouring money into shovel-ready projects, regardless of how they might boost the economy. Windmills won’t do it either. We long for a bold urban vision.

With their crowded neighborhoods and web of public services, cities are not only invaluable cultural incubators; they are also vastly more efficient than suburbs. But for years they have been neglected, and in many cases forcibly harmed, by policies that favored sprawl over density and conformity over difference.

Such policies have caused many of our urban centers to devolve into generic theme parks and others, like Detroit, to decay into ghost towns. They have also sparked the rise of ecologically unsustainable gated communities and reinforced economic disparities by building walls between racial, ethnic and class groups.

Correcting this imbalance will require a radical adjustment in how we think of cities and government’s role in them. At times it will mean destruction rather than repair. And it demands listening to people who have spent the last decade imagining and in many cases planning for more sustainable, livable and socially just cities. Read More

Viet Nam Net

French-Vietnamese artist unveils city of the future

An overseas Vietnamese artist’s vision for a cultural city of the future may be one step closer to fruition as many local architects praised it as a bold and creative vision that reflects his whole-hearted love of his home nation.

Stemming from his ambition to embark on a vast project to honor the source of the nation and symbolise Vietnam’s unique culture, Tran Van Liem, a French painter of Vietnamese origin, has spent 20 years developing the plans for Van Lang City. After living abroad for more than 30 years, the artist returned to Vietnam at the end of 2008 to deliver a lecture on the project.

The basis of Van Lang City’s design is rooted in Oriental philosophy, contained by a circle measuring 1,800m in diameter. The city would be capable of accommodating about 1 million residents and would possess eight, spoke-like boulevards leading from the rim of the circle to a central plaza.

Two of the city’s major landmarks are the “Thien tu thap” and “Hoang tu thap” towers, dedicated to Lac Long Quan and Au Co – the legendary ancestor of the Vietnamese nation. The tower dedicated to Lac Long Quan, distinguished by its square foundations, symbolises Yang-Heaven, whilst the tower dedicated to Au Co with circular foundations would represent Yin-Earth. Read More

Los Angeles Times

New Capitol Visitor Center: not a capital idea

Here at Urban Neighbourhood we came to a similar conclusion

With a half-a-trillion dollars of stimulus spending on the way and real-estate developers mired in what could turn out to be a decade-long slump, the federal government has emerged in recent months as this country’s only viable patron of large-scale construction, at least for the foreseeable future.

So here’s an idea: How about taking a careful, critical look at Washington’s recent architectural track record?

A good place to start is D.C.’s new Capitol Visitor Center. In fact, when it comes to the aesthetic and financial perils of government-sponsored architecture, you could hardly invent a more perfect cautionary tale than the one embodied by this grandiose complex sunk into the east side of Capitol Hill. Read More

Car sharing is becoming a much more popular way of having a car in the city. People are trading in the maintenance and costs of being an occasional driver for the convenience of having access to a car when they need it and letting someone else or some other company worry about it when they don’t.

“Carsharing is a model of car rental where people rent cars for short periods of time, often by the hour. They are attractive to customers who make only occasional use of a vehicle, as well as others who would like occasional access to a vehicle of a different type than they use day-to-day.” From Wiki

There have been a couple companies that have offered this service till now; Zipcar, Autoshare, CommunAuto, StattAuto, and others. Up until this point Car sharing has been considered a bit of a fringe industry with most people turning up their noses at the idea of ‘sharing a car.’ That is likely to change as a number of major car companies have started eyeing car sharing as a way to find profit in times that have been less then kind to the Car companies.

The Hertz Corporation which is considered to be the worlds largest general use rental company recently announced that it has decided to get into the car sharing business as a method of increasing revenue and activity at its non airport locations in particular.  The company has termed the new division ‘Connect by Hertz ‘ and will be the first global car sharing organisation. You could join in Toronto but still have access to a car share in Atlanta.

“Hertz’s vision is to offer total mobility solutions and car sharing is a logical step for the Company. In line with Hertz’s long term growth plans, Connect by Hertz supports Hertz’s diversified business model by providing best-in-class transportation solutions across the spectrum of customer needs,” commented Mark P. Frissora, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of The Hertz Corporation. “In addition to being environmentally friendly, Connect by Hertz cars can save members thousands of dollars a year in vehicle ownership costs and, by leveraging Hertz’s established infrastructure, we’re the first major car rental company to be able to offer members the first global car sharing program. With aggressive plans for expansion, Connect by Hertz has all the elements to become a successful and profitable part of Hertz.” S

No matter what your opinion on Hertz,  the company’s entry into an industry that has up till now  been dominated by small environmentally conscious co-ops and independent operators signals that the car sharing business is moving from a fringe service to the mainstream.

Foster & Partners and Aston Martin

Two blue chippers Aston Martin and Foster + Partners raked in a not-much-needed $38,000 (£25,000) and a first-prize award along with Capoco Design for re-jiggering London’s famous double decker bus, the Routemaster. Read More…

The Design By Capoco

Cross Section of Interior Configuration

A new-generation eco-friendly driver-and-conductor Routemaster, which could make a return to regular service. The new bus, which would be emission-free and have a hydrogen-fuelled engine, was backed in 2007 by Boris Johnson. S

As the end of this year rolls around and I realise that I have only about one more semester to choose a direction for my thesis proposal I have been keeping an eye on some other projects. The first one to make mention on here was the Miniature Activism post and today brings another. While still in an embryonic state, A Stage For The City is an interesting concept for collaboration and public consultation while exploring ideas in public space.

A stage for the city
The use of urban space fused together with the access of technology. This blog is an Architectural Design Thesis for Adam Lee, Leeds Metropolitan University. The idea is that I will post my design research and development allowing Internet collaboration, acting as an “open sketch book”. This will be submitted as part of my overall research.

Ørestads Boulevard 76, DK-2300 Copenhagen S

3XN has shot another bit of news our way this past week, Ørestad College has been nominated for the 2009 Mies van der Rohe Award.  The firm issued a press release explaining the purpose of the building and provides an explanation on the firm’s portfolio.

Ørestad Gymnasium (upper secondary school) creates a framework for cross-disciplinary and an extended use of IT-based learning by revolutionizing educational space in a structure without traditional classrooms With a profile of media, communication and culture studies, and providing wireless Internet and laptops for all students it soon got the knick-name “the Virtual Gymnasium.”

Four boomerang shaped storey decks rotate in relation to each other like the shutter of a camera. They form the superstructure; the overall framework of the college, and provide space for the college’s four study zones. Each zone is on one level, providing organisational flexibility, with the option of micro adjustment to create different spaces, learning environments and group sizes. The rotation of the storey decks projects a part of each deck into the high central hall. This part is the so called X-zone; a spatial expression of the colleges’ ambition to promote interdisciplinary expertise between study zones with physical and visual links.

The storey decks are open towards a central core, where a broad main staircase winds its way upwards to the roof terrace. The main staircase is the heart of college educational and social life; the primary connection up an down, but also a place to stay, watch and be seen. Three ‘mega columns’ form the primary load bearing system, supplemented by a number of smaller columns positioned according to structural requirement, not as part of a regular grid. As a result, each floor has few permanent elements and can be laid out and rearranged almost completely at will. The superstructure is supplemented by a series of newly developed ‘room furniture’, which accommodate the need for the flexible and temporary room arrangements and learning environments required by varying group sizes – from one on one to an entire cohort.

The rotated decks are mirrored in the facades. Due to their rotation, the decks create openings double- and triple high while drawing lines on the façade. As a rule, the glass is smooth with the deck fronts, but on each floor, one façade is withdrawn to create an outdoor space. These outdoor spaces are connected from ground to roof. In front of the glass facades, a series of coloured semi-transparent glass louvers can open or close to protect from the sun, while adding dashes of colour to the indoor environment.

Ørestad College was built in immediate continuation of new legislation in the Danish educational sector in 2005 and is an educational building remarkable for its complete absence of class rooms in the traditional sense. At present, the gymnasium is the most-applied-for in Denmark.

Best building i Scandinavia 2007
Nominated for the Mies van der Rohe Award 2009
Forum AID Award 2008 for Best Architecture in the Nordic Region

The building is an intriguing take on an educational facility with its free form design and open concept. I must admit I find it a little hard to imagine what kind of classes could be held in this type of building.  I’m curious if it functions as a teaching area or if it functions as more of a study space.  As a student I would definitely enjoy studying in this type of building, but I also have to wonder whether noise from my fellow students would be an issue.  This building is a forward thinking design that reinterprets the way we look at study spaces.

If any of our readers has visited, or better yet attends Ørestad College we would love to hear what it is like to use this building! Send us an email or comment below!’