Japan’s Solar Shift

One thing that you can say about disasters is that they are rare opportunities to redo everything. A tabula rasa opportunity when it comes to rebuilding affected areas.

Japan is still recovering from the massive earthquake and tsunami that struck on March 11th and the nuclear crisis that it triggered.

The AFP is reporting that Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan is expected to announce Japan’s decision to continue operating nukes in order to meet the countries current power needs, but to also a mandate that would require all new homes and buildings to be outfitted with solar panels as part of the upcoming G8 Summit in France.

Of course a mandate isn’t legislation, but the construction required does present an opportunity for a solar company to step in and take advantage of the increased opportunity for demand if they can offer an efficient solar option.

The New New York City Taxi

In 2007 the Taxi and Limousine Commission of New York City brought together a group of stakeholders involved in the taxi industry in New York City. Including; taxi drivers, owner and passengers and the goal was simple, create a set of goals for the future of the taxi in New York City. A project that was aptly named “The Taxi of Tomorrow.” In 2009 the Taxi and Limousine commission issued a request for proposals to the automobile industry to design the next official taxi for the city. At present the primary vehicle in the city’s fleet is the Ford Crown Victoria. The Crown Victoria was officially discontinued by the Ford Motor Company this past spring (S) and this presents an opportunity for the city to change to a vehicle designed specifically for use as a Taxi, and through this change come up with a Taxi that is both iconic and more environmentally friendly.

The City of New York has already attempted to legislate that the city’s taxi fleet must be entirely electric or hybrid by 2012, but an federal judge overturned the legislation attempt after a suit by the Metropolitan Taxicab Board of Trade, which represented the owners of 29 fleets that control 3,500 yellow cabs, about a quarter of the fleet — said that the hybrid vehicles, which are more fuel-efficient, were not designed to withstand the heavy wear and tear that cabs must endure. S An interesting factoid about Taxis in New York City and in fact most of the rest of the world is that none of the 16 different vehicle models in the city’s 13,200 strong fleet were originally designed to be used as a taxi. All of the vehicles have been specially outfitted to be used as a taxi which will usually drive about 70,000 miles per year and see its back doors slammed around 21,000 times in the course of a year. S

“Although the city has long set standards for our taxis, we have never before worked with the auto industry to design a taxicab especially for  New York City — that is, until now,” Mayor Michael Bloomberg said.

The Taxi and Limousine Commission has culled three semi finalists from the competition; Karsan, Nissan, and Ford. Its a lucrative contract for whoever wins since “the TLC intends to select the best proposal and award an exclusive contract to sell and service taxicabs in New York for the next decade.” Take a look at the concept images and tell both us and the Taxi and Limousine Commission which one you prefer! What is in it for you? Well the prize is worth free cab rides for a year so you could be a winner!

Masdar Springs From The Desert

“The environmental ambitions of the Masdar Initiative – zero carbon and waste free – are a world first. They have provided us with a challenging design brief that promises to question conventional urban wisdom at a fundamental level. Masdar promises to set new benchmarks for the sustainable city of the future.” Norman Foster of  Foster + Partners

I remember seeing a post about Masdar in the past, back during the height of the Dubai construction orgies when it seemed like every week there was a new project coming out that was fantastic this, super-sized that!  Given that I had a bit of an anti Dubai stance, (take a look back at the Dubai tag and you will see how little attention I paid to it) I have to admit that I wrote Masdar off as just another mega project of a dubious nature. Well it seems that I am now playing catch up on this project as it is in fact being built and it is a significant chapter in the development of new sustainable cities.  My attention was re-piqued after a colleague of mine sent me a link to a New York Times article in the Critic’s Notebook about the opening of the first phase of Masdar. They also have an awesome photo slide show given that they were able to fly a photographer over there.

The New York Times takes issue with the fact that the city is at this point essentially a gated community and identity is not helped by its construction techniques.  Visitors to the city drive through the desert until they reach the blank wall of the city.  While the city wall has a function and basis in sustainable design; enabling the raised city to capture desert breezes and regulate transportation functions to its lower level.  It reinforces the perception that this is a city for elites, and not a city for every one.  Of course given that the city just opened and its first residents are only now moving in the government (who happens to be the landlord) still has time to make sure that the city houses a cross section of society.

Upon arrival to the city a visitor must leave their car at a parking garage just inside the city’s edge. All transportation functions within the city are covered by a fleet of driver less cars that navigate through a series of tunnels at ground level, below the main pedestrian level of the city 23 feet above.  Once the transportation system comes online a fleet of hundreds of personal transportation pods that have been likened to the transportation pods in 2001: A Space Oddessy will transport people and goods around the city by following the destination commands inputted by users through a simple LCD screen interface.  It’s a method of separating circulation functions that Le Corbuiser first envisioned and would have loved to employ in many of his residential projects.

The design aesthetic for the city is a combination of modernism and traditional aribic architecture.  Laboratories and office spaces are predominantly hosted in large concrete buildings that have been clad in panels of ethylene-tetrafluoroethylene. Residential buildings tend towards the traditional and appear similar to the Terra Cotta construction techniques found across the Middle East.

By way of design the city aims to tackle one of the biggest issues in the modern day Middle East; obesity. Elevators from the lower levels are tucked out of sight behind stairwells, and on the main level the only way to get around is by foot.  It’s a design response to the growing problem of obesity in the Middle East as anyone can afford to travel by car to escape the heat does so.  The city also uses traditional wind towers to funnel winds down to street level, and orients the streets at an angle to the suns trajectory in order to maximize shade. On top of all of these features the city is also aiming to be one of the first truly solar cities.

Some of the public spaces will also feature reactive architecture: international architectural firm LAVA (Laboratory for Visionary Architecture) won an international design competition for its proposal to utilize a series of giant umbrellas base on the sunflower principle that open during the day to provide shade, store heat, and then close during the night opening the public squares to the sky and releasing their stored heat.

It is impossible to see the city as anything other than visionary in the way it approaches new city building.  While the Times is correct to raise questions about its utopian purity and its creation in isolation from the real city that lives next door, the Times also ignores the fact that brand new from scratch cities is a reality for the next century.  Experts agree that in order to handle the world’s growing population at least 20 new cities will need to be constructed, predominantly in the Asia, Africa and the Middle East in order to handle the world’s growing a urban population.  In Korea New Songdo is being used as a test case for a fully wired its city, and in the middle east Masdar is most definitely a test case for a carbon neutral city that responds to the constraints of its environment.  It is entirely likely that future cities combine the lessons learned from both in their construction.

From Foster + Partner’s Website:

The Masdar Institute

The Masdar Institute (MI) is the first part of the wider Masdar City Master-plan to be realized and creates a focus for the entire programme, as well as setting the context for subsequent development. Initially, five MSc programmes will be established and as well as undertaking research with MIT, Masdar faculty members will be able to work within the Masdar Research Network. The MI campus embodies the principles and goals of the Masdar City Master-plan to create a prototypical and sustainable city, one in which residents and commuters can enjoy the highest quality of life with the lowest environmental footprint. All developments within the city are to be carbon neutral and zero waste.

The buildings are oriented to provide optimum shade and reduce cooling loads. Shaded colonnades at podium level exploit the benefits of exposed thermal mass and transitional thermal spaces are integrated to mediate between internal and external zones. Facades are designed to respond to their orientation and photovoltaic installations on every roof are combined with carefully positioned photovoltaic panels to shade streets and buildings. Green linear parks adjacent to the buildings capture cooling night-time winds, with wind gates employed to control hot winds. The ventilation strategy for the streets and night time cooling is further enhanced by wind towers and courtyards.

Pedestrian circulation is primarily at podium deck level, where a shaded route throughout the campus is provided. The buildings within MI are made up primarily of laboratories and residential accommodation, supported by a gymnasium, canteen, café, library and landscaped areas that contribute to the campus environment and forge a new destination within the city. The laboratories – and the interactive laboratory space – are at the heart of the development and offer the optimum flexible, column free space possible within the strict loading and vibration criteria. The residential element further integrates the principles of the master-plan and provides one, two and three bedroom apartments in low-rise, high-density blocks. These complete the master-plan street-scape and urban form, while acting as a social counterpoint to the intense laboratory environment. Source

The Red Chair

Concept art by Doug Williams

The 3D Plan View

From military application to building design competition, one of the latest innovations in presenting geographic and building data are 3D plans created by Zebra Imaging. A constant issue when it comes to presenting design idea`s is how to have others see them the way you do. How do you have an average person conceptualize how the design is supposed to look embedded within the city. Well there is help using new technology from Zebra Imaging.

Zebra’s holographic images are unlike anything you have ever seen. The image literally “floats” in the air. You will be tempted to reach into the image with the expectation that you will touch the object being presented. You can move around the image to view it from a wide variety of angles with no special glasses or other viewing aids. S

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.

Robo Building

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

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.

Washington 2054

What does the city of the future look like?

James Clyne gives us a look at his vision for the future with some stills from Minority Report.  The concept for what Washington DC looks like in the background cityscape is a series of hyperstructures that nestle up to the Patomac.  It look green and shiny and it is hard to really grasp the amount of structure/infrastructure required for a  city/building of this scope. The it’s a future that is any developer’s most glorious dream for construction prospects over the next 44 years.

Stay tuned for other artists visions of what the future brings in the weeks to come.

The Urban Umbrella

Another young south Korean, Young-Hwan Choi has come up with an innovative and winning proposal for protecting pedestrians on our city streets. The last one involved plasma lasers and other high tech futurism, but this one is rather remarkable in its simplicity and immediate practicality.

Most people don’t really think of them but the wood and metal rod pedestrian sheds that protect pedestrians as we walk past construction sites are yet another part of the city. In New York contractors are legally required to keep the sidewalks clear and pedestrians safe. Most of the time these sheds are dark and unpleasant to walk through.

The city of New York wanted to do something about this so they sponsored a design competition to see who could build it better. Young-Hwan Choi built it better and now has $10,000 and a comitment from the city of New York to build a mock up and potentially take it into production.

“I tried to think, ‘What is wrong with this scaffolding?’ It’s complicated. I thought the structure should be simplified.” S

Building the Urban Network

I came across an interesting article the other day while surfing the interweb about the future of new city building in Asia, (which is one of the few places in the world where cities spring up from scratch). In this age of bundling and value add ons comes a different vision of what a city is, how to make them more efficient, how they should be built, and how a couple of companies think they should be built. Estimates put spending on global infrastructure at $35 trillion over the next two decades and the new city market itself is likely to be worth at least $500 billion in the next ten years. How’s that for a growth industry?

Fast Company

Cisco’s Big Bet on New Songdo: Creating Cities From Scratch

By: Greg LindsayFebruary 1, 2010

The world is bracing for an influx of billions of new urbanites in the coming decades, and tech companies are rushing to build new green cities to house them. Are these companies creating a smarter metropolis — or just making money?

Stan Gale is exultant. The chairman of Gale International yanks off his tie, hitches up his pants, and mops the sweat and floppy hair from his brow. He’s beaming like a proud new papa, sprung from the waiting room and handing out cigars to whoever happens by. Beckoning me to follow, he saunters across eight lanes of traffic toward his baby, delivered prematurely days before.

Ten years ago, Gale was a builder and flipper of office parks who would eventually become known for knocking down the Boston landmark Filene’s Basement and replacing it with a hole in the ground. But Gale’s fate began to change in 2001 with a phone call from South Korea. The Korean government had found his firm on the Internet and made an offer everyone else had refused. The brief: Gale would borrow $35 billion from Korea’s banks and its biggest steel company, and use the money to build from scratch a city the size of downtown Boston, only taller and denser, on a muddy man-made island in the Yellow Sea. When Gale arrived to see the site, it was miles of open water. He signed anyway.

New Songdo City won’t be finished until 2015 at least, but in August, Gale cut the ribbon on the 100-acre “Central Park” modeled, like so much of the city, on Manhattan’s. Climbing on all sides will be a mix of low-rises and sleek spires — condos, offices, even South Korea’s tallest building, the 1,001-foot Northeast Asia Trade Tower. Strolling along the park’s canal, we hear cicadas buzzing, saws whining, and pile drivers pounding down to bedrock. I ask whether he’s stocked the canal with fish yet. “It’s four days old!” he splutters, forgetting he isn’t supposed to rest until the seventh.

As far as playing God (or SimCity) goes, New Songdo is the most ambitious instant city since Brasília 50 years ago. Brasília, of course, was an instant disaster: grandiose, monstrously overscale, and immediately encircled by slums. New Songdo has to be better because there’s a lot more riding on it than whether Gale can repay his loans. It has been hailed since conception as the experimental prototype community of tomorrow. A green city, it was LEED-certified from the get-go, designed to emit a third of the greenhouse gases of a typical metropolis its size (about 300,000 people during the day). It’s an “international business district” and an “aerotropolis” — a Western-oriented city more focused on the airport and China beyond than on Seoul. And it’s supposed to be a “smart city,” studded with chips talking to one another, designated as such years before IBM found its “Smarter Planet” religion.

Being seriously ahead of the curve explains why Gale had such a hard time finding a tech partner to bring this dream to fruition. First in line was LG, one of Korea’s homegrown conglomerates. None of its ideas had made it past the prototype stage. Next up was Microsoft, which signed a deal giving it carte blanche to mold the city in its image. “Designing an entirely new city from the ground up provides a unique opportunity to create an ideal technological infrastructure,” Bill Gates boasted. But before he could even measure for drapes, Gale decided a plumber would be a better fit and threw Microsoft over for Cisco.

Last spring, the networking giant became New Songdo’s exclusive supplier of digital plumbing. More than simply installing routers and switches — or even something so banal as citywide Wi-Fi — Cisco is expected to wire every square inch of the city with synapses. From the trunk lines running beneath the streets to the filaments branching through every wall and fixture, it promises this city will “run on information.” Cisco’s control room will be New Songdo’s brain stem.

And that’s just the beginning. No longer content to sell just plumbing, the company is teaming up with Gale, 3M, United Technologies (UTC), and the architects of Kohn Pedersen Fox (KPF) to enter the instant-city business. At a Cisco event near New Songdo last summer, Gale stunned the room by announcing plans to eventually roll out 20 new cities across China and India, using New Songdo as a template. In the spirit of Moore’s Law, he says, each will be done faster, better, cheaper, year after year.

Cisco calls this Smart+Connected Communities initiative a potential $30 billion opportunity, a number based not only on the revenues from installation of the basic infrastructure but also on selling the consumer-facing hardware as well as the services layered on top of that hardware. Picture a Cisco-built digital infrastructure wired to Cisco’s TelePresence videoconferencing screens mounted in every home and office, with engineers listening, learning, and releasing new Cisco-branded bandwidth-hungry services in exchange for modest monthly fees. You’ve heard of software as a service? Well, Cisco intends to offer cities as a service, bundling urban necessities — water, power, traffic, telephony — into a single, Internet-enabled utility, taking a little extra off the top of every resident’s bill.

Read More!

Cities of the Future: The Royal Institute of Architects 1910

The Library over at Cornell University has a great archived paper about what our cities would look like from the perspective of 1910.

Go to Source

THE CITIES OF THE FUTURE.

Eugène Hénard

Royal Institute of British Architects, Town Planning Conference London, 10-15 October 1910, Transactions (London: The Royal Institute of British Architects, 1911):345-367.

My purpose is to inquire into the influence which the progress of modern science and industry may exercise upon the planning, and particularly upon the aspect, of the Cities of the Future.

It is not without a certain feeling of hesitation that I approach the question: my previous works on Paris have been concerned with subjects which were more clearly defined and which rested upon experimental data. To-day it is my duty to speculate upon mere hypotheses, which, though more or less justifiable, have no established foundation, a circumstance which leads necessarily to hazardous, and sometimes entirely erroneous, conclusions. Even in the most methodical inductions, the exact line of demarcation between the probable and the imaginary is very difficult to draw: nevertheless, I shall endeavour to keep my arguments within reasonable limits; although I dare not affirm that on certain points I may not, unwittingly, be carried away by so seductive a theme. I shall make a special effort to describe the considerations which must determine the form of both our houses and of our streets, as these constitute. the primary elements out of which a city is built up.

Whatever form its future expansion may take, there will always remain, in every large urban community, a centre of intense activity wherein the buildings will always be placed close together, as they are in our cities of the present day. It is a portion of such a centre that we are about to examine.

All the evil arises from the old traditional idea that “the bottom of the road must be on a level with the ground in its original condition.” But there is nothing to justify such an erroneous view. As a matter of fact, if we were to establish as a first principle the idea that “the pavement and carriage-way must be artificially constructed at a sufficient height to allow thereunder a space capable of containing all the installations needed for the service of the road,” the difficulties I have just pointed out would disappear altogether. This, of course, implies an additional floor underground for the neighbouring houses, inasmuch as the ground floor would thus be raised to the level of the street.

Go to Source

Magic Highway USA (HQ)

An excerpt from the 1958 Disneyland TV Show episode entitled Magic Highway USA. In this last part of the show, an exploration into possible future Transportation technologies is made. It’s hard to believe how little we’ve accomplished on this front since 1958, and how limited the scope for imagining such future technologies has become. Witness an artifact from a time where the future was greeted with optimism. Note the striking animation style here, achieved with fairly limited animation and spectacular layouts.

It makes it easier to understand why people decided that the highways were such a great thing, I mean come on it was the 50s and this looks and sounds so great!

The Solar Roadway

Our dependence on automobiles and the miles of asphalt required for them is considered by many to be one of the greatest problems with our current way of life, but what if these roads could be changed to be part of our green future?

The Department of Transportation has awarded $100,000 to Solar Roadways to build a 12′ by 12′ prototype road section to test their proposals for a solar highway. The idea behind the solar roadway is that the miles and miles of roadways would be able to harvest energy from the sun. With embedded LEDs that will light up for the centre lane and also flash messages to motorists regarding hazards or accidents up ahead.

Solar Roadways creator Scott Brushaw suggests that if every inch of America’s 25,000 miles of roadway infrastructure then the system would generate three times as much energy as the country consumed in 2006. The roadways would replace power lines and the energy would flow straight from the streets into our homes. Embedded heating elements would keep the roads clear of snow and ice, and eliminate the need for snow clearing services.

The Solar Roadways website has a lot of information and answers a number of questions about the uses and impacts of the technology. I suggest checking them out.

From Solar Roadways,

Overview

When multiple Solar Road Panels™ are interconnected, the intelligent Solar Roadway™ is formed. These panels replace current driveways, parking lots, and all road systems, be they interstate highways, state routes, downtown streets, residential streets, or even plain dirt or gravel country roads. Panels can also be used in amusement parks, raceways, bike paths, parking garage rooftops, remote military locations, etc. Any home or business connected to the Solar Roadway™ (via a Solar Road Panel™ driveway or parking lot) receives the power and data signals that the Solar Roadway™ provides. The Solar Roadway™ becomes an intelligent, self-healing, decentralized (secure) power grid.

Road Surface Layer – translucent and high-strength, it is rough enough to provide great traction, yet still passes sunlight through to the solar collector cells. It is capable of handling today’s heaviest loads under the worst of conditions. Weatherproof, it protects the electronics layer beneath it.

Electronics Layer – Contains a large array of cells, the bulk of which will contain solar collecting cells with LEDs for “painting” the road surface. These cells also contain the “Super” or “Ultra” caps that store the sun’s energy for later use. Since each Solar Road Panel™ manages its own electricity generation, storage, and distribution, they can heat themselves in northern climates to eliminate snow and ice accumulation. No more snow/ice removal and no more school/business closings due to inclement weather. The on-board microprocessor controls lighting, communications, monitoring, etc. With a communications device every 12 feet, the Solar Roadway™ is an intelligent highway system.

Base Plate Layer – While the electronics layer collects and stores the energy from the sun, it is the base plate layer that distributes power (collected from the electronics layer) and data signals (phone, TV, internet, etc.) “downline” to all homes and businesses connected to the Solar Roadway™. The power and data signals are passed through each of the four sides of the base plate layer. Weatherproof, it protects the electronics layer above it.

Namba Parks

Shopping malls are have a long history of being unattractive here in North America, when seen from the outside they tend to look like giant boxes with acres of parking around them, giant intteruptions in the urban and suburban fabric. Suburban malls are usually built on fringe sights and surrounded by ‘new’ land and appear as a hulking mass up ahead, but a shopping mall doesn’t have to look this way, the acres of parking are a result of zoning requiring extensive parking allowances and cheap land which makes it less expensive to buy the acres then to pay to put the parking underground.

What then if you envision a different kind of mall? What happens when common sense moves the parking inside and the mall is conceived as a land form and a park that is integrated into the urban fabric. The sloping park connects to the street, making it easy for passers-by to enter its groves of trees, clusters of rocks, cliffs, lawn, streams, waterfalls, ponds and outdoor terraces. Beneath the park, a canyon carves a path through specialty retail, entertainment and dining venues.

Then you might get something like Namba Parks in Namba-naka Nichome, Naniwa-ku, Osaka, Japan. Namba parks is a shopping mall in Japan that opened in October of 2003.  In the days before sustainability really caught on, and there was little fanfare on the International scene. Namba Parks was the result of a visionary design, in a city that wanted something great and didn’t have real estate to waste on parking spaces.  The resulting commercial mall and mixed use residential complex is what a mall should be.

From the Project Page:

When Osaka’s baseball stadium closed its doors, it opened the door to a prime redevelopment opportunity in a new commercial district adjacent to Namba Train Station, the first stop from Kansai Airport. Given the location, owner Nankai Electric Railway asked Jerde to create a gateway that would redefine Osaka’s identity. So Jerde conceived Namba Parks as a large park, a natural intervention in Osaka’s dense and harsh urban condition. Alongside a 30-story tower, the project features a lifestyle commercial center crowned with a rooftop park that crosses multiple blocks while gradually ascending eight levels. In addition to providing a highly visible green component in a city where nature is sparse, the sloping park connects to the street, welcoming passers-by to enjoy its groves of trees, clusters of rocks, cliffs, lawn, streams, waterfalls, ponds and outdoor terraces. Beneath the park, a canyon carves an experiential path through specialty retail, entertainment and dining venues. Namba Parks creates a new natural experience for Osaka that celebrates the interaction of people, culture and recreation.

Built in October 2003, “Jerde Partnership Architects “conceived Namba Parks as a large park, a natural intervention in Osaka’s dense and harsh urban condition. Alongside a 30-story tower, the project features a lifestyle commercial center crowned with a rooftop park that crosses multiple blocks while gradually ascending eight levels. In addition to providing a highly visible green component in a city where nature is sparse, the sloping park connects to the street, welcoming passers-by to enjoy its groves of trees, clusters of rocks, cliffs, lawn, streams, waterfalls, ponds and outdoor terraces.”

Project Statistics