Designed by Maxthreads Architectural Design & Planning, their vision for the Taichung City Cultural Center is to create an unconventional and exceptional gathering space for visitors and inhabitants, animated by a public program. As the entry sequence into an urban fabric, this proposal reflects the new city’s philosophy of combining nature and innovative technology. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Designed to support and promote the condition of physical and emotional human health, the Green Health City proposal by Peter Ruge Architekten is an ecologically sustainable development located in China’s Hainan Province, in Boao Lecheng on the Wanquan River. By establishing a cross-disciplinary and inter-cultural approach to design that is routed in China’s long history, a comprehensive and well considered masterplan scheme is achieved. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Last year interdisciplinary architecture firm Höweler + Yoon Architecture were announced the winners of the Audi Urban Future Award for the project Boswash:Shareway 2030. The City Dossier in Boston, held this May, was organized as a series of workshops between Höweler + Yoon Architecture and Audi experts in developing steps to realize aspects of the Boswash: Shareway vision. Part research project, part feasibility study, part road map to the future of mobility - the focus of the workshops is to propose a pilot project that can be tested in the proposed region of Boston - Washington.
We featured the project last year as it highlights how the landscape of urban development has changed. The focus of "Shareway" is the string of high-density metropolitan areas, their suburbs and ex-urbs along I-95 between Boston, MA and Washington, DC. The I-95 corridor caters to some fifty million inhabitants, many of whom commute into metropolitan areas for work. Mobility and transportation are critical to the economic vitality of these urban areas; "Shareway" proposes an intentionally re-engineered "highly orchestrated and deliberately produced platform from which we might imagine alternate paths, different trajectories, or new cultural dreams" whereby imagining an "alternate life for the road" is imagining a new American Dream.
Read on for more on the progress of this project after the break.
Designed by Kubota & Bachmann Architects, main purpose of their proposal for the Taichung City Cultural Center (TCCC) is the integration of the Gateway Park and the best practice implementation of green architectural policies. Aiming to be the new landmark of Taichung, together with the Gateway Park and the Taiwan Tower, the architectural ambition of the TCCC/Gateway Park is nothing less than creating a world-leading model in sustainable architecture. More images and architects' description after the break.
Just this past Thursday, schmidt hammer lassen architects, East China Architecture and Design Institute, and Shanghai Expo Construction Development Company celebrated the ground breaking for, and start of construction of, the new Green Valley project on the site of the former 2010 Shanghai Expo. Located immediately next to the iconic Chinese pavilion, the architects won the international competition to design this 50,000-square-meter project last year. This project aims to become a new central urban development in Shanghai, integrating new sustainable solutions in both the urban design and the individual buildings on the site. More images and architects' description after the break.
Designed by AN.ONYMOUS, their "ex.terra" proposal was chosen as one of the winners in the MOMA PS1 Rockaway competition. Their design proposes the creation of a new ground, which serves as an infrastructural network. The structure, elevated 10-15m meters above the current sea level, connects to the existing subway line, bridges and roads in the rockaway. The geometry of the new structure, as an anamorphic grid, creates a structural system which is able to resist and at the same time capture the energy of the wind and the water. The city is then plugged into this infrastructure with designated blocks for different use. More images and architects' description after the break.
Conceived to aid in the cohesion between people, Salotto Urbano is a public area designed by architects Michela Romano, Emanuela Ortolani, Federica Spinaci, Eleonora Sanfilippo, and David Vecchi. The project aims to be a pleasant place to support the social interactions, working as a structure for several activities and events. It is a space where people can freely operate and get back the participation of common good. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Designed by EFFEKT + Henning Larson Architects, in collaboration with Marianne Levinsen Landscape and Moe consulting engineers, Vinge is set to be a brand new town planned in the scenic natural surroundings just 30 minutes from Copenhagen. A large project both on the regional and international level, Vinge will house around 10.000 residents and employ 4.000 people. The city will have its own train station and a new highway will take its residents rapidly to and from Copenhagen. More images and architects' description after the break.
New York City's Midtown East will be facing a rezoning in the near future, bringing a dozen office towers into the already crowded neighborhood. To help the Bloomberg Administration address the issues that may arise with this move, the city has hired sustainable real estate development firm, Jonathan Rose Co.; Dutch Urban Planning firm, Gehl Architects; and the global civil engineering firm, Skanska. The different firms will be working to develop the streetscape to be known as the East Midtown Public Realm Vision Plan which is scheduled for release later this year.
Russia has madly, passionately (and not a little blindly) fallen in love. And, as with any love affair worth its salt, this one will have its fair share of consequences when the honeymoon ends.
The object of Russia’s affection? The good, old-fashioned automobile.
It started fast and has only gotten faster. In 2005, Russia’s auto industry grew 14%; in 2006, 36%; and, in 2007, a whopping 67% - an exponential growth that attracted foreign investors, particularly after 2009, when the country welcomed companies like GM & Ford with open arms. Today, the ninth largest economy in the world is the seventh-largest car market, positioned to surpass Germany as the largest in Europe by 2014.
Nowhere is this love affair more evident, more woven into the city itself, than in Moscow. The city has a reputation (perhaps rivaled only by Beijing’s) for traffic, pollution, and downright hostility to pedestrians. And, ironically, because of its epic congestion, the city continues to expand its highways and parking spaces.
We’ve heard that story before, and we know how it ends - for that matter, so does Moscow. But passion, by nature, is blind - and stopping a love affair in its tracks is far from easy.
Designed by Garrett Rock, the New Acadia, Retrofitting Urban Decay proposal was the winning entry for one of six sites in the [Imagine Downtown] Lafayette Design Competition which aims to be a re-imagination of urban density within the neighborhood’s city core. The design offers Lafayette an alternative mode of development that stimulates street life in hopes of attracting a young, creative class that are leaving the city for more amenity-rich urban enclaves. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Atlantic Cities recently wrote about this project by Schema Design that was initially produced as a result of a call for projects for the Urban Data Design Challenge. The intention of the challenge was to use various methods of data visualization to develop insight into public transit in three cities: Philadelphia, Zurich and Geneva. Join us after the break to watch the videos.
Bike sharing has become a staple for urban commuting in city's all over the world. Since its reintroduction into urban culture in the 1990s, it has taken on many forms. Today it is being optimized to serve dense cities to help alleviate traffic congestion, provide people with more transportation options, and to encourage a healthy way of commuting. An article by the Earth Policy Institute by Janet Larsen marks the exponential progress of bike-sharing programs, noting innovative solutions in cities across the world that make the programs safer, more accessible and more streamlined.
Join us after the break for more.
Meagan Durlak and James Frankis, both students studying Transdisciplinary Design at Parsons New School for Design, have developed a mobile mapping tool to unveil the true dynamics of informal slum communities, as revealed by Metropolis Magazine.
The system, called Mark, is being tested in the Heliopolis favela of Sao Paulo, Brazil, after which the duo hope it will be "scalable and adaptable" enough to be applied to other informal settlements all over the world. The SMS-based tool is designed not only to provide information about the settlements to external organizations, but also to be a sharing platform for the residents who become cartographers of their own neighborhood.
Read about the motivation behind the Mark project after the break
As cities become more conscious of their environmental and social impact, smart growth has become a ubiquitous umbrella term for a slew of principles to which designers and planners are encouraged to adhere. NewUrbanism.org has distributed 10 points that serve as guides to development that are similar to both AIA's Local Leaders: Healthier Communities through Design and New York City's Active Design Guidelines: Promoting Physical Activity and Health in Design. Planners all appear to be on the same page in regards to the nature of future development. But as Brittany Leigh Foster of Renew Lehigh Valley points out, these points tend to be vague; they tell us "what" but they do not tell us "how". 10 Rules for Smarter Smart Growth by Bill Adams of UrbDeZine San Diego enumerates how to achieve the various design goals and principles that these various guides encourage.
Follow us after the break for more.
The potential to generate energy is hidden in many places, from skyscrapers to ski-slopes. But new research is showing that a potent source of energy is hiding right beneath our noses, or feet to be more specific.
MVRDV and Space Group are one of three teams who have been asked to submit a masterplan proposal for the Norwegian town of Madla-Revheim, the main development area outside of Stavanger. The aim of this commission is to develop a model of sustainable growth that treats development principles, transportation systems and built structures as parts of a whole. In this proposal, MVRDV and Space Group propose to concentrate 4,000 housing units on the edge of the 780 acre site, preserving the heart of the development for open, green space, public programs and sports facilities.
Despite the romantic notion about cities that develop organically have a rich diversity of form and function, we cannot overlook the deadly side effects of negligent city planning. As Christopher Hume of the Toronto Star points out, last month's tragic fertilizer plant explosion in West, Texas is a grim reminder that planning has a time and place and its ultimate utility resides in the initiative to protect residents and make for healthier communities. The tangle of bureaucracy associated with planning, zoning and land use regulations can give any architect or developer a massive headache. In some cases, the laws are so restricting that diverging from bulk regulations becomes very limiting.