Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM) was recently awarded the contract to create a stunning new Central Business District in Beijing. The project will integrate into the existing downtown urban district and will improve transportation infrastructure while introducing energy-efficient buildings green public space. The plan also provides a framework for new sustainable growth that would result in eliminating 215,000 tons of CO2 per year, which is the equivalent of planting 14 million adult trees.
Re-inventing ordinary street dividers and concrete balls, Liesbet Bussche creates larger-than-life jewelry pieces for the streets of Amsterdam. The Belgian designer makes small interventions to the street scape, a charm to a chain or earring backs to a concrete ball. However, altogether the jewelry can easily make any passer-by smile upon finding a serendipitous change in the uniform vocabulary of the urban landscape.
City governance and open-source programming never seemed like a likely marriage. However, emerging initiatives have been working towards it, and have received a boost of popular support through Obama’s call for open government. When NYC’s Mayor Bloomberg launched the Big Apps competition this past June, he invited individuals and groups to program applications that make government data sets accessible to the public — solidifying that technology can contribute to improved quality of life. Applications created in response to Bloomberg’s decisions will join the crowd-sourced initiatives that already exist in New York City, and already explore methods that can offer residents not only information, but a place to gain a sense of community, to exchange ideas and to visualize space digitally.
Last week, Geoff Manaugh of BLDGBLOG asked Mason White of InfraNet Lab for his thoughts on the growing interest in infrastructure and planning. White reflected that designers today that are looking to positively impact the built environment, and are subsequently thinking about the bigger picture rather than object-orientated thinking. So if you love architecture, and are curious about the larger systems at work at the city scale — and you want make sure it is environmentally conscious, take a peek at the initiatives and innovations that were covered this week below.
Mother Nature Network tells us about a program in New York City that will train building managers in the latest green building practices.
Good Magazine reminds us that there are several components to creating more livable cities.
Treehugger is cautious about a substance that enables concrete to remove nitrogen dioxide from the air.
Green Options says that England and China have new transportation projects: ecowordly says England has a dual plan that include bikes and trains. cleantechnica says China is funding a high-speed rail.
(Oh, and Happy Birthday, Worldchanging!)
On September 1st, Jennifer Leonard of IDEO and Massive Change fame joined Alex Steffan of Worldchanging, Cameron Sinclair of Architecture for Humanity, architects Bjarke Ingels and Ken Yeang, and other well-known designers, architects and thinkers at the kick-off of CLEAR Village project at the Danish Architecture Center in Copenhagen. The intiative investigates sustainable mid-sized developments to revive rural and peri-urban areas, and aims to allow businesses test out innovative technologies and services at a village scale. It will do this by soliciting design ideas for a sustainable village, and then constructing it.
Every country needs their own master-planned eco city. Germany will have aptly named ECO CITY Hamburg, the UK has Hanham Hall, Sweden has Super Sustainable City in Gothenburg, Spain has Logroño Montecorvo Eco City, and the UAW has Masdar. But South Korea seems to have two master-planned sustainable communities, we saw this super sustainable city by Foster + Partners earlier this week, and now we are taking a look at Songdo International Business District or Songdo IBD. This new eco-city will be impressive with its list of eco-credentials – tons of beautiful open space and parks, green roofs, solar passive design, mass transit and over 120 buildings built to LEED standards.
As the construction process for Hudson Yards drags on in New York, we’re glad to see green urban design is alive and well in Chicago. The windy city is no stranger to sustainable building, and this urban park, located on the fringe of the city’s downtown, will certainly give Chicago even more green cred. Perkins + Will, the architects behind the design, developed the park to create more open space for the city, but the greenway also proves to be a pedestrian-friendly gateway that connects the existing downtown to any future development across the Kennedy Expressway.
LAST CALL FOR ENTRIES!
We’ve received hundreds of submissions to our REBURBIA design competition but there is still time to get yours in if you haven’t already! Do you have an idea that could change the dismal future of our suburbs? It could be exactly the one that we’re looking for and win you fame (a feature in Dwell Magazine and on Inhabitat) and fortune ($1000 cash money). Don’t miss the deadline – it’s TODAY!
The Rak Jebel Al Jais Mountain Resort is a new master planned tourist village in the Emirate of Ras al-Khaimah in the United Arab Emirates. Designed by the Office for Metropolitan Architecture, this future resort will be built on the top and the sides of a mountain range, defying nature and the mountains with its extravagant design, improbable building site and disregard for the native landscape. In a country focused so completely on luxurious resorts, new developments and ostentatious displays, this resort is no surprise.
Addressing the urgent need to green our built environment, Kjellgren Kaminsky Architects have conceived of a Super Sustainable City that re-envisions Gothenburg, Sweden as a future-forward ecotopia. Designed as a dense and interconnected urban area, the master plan incorporates everything from green rooftop gardens to water and energy harvesting roadways, towering solar arrays, and soaring wind turbines. These measures address the issues of density, energy, and food production, while staying true to the city’s architectural heritage.
Rotterdam-based architects MVRDV recently won the Gwanggyo City Centre Competition with their design of this incredible new city just south of Seoul, South Korea. Envisioned as a verdant acropolis of organic ‘hill’ structures, the proposed complex is a fully self-sufficient city for up to 77,000 inhabitants. Similar nodes, common in South Korea, concentrate residences, work and play all in one interactive center, reducing dependency on auto or train travel and building a strong sense of community.
As the inexorable juggernaut of Dubai’s construction boom wears on amid a turbulent economic era, the city recently unveiled an incredible new development that is intended to cement its status as “a global city of the future”. Master-planned by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture and developed by Meraas, Jumeira Gardens is a modern megopolis that will feature no fewer than three soaring superstructures designed by AS + GG: 1 Dubai, Park Gate, and 1 Park Avenue. Although the super-massive project will consume approximately $95 billion, it’s encouraging to see that the entire community has been designed with sustainability in mind.
Graffiti meets environmental and social activism in Peter Gibson (a.k.a. Roadsworth)’s literal take on street art. Frustrated with the lack of safety provided for cyclists in today’s cities, the artist began (illegally) spray painting extra bike lanes onto the streets of Montreal in 2001. It wasn’t long before he began to branch out and address other civic and environmental issues through his cutting brand of creative imagery. Intended to address many of the confining conditions of living in an urban environment, Peter Gibson’s work treats these topics with a sort of wry humor that doesn’t dull their urgent message.
New parks will be popping up all over the country today, thanks to Park(ing) Day, an annual event that turns paved parking spaces into temporary green gardens. The event was started in 2005 by ReBar, an art collective based in San Francisco, and is meant to challenge urbanites to think about what our public spaces would be like if they were designed for the pedestrian, rather than the car.
Amidst the excitement of athletic accomplishments at this year’s summer Olympics, a significant achievement for sustainable design was recognized as well. Last week, on Wednesday, August 13, U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson presented Chinese officials with a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold award for the 2008 Olympic village. The world-class development boasts a variety of sustainable features including solar panels, green roofs, and an extensive rainwater recycling system.
The past month has seen shock waves resonating throughout the world of sustainable architecture with two monumental reports on green building backed by some serious changes in public policy. First, the CEC released “Green Building in North America: Opportunities and Challenges”, which lauded sustainable buildings as the quickest, cheapest, and most substantive way to cut down on North American greenhouse gas emissions. Next, CoStar released a comparison report stating that LEED buildings consistently outperform their peers in terms of occupancy rates, sale prices, and rental rates, with demand far outnumbering their supply. And, last week on Earth Day, Los Angeles approved a green building ordinance that signifies a significant shift towards a policy and market-driven era of economically and environmentally viable building.
Out of a pilot program called the Wild Urbanism design studio at the University of Oregon’s Department of Architecture comes Integrating Habitats, an open design competition focused on the interface between nature and the built environment. In collaboration with the Nature in Neighborhoods initiative of Portland, Oregon, the competition calls for innovative, multi-disciplinary efforts that fuse design excellence, ecological stewardship and economic enterprise to create healthy urban ecosystems.
LOTS MORE GREAT GREEN DESIGN STORIES HERE... KEEP READING!
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