Mateo Arquitectura

http://www.vimeo.com/9885044
Place de la République. Restricted Competition from Josep Lluis Mateo on Vimeo.
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Place de la République
Restricted competition
2009 – Paris

Place de la République as public space

Transforming a traffic junction into an urban space means, firstly, reducing the impact of road traffic. Having addressed the traffic, the challenge is to transform the place into an urban space.

Pavements and plaza
We propose a substantial increase in pavement space, concentrating all specifically urban flows (buses and taxis) around its edge.

The pavement, transformed into a boulevard, would then be able to accommodate both pedestrian traffic and the kiosks and galleries that house the overflow of ground-floor businesses, as well as being a place for people to sit and rest.
The central plaza, also enlarged, would be of a different nature: a space for demonstration and representation that can coexist with the more domestic, ludic presence of nature. Monument esplanade, garden.

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The plaza: unity and diversity
The plaza, a long space running NW-SE, takes in three different urban moments. These characteristics call for specific attention to create a figure that is designed to be unitary but also special, contextual and varied.

The small salon
At its north-west point, the plaza meets the pre-Haussmann city, with its finer grain and less geometrical monumentality. Our response is the small salon; earth makes an appearance at ground level, with emphasis on the urban continuity of bvd St Martin-rue Boulanger.

The idea of the paving is to establish continuities between the city and the plaza. Traffic, though a real presence, could be studied and eliminated at certain points to ensure pedestrian continuity.

The centre of the monument
The centre of the place, at present a small island amid the flow of traffic, is marked by movement. We propose constructing a base for it, a podium which, with a slight slope, accentuates the volcanic composition of the object and allows people to walk around it, establish a direct relation with it and rest in its shelter.

The esplanade
The most abstract boundary would be on the three-pronged Haussmann layout: bvd Voltaire, République, bvd du Temple. This is the site of the big demonstrations that characterize the place. We propose the construction of a great petrous esplanade.
The great esplanade constitutes the dialectical counterpoint with the small salon, at the same time ensuring continuity with the symbolism of the monument.”
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Chicago Architectural Club

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The Chicago Architectural Club is pleased to announce the 2010 Chicago Prize Competition: MINE THE GAP, a single-stage international design ideas competition dedicated to examining one of the most visible scars left after the collapse of the real estate market in Chicago: the massive hole along the Lake Michigan shore that was to have been—and may yet be—the foundation for a singular 150-story condominium tower designed by an internationally-renowned Spanish architect, a tower which was to have become a new icon for the city and region. What to do with the gap? Whether or not the project is resuscitated, what else can we do with this strategic and highly-charged site? Once the motor of real-estate speculation has stalled, what can we use to propel ourselves, and the discipline, forward?

Register Now

More information about entry fee, jury, deadlines and registration can be found at the Chicago Architectural Club’s webpage. Competitors may submit material online anytime between March 22, 2010 and May 3, 2010. Registration is open, and may be completed anytime before the deadline. The first prize is $ 3,500, the second is prize $ 1,500 and the third prize is $ 750. Up to 3 Honorable Mentions will be awarded.
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The City * The Arch * The River

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Contest organizers today announced the names of nine design teams selected to advance to the next round of the competition “Framing a Modern Masterpiece | The City * The Arch * The River” to invigorate the park and city areas surrounding the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, MO.
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The lead designers and design teams are:

* Behnisch Architekten, Gehl Architects, Stephen Stimson Associates, Buro Happold, Transsolar, Applied Ecological Services, Limno‐Tech, Herbert Dreiseitl, Arne Quinze, Peter MacKeith, Eric Mumford
* FIT (Fully Integrated Thinking) Team – Arup, Doug Aitken Studio, HOK Planning Group, HOK
* Michael Maltzan Architecture, Stoss Landscape Urbanism, Rafael Lozano‐Hemmer, Richard Sommer, Buro Happold
* Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, Steven Holl Architects, Greenberg Consultants, Uhlir Consulting, HR&A Advisors, Guy Nordenson and Associates, Arup, LimnoTech, Ann Hamilton Studio, James Carpenter Design Associates, Elizabeth K. Meyer, Project Projects
* PWP Landscape Architecture, Foster + Partners, Civitas, Ned Kahn, Buro Happold
* Quennell Rothschild and Partners and Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Vishkan Chakrabarti, Buro Happold, Atelier Ten, and Nicholas Baume
* Rogers Marvel Architects and Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects, Urban Strategies, Local Projects, Arup
* SOM, BIG, Hargreaves Associates, Jaume Plensa, URS
* Weiss/Manfredi, Magnusson Klemencic Associates, Mark Dion

“The Jury had the challenge of evaluating portfolios that represented designers of international and national recognition, emerging designers and design teams comprised of individuals that provide great promise as collaborators,” said competition manager Don Stastny, of StastnyBrun Architects. “The lead designers and design teams invited to participate in Stage II represent individuals and firms that have local, national and international ties – and have the potential to come up with extraordinary solutions to the design challenges presented by the City, the Arch and the River.”

The nine design leaders and teams now have five weeks to complete their teams and present full qualifications to the competition jury, Stastny said.
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In addition, local contractors, minority, disadvantaged, or women‐owned businesses and others are invited to meet Feb. 18 from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. at the Old Court House with representatives of the shortlisted design groups for potential teaming opportunities.

“This will be an excellent opportunity for these businesses to learn about the project and to begin considering participating,” Stastny said. “We look forward to a strong turnout.”

The competition, launched Dec. 8, 2009, has three stages. Portfolio submissions in Stage I included a description of the design team, a statement of design intent and philosophy of the lead designer, a profile of the design team and examples of their work. Each team was required to include representatives of architecture, landscape architecture, urban design, engineering and an artist.

Stage II involves the formation of the complete teams capable of executing the project, submission of required paperwork and a jury interview. This phase will culminate April 7, 2010, with the narrowing of the field to four or five teams.

The final stage, Stage III, to take place over the summer, will include a 90‐day design concept competition to explore the finalists’ design approach and test their working methodology.

The competition’s goal is to create an iconic setting for the international icon, the Gateway Arch, honoring its immediate surroundings and weaving connections and transitions from the city and the Arch grounds to the Mississippi River, including the east bank in Illinois.

The public will be invited to two events this spring and summer. A “meet the designers night” will be held in late April. This summer, there will be a public exhibition of the designs. Details will be available soon.

The final jury pick will be announced on Sept. 24, 2010. The project will be constructed by Oct. 28, 2015.

The new design is called for in the National Park Service’s General Management Plan, which was developed with extensive public input over an 18‐month period and approved Nov. 23, 2009.

The competition is sponsored by the CityArchRiver 2015 Foundation, which includes National Park Superintendent Tom Bradley, St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay, community leaders from Missouri and Illinois, academics, architects and national park advocates.

Financial contributions to the CityArchRiver 2015 Foundation are being handled by the Greater St. Louis Community Foundation, a public charity with more than $140 million in charitable assets and representing more than 350 individual funds.

Donors to the competition include: Emerson, Gateway Center of Metropolitan St. Louis (Malcolm W. Martin Memorial Park), Peter Fischer, Emily Rauh Pulitzer, Civic Progress, Wachovia Wells Fargo Foundation, Danforth Foundation, John F. McDonnell, Bryan Cave LLP, Greater St. Louis Community Foundation, National Park Foundation, Monsanto, Alison and John Ferring, Bank of America, David C. Farrell and others who choose to remain anonymous.
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A full list of registrants for the competition, “Framing a Modern Masterpiece: The City + The Arch + The River 2015,” has also been released. It can be found with other competition information at www.cityarchrivercompetition.org.
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WORKac

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“WORKac and ZhuBO recently won an invited competition to redesign a 1-kilometer section of Hua Qiang Bei Road. Hua Qiang Bei has emerged naturally from an industrial district to become Shenzhen’s premier shopping and electronics street. This success has also unfortunately created traffic problems, and the street needs a new contemporary expression to reflect its destination status. A single solution – as proposed by Shenzhen’s Planning Bureau – that covers the entire length of the street, could overwhelm this vibrant character. For this reason, we proposed a series of strategic interventions, rather than a single approach.
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We have taken the idea of the 3D Street and created five iconic “lanterns” by twisting the required program into sinuous bands, creating unique, visible destinations through a process of “urban acupuncture” – strategically affecting change where required. These lanterns are high enough to maintain views across the street, while still providing shade and bridge connections. At night, the Lanterns glow with colored light and activity. Each Lantern contains special destination public programs. From an electronics museum at the south, to an urban information hub in the electronics district to an elevated public park at the center, a “figure eight” observation pavilion and a fashion and design museum at the north.
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Underground, new connective spaces provide public amenities – a public library, a food court, and a series of performance and gallery spaces – and provide connections across the street and between four newly created metro lines. Terraced steps create generous entrances at each of the Lanterns. The underground spaces are connected by a wide shopping “boulevard” at mezzanine level.

The project is a collaboration with Arup as consulting traffic, sustainability, structural and MEP engineers and Balmori Associates as landscape architect.”
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OMA – Lectures
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Rem Koolhaas
Keynote lecture on two strands of thinking in sustainability: advancement vs. apocalypse.
Ecological Urbanism Conference, Harvard University, 3 April, 2009

“Because you invited me here, we did some research. We looked first at antiquity and realized that 25 years before Christ there was already a profound knowledge about ecology and how people should build to be economical, logical, and beautiful. Vitruvius (1), for instance, was completely aware that the sun would cast shadows at different inclinations depending on the orientation of the site, and that his architecture should address these conditions (2). Since the sun was shining from the south, the hottest parts of Roman baths should also be in the south (3). This knowledge was not limited to individual buildings, but extended to the planning of cities that were effortless and logical, based on engagements with and an understanding of nature.
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During the Renaissance, this knowledge was cultivated and further amplified. A century later, the so-called Enlightenment broke out, and with Enlightenment came a formal launch of modernity. What we see is that the Enlightenment had a phenomenal effect on reason, in terms of triggering the apparatus of modernity in a surprisingly short time. Also inscribed in Enlightenment were people like Goethe, who effortlessly combined art and science, and people like Caspar David Friedrich. His paintings show highly sophisticated and cultivated people in search of and interacting with nature in a way that doesn’t show any tension or alienation; the interaction actually seems to work for both sides (4). Perhaps the very final outcome of this highly reasonable streak of our civilization is the nuclear power plant (5).
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There is also an entirely different streak in our culture. It is a not a narrative of linear and reasonable progress, but a narrative of disasters and fundamental tensions between nature and mankind. It depicts nature as a kind of punishment of mankind and, occasionally, mankind as a punisher of nature (6, 7). That narrative, however we look at it – religiously or otherwise – is a fundamentally anti-modern one, which insists on apocalyptic expectations. Friedrich symbolizes this feeling in some of his paintings, which generated a series of prophets. Perhaps Malthus was the first one, with his belief that a premature death must visit the human race. Others were Paul Ehrlich in 1968 (8) and James Lovelock (9).

What we have are two completely opposite strains, both with very eloquent and impressive practitioners. Both ideologies read the same phenomena in completely contradictory terms: one as a line of reasonableness and the other as a line of disastrous manipulation and wrongness. The confusion at the current moment is generated by the tension between these two lines. We are not able to disentangle them or understand when one of the traditions speaks and when the other speaks. This polarity is still operating and has been for a long time.

To introduce a slightly more autobiographical moment, when I studied in London in 1968, I was taught in a school where tropical architecture was still on the curriculum. Although I didn’t take it entirely seriously, I was fascinated by its teachers, who taught us an incredible respect for the landscape. They taught us to look at other cities to see how they work, and to look at seemingly completely non-architectural environments. For them, no issue was too humble or lowly. Jane Drew and Maxwell Fry (10) made drawings of open sewers and ways to clean them. That kind of humility in architectural education has practically disappeared.
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But it’s not only about humility. They were also interested in the tropics as a special domain, which is now the front line of the tensions and impossibilities that we are confronted with. They looked at these areas in great depth and were able to analyze to what extent this climate required specific architectures and planning. The studies also examined how an architecture could emerge that would actually persist in this climate without the degree of artificiality that we now take for granted. What I find touching in retrospect is not only the earnestness of this discourse, but also the conviction that they had relevant knowledge worth teaching. The equivalent of this kind of knowledge today is rather tenuous in our academies.

They developed a repertoire of measures, avoiding air conditioning and the trappings of typical Western architecture, and created strange prisons of avoidance. They also created an aesthetic that was able to renew modern architecture, which at the same time was running into issues of Puritanism and unpopularity. They not only worked on architecture, but also on cities or villages. I am impressed by the perhaps condescending, but still highly efficient didactic intensity of this kind of effort. Even the simplest words were explained in plausible language. As a student, I cannot say that I embraced this knowledge. But in retrospect, I was being confronted with knowledge that was on the way out because it was in the way of development. That is one of the tragedies.

I have since become increasingly involved in researching Africa and the tropics, and have found examples of engineering for Lagos by an East German firm. They seemed to ruthlessly turn Lagos into a modern metropolis, making everything local disappear. But upon closer inspection, the project coexisted plausibly with expressions of poverty and of social improvisation. Though it appeared completely chaotic, things actually worked extremely well in a process of mutual interdependence. There is a subtlety to this kind of engineering that is not visible at first sight. But if you look over time as the infrastructure decays, you see that it has a certain depth (11).

That depth came not from the capitalist West, but from the Communist world, which influenced Africa in the 1960s and 70s. It was so frugal, so efficient, so methodical and so coherent that it could actually realize complex and subtle entities. In the period between 1965 and 75 there was an incredible ability to take difficult conditions seriously, to take different climates seriously, to take the question of energy use seriously and to try and combine the words “design” and “science”. Unfortunately, 30 years later, these words are further apart than ever before.

This joint entity, design and science, was stimulated and sponsored not only by designers and scientists, but also by free-form intellectuals like Marshal MacLuhan and Ian McHarg, a sociologist who, in Design with Nature, wrote one of the most subtle manifestos on how culture and nature could coexist.

At a reunion on a boat in the Mediterranean in 1965 (12), the anthropologist Margaret Mead and other intellectuals discussed at a very high level of intelligence the issues that we are discussing now. They produced sketches in which, almost as a matter of course, human energy, solar energy, and commercial forms of energy are intertwined and mixed in ways we barely know how to do now. What I find particularly impressive in the handwriting of these sketches is how enforced and urgent it is compared to our current, more smooth and perfect renderings. These sketches show the inevitability of nature and networks operating together.

Perhaps Buckminster Fuller’s contribution to the field was the apotheosis of this combination of nature and network. He did the most with the least, producing on the one hand diagrams of ponderous simplicity. On the other hand, he worked on radical inventories of the world, both of cultural and natural elements, documenting the neck-and-neck race between them in a very forward-looking way. For instance, this group was appalled by the predominance of American consumption. Fuller was able to show, in diagrams produced for a mainstream publication, how the problems of the world could be resolved by switching military resources into other domains (13). This kind of clarity doesn’t exist at this moment at all. It is the absence of this kind of clarity that makes us so desperate for a degree of coherence.

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Fuller also made a diagram of energy in the world running in certain kinds of streaks or vents, therefore enhancing the entire efficiency of the system (14). There’s more about it later. Now, if you put everything that’s happening in the late 1960s and early 70s in a cloud or cluster, it seems that there is a very confusing mixture of good and bad. But if you put the events into different zones or categories, a pattern emerges. There are of course many crises, but an explosion of green consciousness as a response to those crises. At the same time, a highly developed and imaginative form of engineering, theorized by Fuller and others, was put into practice: the bridge across the Bosporus, the reversal of a river current to irrigate entire parts of Siberia, the spread of computers, the Concorde, the World Trade Center, and the first international conference about international environmental issues.

Against this backdrop came the first Club of Rome meeting, which talked about the limits of growth (15). It was a reasonable and dramatically illustrated argument about the limits of resources, and showed how in the next hundred years we have to be more careful and more restrained in our consumption. But then the market economy was unleashed in the mid 70s. The market economy had a devastating effect on the knowledge that had been accumulated at this point. This forced the apocalyptic streak of the polarity that I defined at the beginning.

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Twenty years later, the Club of Rome is completely open about the fact that “global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill … In searching for a new enemy to unite us.” In the same year, they even suggested that “democracy is no longer well suited for the task ahead” (16, 17). You see a perverse amplification and intensification of the arguments: seemingly rational, but actually on the apocalyptic side.

So, these two tendencies almost merge, or the evidence that they use is the same. But one continues to use the evidence for a rational and reasonable future, such as the application of atomic power. In France, about 80 percent of electricity is generated from nuclear energy. The country in which the Enlightenment began is still the most enlightened nation, in a way, with its energy policy.

Scientists like Freeman Dyson relativize the disaster of CO2 levels, saying that actually they could also, in certain areas, have a positive effect (18). He is, of course, completely vilified for these statements. But this kind of thinking leads perhaps to a school of thought that engineering can finally offer a number of strategies that could help us.

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Then there is the apocalyptic streak, which portrays trains powered by coal as a holocaust (19), and which develops more and more extreme scenarios (20, 21). For example the deadline on intervention that the Club of Rome envisioned in its first report has been revised to four years, confronting all of us with a desperate time limit.

We have an energetic crew of people working on the problem, but we doubt their seriousness and whether they have the necessary information at their disposal. Interesting accusations emerge: “White people with blue eyes have caused it”. “America can no longer dictate”. “Western consumption is no longer necessary”. “The dollar has to be abandoned”. What you see is a push back of the American position (22, 23, 24).

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Now, what about architecture? I think what the crisis will mean for us is an end to the ¥€$ regime. For those who didn’t recognize it, this is a collection of masterpieces by architects in the last ten years (25). It’s a skyline of icons showing, mercilessly, that an icon may be individually plausible, but that collectively they form an ultimately counterproductive and self-canceling kind of landscape. So that is out.

Unfortunately, the sum total of current architectural knowledge hasn’t grown beyond this opposition. That is where the market economy and the evolution of architectural culture have been extremely irresponsible in letting knowledge simply disappear between the different preoccupations. I still think that architectural dialectics are between buildings like Falling Water and Farnsworth House, and are therefore not deep enough.

We have all of these images of buildings that do not perform correctly, but our answers are not necessarily very deep. I don’t exclude myself from any of these comments, as I hope you realize. Embarrassingly, we have been equating responsibility with literal greening. The boutique of Ann Demeulemeester in Seoul, for example, covered entirely in green (26). Even significant buildings by serious architects, such as the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, for me almost fall into the same category (27). What is very difficult about architecture today is that architects themselves are the main commentators, using a language that is either outrageously innocent or deeply calculated – probably both – but in a shocking way. If you read the criticism in the New York Times by Nicolai Ouroussoff, the architect’s commentary seems to work very well, because Ouroussoff is extremely happy with this building. A question that doesn’t seem to be asked is: is it all so necessary? And, do we need more aquariums? We have a kind of Parthenon with a planetarium, a piazza, and a rainforest. I would politely submit that it is not a Parthenon. In Abu Dhabi, Foster makes a much more serious effort with his zero-carbon city, Masdar, which will have no cars and will be carbon neutral by using technologies that are still to be revealed.

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I didn’t really want to talk about our own work, but there is one project that resonates with the material here. It also indicates the direction in which I think we need to move: we need to step out of this amalgamation of good intentions and branding in a political direction and a direction of engineering. We are working on an analysis of what Europe could do with power harvested from the North Sea. Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, Belgium and England all have large territories on the North Sea (28). We have divided them into sections, which means that Holland could be conceived as having a new shape, extending into the North Sea.

The project imagines that wind energy could be combined, and that supply and demand could be regulated (29). A single ring of integrated wind turbines would not only generate energy, but would also have additional benefits like the reuse of some of the redundant oil-extraction apparatus, and potentially even generate its own tourism. A single ring could generate more energy than the Middle East currently produces each year (30). Looking even further, there would be a potential North-South connection to try to exploit the specific potentials in each area: wind, tidal, and solar. All these sources of energy can be mobilized into a single European grid (31). It’s simply through the combination of politics and engineering that this needs to be addressed.

In working on this material, I discovered that what we are doing is inadvertently exactly what Fuller proposed when he looked at the map forty years ago (32).

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OMA Lectures
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cityLAB

“WPA 2.0: Working Public Architecture, the design competition organized by UCLA’s cityLAB, culminated with the announcement of “Carbon T.A.P.// Tunnel Algae Park” as the winning proposal of the professional competition and “R_Ignite” and “Aquaculture Canal_New Orleans” as the winning proposals of the student competition – WPA 2.0 (SE).”
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Winner of the professional competition: “Carbon T.A.P.// Tunnel Algae Park” by PORT architects Andrew Moddrell and Christopher Marcinkoski (Chicago/New York). Video by Richie Gelles
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“UCLA Architecture and Urban Design Chair Hitoshi Abe, Dana Cuff, cityLAB director, and Roger Sherman, cityLAB codirector congratulated the winners at the conclusion of a day-long symposium in Washington, DC on November 16. Housing and Urban Development’s Ron Sims and Adolfo Carrion of the White House Office of Urban Affairs urged those gathered at the symposium at the National Building Museum to think outside the box, and to “boldly lead us to places we have never gone before.” The federal administration is primed for innovative thinking about urban issues, creating a perfect storm for designers to lead the way. The WPA 2.0 winners do just that.

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“Carbon T.A.P.// Tunnel Algae Park” is the brainchild of PORT architects Andrew Moddrell and Christopher Marcinkoski of Chicago and New York. The proposal uses algae pontoons to capture mobile-source carbon-dioxide emissions along New York City’s transportation arteries and employ them in bio-fuel production, creating an urban park with structured wetlands, aquatic and avian habitat, recreation amenities, as well as high speed bike lanes and public promenades. The jury of Elizabeth Diller, Cecil Balmond, Marilyn Taylor, Walter Hood, Stan Allen, and Thom Mayne was unanimous in its decision, citing two primary qualities: The floating, carbon-capturing bridge between Brooklyn and Manhattan would be a visible marker for the tunnel hidden below, and the periodic rotation of the parkway across the river had the power to reshape the image of the city.”
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Winning Projects of the WPA 2.0 Student Competition:
“R_Ignite” was designed by four graduate students of the Manchester School of Architecture – Peter Millar, Jamie Potter, Andy Wilde and Stuart Wheeler. This proposal revitalizes port cities and greens the shipwrecking industry through the addition of recycling and social activities.

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“Aquaculture Canal_New Orleans,” by Fadi Masoud, a Landscape Architecture student at the University of Toronto, envisions the New Orleans’ Industrial Canal as productive infrastructure for flood control and aquaculture. The jury noted that the winning submissions were ideal as a pair, representing the range of innovative ideas relevant to WPA 2.0.

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For the WPA 2.0 competition, more than 300 proposals – half from professional teams, half from student teams – , envisioned a new legacy of publicly-supported infrastructure hybrids. The projects explore the value of infrastructure not only as an engineering endeavor, but as a robust design opportunity to revitalize communities. Students from China to the United Kingdom submitted proposals to WPA 2.0 (SE) tackling the problems of America’s next generation of public works. Seven student finalists’ proposals were exhibited at the National Building Museum: Re-Ignite, Aquaculture Canal_New Orleans, Polytechnic HighSchool and Transportation Center by Douglas Segulja, Fluctuating Freeway Ecologies by The Crop, urban ConAgraculture by Dale Luebbert, Cash for Clunkers = Bike Sharing for Chicago by Matt Moore, and Topographic Infrastructure: Hollywood Freeway Central Park by Meng Yang.

The six finalists from the professional competition presented their work at the symposium, and exhibited creative videos that animated their projects, bringing them to life. They are: PORT (Chicago/New York), Lateral Office / Infranet Lab (Toronto), Rael San Fratello Architects (Oakland), UrbanLab (Chicago), aershop (Los Angeles), and Nicholas de Monchaux & Collaborators (Berkeley).

The symposium, held in the impressive Great Hall of the National Building Museum, allowed experts to examine infrastructure from a range of unique yet critically integrated perspectives. In his keynote address, White House Director of Urban Affairs, Adolfo Carrion, praised all the finalists for imaginatively engaging the future of American cities. His words were echoed by HUD Deputy Secretary Ron Sims who called on designers to reimagine public works in terms of sustainability, community, and jobs. Director of cityLAB and UCLA Professor Dana Cuff, said the cityLAB team followed his advice. “The cityLAB team spent the entire day after the symposium taking the message to agency heads and legislators on Capitol Hill. We showed them that designers have the vision to bring innovative policies to reality. Our timing couldn’t have been better.”

More information about the winners and the competition can be found on the WPA 2.0 website at http://wpa2.aud.ucla.edu/info/.
Sponsors of WPA 2.0 include: The Graham Foundation, Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, LLC, Buro Happold, UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture, The Architect’s Newspaper, The National Building Museum, The Ziman Center for Real Estate Development, Sarah Jane Lind, the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture.
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Triple Canopy

by Urban China, translated by John Thompson

When cities reach their breaking point, life must be moved beneath the surface. China’s subterranean-development expert speaks.
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“FOR THE FIRST TIME in human history, more people live in cities than outside them. As metropolises blossom throughout the world, and as existing urban centers struggle to cope with influxes of immigrants, more and more governments are turning to the underground. Developments beneath the earth’s surface aim to ease congestion, salvage open spaces aboveground, and provide some reprieve for cities in search of solutions to the problems posed by teeming populations and inadequate infrastructure.

Shu Yu has been at the forefront of underground urban planning for decades. He spent many years studying in Japan, the home of modern subterranean development, before bringing his expertise to bear on his homeland, China. He currently lives in Shanghai, where he is a professor at Tongji University, vice director of the Tongji University Underground Space Research Center, and president of the Shanghai-Tongji Underground Space Planning and Design Research Institute. He is extensively involved in the planning of the myriad southern Chinese cities where populations have exploded over the past half century, and has been charged with designing the underground portion of the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai.

What follows is an exposition of the history and current uses of underground urban space, as told to Tong Zhen. It is excerpted from a longer interview with Shu Yu that was published last year in Urban China magazine and translated from Chinese by John Thompson.”
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““URBAN UNDERGROUND SPACE” simply refers to space below a city’s surface: either man-made spaces formed through excavation or caves formed by natural processes. Besides being a geologic fact, the realm under the earth’s surface can be seen as a potential space for development.

Mankind has a long-standing history of developing underground space. Consider, for instance, the Peking Man site at Zhoukoudian, and the dwellings in the Loess Plateau of western China. People lived in the caves and planted crops in the ground overhead. In response to environmental pollution and energy crises, modern cities have employed eco-friendly architecture like green roofing, which essentially derives from Chinese cave dwellings.

If we want to resolve urban problems related to population density and limited surface space, we must turn to underground development. It’s a matter of “ascending to the sky and reaching into the earth.” Today, underground space is still used primarily for disaster protection. During World War II, Paris turned abandoned caves into ammunition depots, secret outposts, and arsenals. London used subways. Now China plans to construct integrated civil-defense projects designed to prepare for military conflict and protect against natural disasters. For instance, rain from torrential downpours cannot adequately be drained through sewer systems and often produces flooding. Constructing underground rivers is a relatively easy solution to this problem, and it creates a sustainable way of dealing with rainwater.

There are also significant stores of energy underground. Shanghai’s average annual temperature is about 16 degrees Celsius; underground, it’s a little bit lower, and without much seasonal fluctuation. By exchanging energy between the surface and the underground in accordance with the laws of stratigraphic temperature differences, we can cool the surface in the summer and warm it up in the winter. At the 2010 Shanghai World Expo, the main hall’s air-conditioning system will get about 80 percent of its energy from geothermal and hydrothermal heat pumps.

Of course, underground space is also used for transportation, storage, infrastructure, and shopping. Japan is planning to build underground shopping districts connecting subway stops. They will be two to three levels, with the first level for shops and public walkways, and the second floor on down for parking garages and subway stations. It’s convenient and cozy, and the profits are remarkable.

But this kind of development is only possible when the cost of surface expropriation and demolition exceeds that of underground construction, which generally has two to three times the start-up costs of surface construction. Our research shows that once a city’s per capita GDP tops $3,000, underground development becomes economical. Many Chinese cities now reach or surpass this threshold; in the cities that have over one million people, surface transportation is inefficient, unpunctual, and uncomfortable. Forty cities in China currently have plans in place to build subway and rail lines to remedy these problems. The experience of other countries shows us that the key to developing underground space in
China is the intensive development of rail transport.

Foreign businesses with experience in developed nations have begun building underground in the downtowns of Chinese cities. Shanghai already has in use 30 million square meters of underground facilities. For the Shanghai World Expo, I’m working on underground integrated government facilities, energy-source centers, a series of high-tech guidance systems, and an underground safety-evaluation system. All of these efforts serve the expo’s theme: “Better City, Better Life.”
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“THE USE OF UNDERGROUND SPACE varies from North America to Western Europe to Asia, according to differences in land, economy, society, culture, and climate. The United States has a very innovative, progressive model. When a city reaches the point at which the existence of overpasses becomes a restriction to urban development, they knock them down and take them underground. Boston had an overpass built in the 1970s that improved transportation in the city but weakened the vitality of the vibrant areas alongside the highway, turning it into a dead space. In order to revitalize the city center, the government decided to take the overpass underground and landscape the surface, revitalizing the area.

Canada is a northern country with five months or more of unrelenting winter cold, which makes living and working there inconvenient. Taking advantage of the 1967 World Expo in Montreal, the city built a subway system. A network of underground pedestrian walkways connected the basements of the major buildings around each stop. Underground plazas and common spaces were linked to commercial areas, forming a true underground city. The government gave companies the right to use the subterranean space, drew up technological standards, established design requirements that would satisfy the public’s
needs, stipulated opening and closing times, and encouraged commerce by paying for construction and providing security. This kind of experience—the city guiding private enterprise in the development of underground space—is worth learning from.
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“Europe’s exemplar is the Parisian “twin-level city” of La Defense. This modern underground business center integrates rail transport and roads, leaving nothing but open space on the surface. Buildings have six-level basements, so all kinds of facilities have been placed underground. The city’s lifeblood runs through these underground spaces, truly realizing the dream of a “twin-level city”! Paris has also seen the transformation of the shopping mall. As the city expanded in the middle of the century, its longtime central marketplace at Les Halles went into decline. In 1971, the city dismantled the market and began building a railway hub and mall on the site, using the construction of the rail lines as an opportunity for large-scale revitalization. The remaining structures were preserved, and the new project was rendered in an excellent combination of modern, contemporary, and ancient styles. It was christened in 1977 as Forum des Halles, a four-story underground shopping area with a recessed plaza, fountains, mosaics, and a wax museum.

In Asia, Japan has made the greatest strides in developing underground space. Following the construction of underground railways, Japan started building other facilities beneath its cities. Osaka has a completely integrated underground city center; urbanites can go about their daily business without ever setting foot on the surface. By the late ’50s, the reputation of Osaka’s underground street—translated into English as “underground shopping center”—had spread internationally and become known as a crystallization of theoretical approaches and building methods. The area occupied by this development was public, so the government held the land-use rights; it provided funds for transportation and let famous commercial
brands open stores. This led to the founding of the cooperative Underground Street Company Limited. In 2001, Japan implemented the Underground Special Use Measures, which granted land-use rights to public services. This was a major breakthrough, as it resolved the problem of building public works underneath privately owned land. Previously, subway projects had been delayed for years because of objections by property owners. China should learn from this regulation.”
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“FOR UNDERGROUND DEVELOPMENTS to be successful, you have to find a way to get around the problems of light, moisture, and noise. People associate the underground with tombs and bomb shelters. On the surface, the field of vision is broad: You can see light, trees, people going about their business. Underground, in a sealed space, you can’t; it’s difficult for people to see how they might escape if something happens. If the air quality isn’t sufficiently regulated, it will give off an
“underground smell.” Generally, cramped, closed spaces make people agitated and uncomfortable. We are still researching the underground environment to determine the extent to which its characteristics affect physiology and psychology.

We need to make the bodily experience of being underground not feel like you’re underground. We should change the composition of the underground environment—the space’s lighting, shadows, colors, materials, shape, and texture—so that it matches what people are used to above ground. We should change the quality and flow of air. We are also thinking of ways to introduce key elements of the natural environment underground, such as sunlight, green plants, flowing water, and small animals. If we can’t do that, we can at least project images of surface life onto the walls underground.”
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Digital image collages by Natalie Labriola: Subterranean Mini-Mall; Guardians of the Fallout Shelter; Sleep-Away Bunker; Snow Day; Out of Business; Stalagmite Yoga Chamber; Tunnel Vision Quest. Above Image: Shanghai World Expo mascot Haibao, who is rendered in the form of the Chinese character ren, which symbolizes human beings; his name means “treasure of the sea.”
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Source: Triple Canopy
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today and tomorrow

“Last summer, Felice Varini did this installation called “Cercle et suite d’éclats” in Vercorin, Switzerland. The scale of this point of view artwork is very impressive.”
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from Bustler

“The winners of the 2009 Toronto Urban Design Awards, the 6th since amalgamation, were recently announced. The award program celebrates the best urban design in Toronto. Unlike other design awards programs that highlight individual projects, the Urban Design Awards honor the improvements to urban life made by designers who are focusing on context—the way their designs fit into the surrounding environment and contribute to the creation of great public spaces.

“To create a successful ‘place,’ each new building, open space and streetscape element has to follow a similar set of rules—some written, some unwritten—so that the sum of parts works as a coherent, well-proportioned whole, despite being built by many individuals and over a long period of time,” said Robert Freedman, Director of Urban Design at the City of Toronto. “We have worked hard over the years to refine the submission requirements to emphasize place-making and context and we have observed an enthusiastic response from the design community and noticeable improvements in the urban design quality of submissions.”

The 2009 jury was composed of Ian Chodikoff, Editor – Canadian Architect; Jack Diamond, Principal – Diamond + Schmitt Architects Inc.; Eha Naylor, Principal – ENVision – The Hough Group Limited; and Michael Van Valkenburgh, Principal – Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates Inc.

The winning projects are on view at Toronto Metro Hall until today, October 2, and will further be exhibited at Etobicoke CC (October 5 – 9), Scarborough CC (October 19 – 23), and North York CC (October 27 – November 2).
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Here some of the 2009 prize winners sorted by award categories:

Buildings in Context – Private

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More categories and Projects at Bustler
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from AIA NY

MORE THAN 270 PARTICIPANTS REGISTER FOR INTERNATIONAL SIDEWALK SHED DESIGN COMPETITION
Competitors from 28 Countries Are Submitting Designs for a Safer, More Appealing Sidewalk Shed in New York City

The New York City Department of Buildings (DOB) and the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIANY) today announced that 273 designers from around the world have registered for the urbanSHED International Design Competition. The competition seeks to develop a new standard of sidewalk shed design that improves the pedestrian experience while maintaining or exceeding the required safety standards in New York City. The registration period has ended, and proposals must be submitted no later than 5 p.m. on Friday, October 2. Of the 273 competitors, 177 are professional designers, including architects and engineers, and 96 are students. Nearly 20% of the registrants live outside the United States, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, Croatia, Denmark, Egypt, France, Germany, Greece, Guatemala, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal, Russia, Serbia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan and the United Kingdom.

Sidewalk sheds are typically built over public space to protect pedestrians during construction activity, and there are currently more than 6,000 sidewalk sheds installed and in use today at New York City’s buildings and construction sites, spanning more than 1,000,000 linear feet. The competition, which was launched on August 13, is being sponsored by DOB, AIANY, Alliance for Downtown New York, ABNY Foundation, Illuminating Engineering Society New York City Section (IESNYC) and New York Building Congress with additional support from the NYC Department of Transportation (DOT), the NYC Department of City Planning (DCP) and the Structural Engineers Association of New York (SEAoNY).

“This competition provides a unique opportunity to re-design the landscape of New York City. We have received an amazing response, and it shows that there’s a worldwide interest in obtaining that opportunity,” said Buildings Commissioner Robert LiMandri. “This great City has continued to grow and evolve to better serve its people, and this one-of-a-kind competition is another step in that direction. Sidewalk sheds are a part of life in a vertical city, but there’s room for improvement when it comes to their safety, strength and design. I wish good luck to all of the participants and may the best design win.”

“A greener, safer and more street-smart sidewalk shed can transform the urban landscape,” said Rick Bell, the executive director of the AIANY. “Design matters, whether for grand new buildings, or for the street-side scaffolding that protects passers-by. Challenging the design community during the current construction lull to think about the future fits into the AIA New York Chapter’s commitment to encouraging the creation of livable and sustainable communities, for both today and tomorrow.”
“We are grateful to DOB for taking the lead on a competition that promises to help improve the look and feel of construction sites citywide,” said Richard T. Anderson, President of the New York Building Congress. “In a city that is constantly evolving, through new buildings and renovations in all five boroughs, construction sheds represent the building industry’s front door. The Building Congress and its Foundation have advocated just such a program that can enhance the relationship between the industry and the community at large, while supporting active construction sites.”

“IESNYC is excited to see how lighting design will enhance each of the hundreds of submissions and looks forward to the global perspectives on lighting that will emerge from all the submissions for the urbanSHED competition,” said Kelly Seeger, President of IESNYC.
“The overwhelming response to urbanSHED is just the latest example of the enthusiasm we’ve seen from all corners of the globe to bring a fresh perspective to our streets,” said DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan. “While sidewalk sheds might seem like a sacrifice we have to make, the entrants clearly see them as an opportunity to reshape our public space and improve our streetscape in unexpected ways.”

“Negotiating sidewalks should not be an ominous adventure,” said City Planning Commissioner Amanda M. Burden. “The design competition for a new city sidewalk shed provides a unique opportunity to rethink how these ubiquitous structures can bring amenity and delight to the pedestrian. I am anxious to review the design submissions to discover what creative and inventive minds have brought to this challenge.”
The competition is taking place in two stages. During Stage I, the jury will select up to three designs based on criteria such as the design’s safety, sustainability and constructability.
Designs also will be evaluated on their impact on the streetscape and pedestrian experience, use of both natural light and the required electrical lighting, and improvements to structural components. The finalists will be announced during AIANY’s annual Heritage Ball at Pier Sixty of Chelsea Piers on October 8. Following Stage I, all of the submitted designs will be featured on the competition’s Web site at www.urbanshed.org – including the finalists’ proposals.

The finalists, who will be awarded $5,000 each, will participate in Stage II, where they will further develop their designs to meet or exceed current technical and structural requirements to assure safety and stability. The finalists’ designs also must be cost-effective to produce, install, maintain, and reuse over time. During Stage II, the jury will select a winning design and announce their decision in December 2009. The winner, whose design will become an approved standard, will receive a $10,000 cash prize. As part of the top award, the Alliance for Downtown New York will facilitate the construction of a full-scale prototype on a job site in Lower Manhattan as part of its RE:Construction art program.

The jury is comprised of City Planning Commissioner Amanda M. Burden, FAICP; David M. Childs, FAIA, of the Municipal Arts Society; Craig Dykers, AIA MNAL, of Snøhetta; Buildings Commissioner Robert LiMandri; Jean Oei of Morphosis; Department of Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan; Craig Michael Schwitter, P.E., of Buro Happold North America; Frank Sciame of the New York Building Congress; and Ada Tolla of LOT-EK. Susanna Sirefman of Dovetail Design Strategists is the competition advisor overseeing the development and management of the competition.

The finalists will receive recommendations from a technical advisory group of leading design and construction industry stakeholders including: Fatma Amer, P.E., First Deputy Commissioner at DOB; Rick Bell, FAIA, Executive Director of the AIANY; Ken Buettner of the Hoisting and Scaffolding Trade Association; John Delucia, Director of Street Reconstruction at the NYC Department of Transportation; Skye Duncan, Urban Designer at the NYC Department of City Planning; Carl Galioto, FAIA, senior principal at HOK New York; Andrew Hollweck, Vice President of the New York Building Congress; Laurie Kerr, Senior Policy Advisor on Buildings and Energy at the NYC Mayor’s Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability; Caleb McKenzie of IESNYC; Brigit Pinnell, Executive Director of the Jamaica Center BID; and David N. Rackmales, P.E., of U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Competitors must submit illustrations of their design concept as it would appear when installed at the DOB headquarters at 280 Broadway in Manhattan. The current sidewalk shed installed at 280 Broadway exemplifies many of the complexities that shed contractors must face when erecting these structures, including heavy pedestrian traffic, car passenger access, street parking, public doorways, loading docks, parking garage entries, bus shelters, coffee carts, storefront, retail and DOT signage. Further information on the competition, including details on eligibility, schedule, and judging criteria, is available at www.urbanshed.org.

For more Information, please contact:
Tony Sclafani / Carly Sullivan (DOB) (212) 566-3473
Emily Nemens (AIANY) enemens@aiany.org or (212) 358-612
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Mediapolis @ one-north is a unique collaboration among four government agencies – JTC Corporation as the master planner and master developer, the Media Development Authority, the Infocomm Development Authority and the Economic Development Board. When completed, Mediapolis @ one-north will be a vital piece of Singapore’s media ecosystem that will add significant depth and scale to Singapore’s media infrastructure. It will serve as the crucible for creating and distributing content from Singapore to the world.
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Mediapolis is strategically located within one-north, a 200-ha R&D hub that is master-planned and master-developed by JTC. one-north is a vibrant hotspot for test-bedding, innovation and R&D hub. Mediapolis will be the third strategic industry cluster in one-north, after Biopolis (for biomedical sciences) and Fusionopolis (for infocomm technology, media, science and engineering industries).

Mediapolis @ one-north will be a self-contained center of expertise providing strategic media infrastructure for local and international media businesses and activities. It will house a media ecosystem comprising incubators, R&D activities, content development, digital production, broadcasting, industry-responsive education, intellectual property and digital rights management. These will be anchored by shared facilities (such as sound stages, advanced digital screen studios, sound recording studios and motion capture studios) and services (such as equips and grips, costumes and sets as well as film processing lab). Mediapolis @ one-north will also house specialised media schools which provides industry-responsive education and training.

Mediapolis @ one-north will focus on the development of high quality digital media content as well as R&D in interactive digital media. It will be supported by a strong and robust IT infrastructure and a synergistic business environment.

A 19 ha plot within one-north has been earmarked for the development of Mediapolis. The development will be demand driven by the industry and carried out in phases. When fully developed, there will be business park space to house quality digital production and post production facilities. R&D laboratories located within Mediapolis will also play a key role to boost R&D efforts in digital media technologies to capture the increasing demand for innovative applications, services and devices.

The master plan for Mediapolis @ one-north was unveiled in December 2008. The development of Phase one has started earlier in 2009 with the building of a sound stage complex on a 1.2 ha plot by Infinite Frameworks, a Singapore media production company. This first soundstage complex which will allow film-makers and production houses to shoot high-definition and 3-D movies is expected to be completed by 2012.”

Text & Photos by JTC Corporation
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from Bustler

“The winners of Reburbia, the Suburban Design Competition, have just been announced. The competition, sponsored jointly by Dwell and Inhabitat.com, called for design solutions that would address the problems that plague present-day suburbia by envisioning different scenarios for the future.

From over 400 international submissions, the judges narrowed the list of the best entries down to 20 finalists, and eventually decided on three prize-winning projects. Additionally, a People’s Choice Award was selected through an online voting process that allowed the general public to elect their favorite entry from a list of twenty finalists.
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GRAND PRIZE:

Frog’s Dream: McMansions Turned into Biofilter Water Treatment Plants by Calvin Chiu

The grand prize goes to Frog’s Dream: McMansions Turned into Biofilter Water Treatment Plants, submitted by Calvin Chiu. The design proposed converting abandoned suburban tract homes into wetland areas, using vegetation to filter and clean water in abandoned suburban areas for nearby urban centers. Of this entry, judge Geoff Manaugh, author of BLDGBLOG, said, “I love the trans-species approach, the acceptance of certain economically obvious shifts that are occurring already in many a recently constructed suburb, and the hydrological inventiveness. It’s poetic, not practical – and that’s exactly why this project is positive evidence of how we might really rethink suburbia.”
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SECOND PLACE:
Entrepreneurbia: Rezoning Suburbia for Self-Sustaining Life by Urban Nature, F&S Design Studio, and Silverlion Design

The second place prize goes to Entrepreneurbia: Rezoning Suburbia for Self-Sustaining Life, submitted by Urban Nature, F&S Design Studio, and Silverlion Design. This entry called for reining in sprawl and making suburban communities more vibrant and walkable by transforming uniformly residential neighborhoods into entrepreneurial incubators by changing zoning laws to support small businesses. Of this entry, judge Jill Fehrenbacher, founder of Inhabitat, said, “The idea was one of the few entries in the Reburbia competition that wasn’t really a design proposal at all, but instead a policy proposal — and it was clearly the most practical, cost-effective and energy-efficient proposal submitted to us, and therefore the one which has the biggest potential to effect real change.”
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THIRD PLACE:
Big Box Agriculture: A Productive Suburb by Forrest Fulton

The second runner-up was Big Box Agriculture: A Productive Suburb, submitted by Forrest Fulton. This entry proposed turning big box store parking lots into farms, the interior of the stores into greenhouses and restaurants, and many of the existing structural details into renewable energy generators. Of this entry, judge Eric Corey Freed of OrganicArchitect said, “Flipping the economic flow of agriculture and commerce is a much needed step in the right direction. I love that this entry looks at reuse of existing infrastructure, local farming and methods of growth.”
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PEOPLE’S CHOICE AWARD:
Urban Sprawl Repair Kit: Repairing the Urban Fabric by Galina Tahchieva

Finally, the People’s Choice Award entry, which was selected through an online voting process that allowed the general public to elect their favorite entry from a list of twenty finalists, was the Urban Sprawl Repair Kit: Repairing the Urban Fabric, submitted by Galina Tahchieva. With a staggering 2,348 votes, the design delineated five building typologies characteristic of suburbia, and corresponding formulas for recreating them in order to promote environmental responsibility and community building. There were a total of 188 comments on Ms. Galina’s proposal, of which the vast majority echoed the thoughts of Walter Chatham who said, “This is an incredibly thoughtful and practical solution to poor urban design, but
 it also suggests how the many, many “tired” relics of the twentieth century can find intelligent and useful life well into the twenty-first century. This is the greenest idea of all.”
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The winners will be featured on Inhabitat.com, Dwell.com and Re-burbia.com, and as well as in Dwell magazine’s December 2009/January 2010 issue, which will explore the future of design. The grand prize winner will also receive $1000.

Images: Reburbia
Source: Bustler
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from ReBurbia

“Inhabitat announced the Top 20 finalists of the Reburbia design competition to revitalize the suburbs. Reburbia invited architects, urban designers, renegade planners and imaginative engineers to design future-proof spaces and systems using the suburban structures of the present, from small-scale retrofits to large-scale restoration.”

Here is the Second Finalist:

T-Tree: A Towering Community of Sustainable Residences
Designed By: Adil Azhiyev, Ivan Kudryavtsev (Light+Space)

Project Description:

“For our T-trees social housing project we used the concept of a “tree”. It is not a totally new idea, others worked with the concept in the 70s and 80s. The whole visual image of a building is constructed with two interwoven design principles. The first is supporting a core – the central block that contains the elevator and the stairs. The second is the communication module. As the trunk of the tree, which is where the blocks are mounted a branch with leaves, in this project – it is communication modules.

With a future of increasing energy, living costs, climate change, high population density, urbanization it is no surprise that we are now seeking new solutions. Everyone wants to live in a green, sustainable environment in suitable house, with low construction costs.
The basis of the apartment is a cubic shaped living module with 3m sides.

At the request of the opportunities and possible variations of easy assembling, replacing, or adding extra module depenidng of a family needs, made in recycled materials (wood, plastic, glass, aluminium), each prefabricated module consist in build-in facilities, furniture, toilets, shower, kitchen etc. depending on function of each cell, also wind mills are additional modules on the top, produce energy which cover 25% of required energy.
The module remains unchanged, which makes assembling easier. For people with disabilities, entrance in each floor will be aligned with elevator entrance.”

Source: ReBurbia
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from ReBurbia

“Inhabitat just announced the Top 20 finalists of the Reburbia design competition to revitalize the suburbs. Reburbia invited architects, urban designers, renegade planners and imaginative engineers to design future-proof spaces and systems using the suburban structures of the present, from small-scale retrofits to large-scale restoration.”

Here is the First Finalist:

AIRBIA: A Suburban Airship
Designed By: Alexandros Tsolakis / Irene Shamma

Project Description:

“Airbia proposes a new eco-friendly and efficient transportation system linking the suburbs and city centre. Corresponding to the lack of coherent public transportation in the majority of the sprawling cities, a set of airships is designed to form an additional network over the urban tissue.

The proposed network bases its flexibility on the limited required infrastructure (just overground platforms) and facilities, easy hovering, landing and passenger access. The target is to develop a set of routes covering nodal points of the suburbia, travelling all the way to the borders of the city centre creating a ring around it. This network would potentially replace the use of cars and trains as transportation between the suburbs and the city centers.

Being inspired by the zeppelin technologies, the proposed airship engages the idea using helium to hover, which is proven to be a sustainable and economical approach.
The proposed airship has a capacity to carry 400 people and travel with an avarage of 150 km/h speed on a hight between 30 – 500 meters. Instead of having a major airship station, Airbia proposes a more dispersed network of station-platforms, that constist of staircases, lifts and ticket spaces. This way the system becomes much more flexible, since these drop off – pick up platforms can be placed almost anywhere in the city.”

Source: ReBurbia
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