[Press Release]

DRAGONFLY, A METABOLIC FARM FOR URBAN AGRICULTURE

2009 : 800 MILLION OF URBAN FARMERS FOR RESPONSIBLE ECO-CITIES

The world of fast-food and frozen food is over! The urban keen interest of the beginning of our Century turns toward the garden flat bringing back the countryside in our overcrowded cities fighting from now on for a community urban agriculture able to contribute to the durability of the city and to rethink the food production.

On the roofs, terraces, balconies, in the hollow of the non-built public spaces, in the interior yards and the suspended greenhouses, the eco-warrior aspires to escape from its competitive and consumeristic universe imposed by the laws of the market. He desires to cultivate its immediate landscape so as to better take root in the ground by creating his own ecologic and alimentary biodiversity. The consumer becomes from then on producer and the garden inhabitant !

From the Parisian « worker gardens » to the « community gardens » of New York going though Muscovite « vegetable squares », eight hundred million of urban farmers, i.e. more than one human being out of ten, consume nowadays chlorophyllous products from these cosmopolitan kitchen gardens. These new gardens, aware of the emergency to reduce our fuel consumption and the necessity to modify our behaviour facing the climatic changes, decrease thus their environmental impact and build eco-responsible cities on a community way.

2025 : 5.5 BILLION OF CITY SLICKERS FACING THE FOOD CHALLENGE OF THE 21ST CENTURY

According to the PNUD (Programme of the United Nations for the Development), the worldwide urban population will go from 3.1 billion of inhabitants in 2009 up to 5.5 billion of inhabitants within 2025. Looking for a positive energetic assessment, the contemporary city aims within fifteen years at producing cleanly and intensively more energy than it consumes so as to pack this urban exodus! It develops therefore the urban agriculture to become food self-sufficient by recycling at the same time its liquid waste by phyto-purification, its solid waste in fertilizers by composting and by producing energy by biomass, photovoltaic cells and other renewable energies (thermic solar, photovoltaic solar, wind, tide-turbine energies…).

In order to avoid the asphixiation of the planet and the feeding of its 9 billion of inhabitants within 2050, it deals thus with reinventing the traditional energetic pattern between the city and the countryside between western countries, emerging countries and developing countries. This sums up as following: on the one hand import of natural and food resources, and on the other hand export of waste and pollution. The ecologic city aims at reintegrating the farming function on the urban scale by emphasizing the role of the urban agriculture in the use and the reuse of natural resources and biodegradable waste so as to close the loop of ecologic flows.

The urban agriculture can feed the city without any pesticide or chemical fungicide (whose toxicity is proved on the human being : cancer, sterility…), and make it less food dependant of its backcountry or other regions of the world. Organising the distribution of fresh products in short circuits, that means linked directly with the consumer, the urban agriculture complete thus the traditional agriculture. In addition to the nutritive quality of the produced and consumed food, the urban agriculture is also a growth lever of the urban unemployment market and the local economy. It is used directly as a social link in the conciliation of the primary needs of the newcomers with the challenge of their integration in the life of the city, fighting thus against poverty and exclusion. On the sanitary level, this farm approach presents also an interesting potential for the decontamination of polluted grounds and undergrounds as well as for he purification of the polluted atmosphere in CO2.

Due to the fuel crisis and climatical change, the rural agriculture of the western countries must answer to the worldwide food crisis of the developing countries and mainly Africa. Its role is from now on to produce (with an increase estimated of 60% within 2050) all the foodstuffs transportable by boat such as cereals or corn. This is based on the evolution of the science and the most advanced biotechnologies. In addition to this nutritious role, the rural agriculture is newly challenged to recycle its own culture rebus for the green chemistry in order to produce the bio fuel called “second generation fuel” using the energy of non-consumable materials from the plants, that means fibres such as celluloses.

DRAGONFLY, A NOURISHING VERTICALY CULTIVATED CENTRAL PARK

The architecture has to be in the service of this new agriculture and to design this new social desire in this context of ecologic mutation and food autonomy! The Dragonfly project suggests therefore building a prototype of urban farm offering around a mixed programme of housing, offices and laboratories in ecological engineering, farming spaces which are vertically laid out in several floors and partly cultivated by its own inhabitants. This vertical farm sets up all the sustainable applications in organic agriculture based on the intensive production varied according to the rhythm of the seasons. This nourishing agriculture is furthermore in favour of the reuse of biodegradable waste and the keeping of energy and renewable resources for a planning of ecosystemic densification.

Floor by floor, the tower superposes not only stock farming ensuring the production of meat, milk, poultry and eggs but also farming grounds, true biological reactors continuously regenerated with organic humus. It diversifies the cultivated varieties to avoid the washing of stratums of soft substratum. Thus, the cultures succeed one another vertically according to their agronomical ability to provide some elements of the ground between the essences that are sowed and harvested. The tower, true living organism, becomes thus metabolic and self-sufficient in water, energy, and bio-fertilizing. Nothing is lost; everything is recyclable to a continuous auto-feeding!

A BIONIC AND ENERGETICALLY SELF-SUFFICIENT ARCHITECTURE
The architecture of Dragonfly prototype suggests reinventing the vertical building (that outlined the urbanistic booming of New York City since the 19th Century) as structurally and functionally as ecologically and energetically.

To ensure the social diversity and a permanent life cycle (24h/24) in the tower, the mixed programmation is mainly laid out around two poles of housing and work places. Around housings, offices and research laboratories as well as the most private to the most public agricultural and leisure spaces are designed in gardens, kitchen gardens, orchards, meadows, rice fields, farms and suspended fields. The distribution of flows is made around a true safe spine spreading in loop the numerous elevators, the goods elevators and stair wells serving all the levels by separating simultaneously the inputs and the outputs recycled from plants, animals and human beings.

Architecturally, the functional organisation is represented by two oblong towers symetrically arranged in pair around a huge climatic greenhouse that links them and deploys itself between two crystalline wings. These very light wings in glass and steel retake the loads of the building and are directly inspired from the structure of the dragonfly wings coming from the family of “Odonata Anisoptera” whose transparent membrane is very finely nervured. Two inhabited rings buttress around these wings. Their organically chiselled exo-structure accommodates the inter-climatic spaces that receive the agrarian cultures. They buttress.

The whole set forms «double layer» architecture in bee nest mesh that exploits the solar passive energy at its maximum level, by accumulating the warm air in the winter in the thickness of the exo-structure, and by cooling the atmosphere by natural ventilation and by evapo-perpiration of the plants in the summer. Protecting thus the cultures from climatic changes in New York (from -25.5°C in the winter to +41°C in the summer), these plug spaces are useful to reflect on the agriculture not anymore in terms of surface area but really in terms of volume. Actually, whereas grounds nourish orchards, each wall and each ceiling are metamorphosed into three-dimensional kitchen gardens. The interior frontages of the housing and offices throw towards the skyline of New York the cantilever of their hydrophonic balconies with hexagonal section thanks to what it multiplies the culture layers by floors. The vegetation abounds, the earth is swarming of insects and animals are freely brought up in holding tanks by urban consumers with low income. The architecture becomes eatable!

Designer : Vincent Callebaut Architect

[Press Release]
MVRDV wins Gwanggyo City Centre Competition, near Seoul, South Korea

The Daewoo Consortium and the municipality of Gwanggyo announced the MVRDV concept design for a dense city centre winner of the developer’s competition for the future new town of Gwanggyo, located 35km south of the Korean capital Seoul. The plan consists of a series of overgrown hill shaped buildings with great programmatic diversity, aiming for high urban density and encouragement of further developments around this so-called ‘Power Centre’, one of the envisioned two centre’s of the future new town.

Since the beginning of the millennium local nodes with a high density concentration of mixed program are used in Korean town planning. These nodes consist of a mix of public, retail, culture, housing, offices and leisure generating life in new metropolitan areas and encouraging further developments around them: the Power Centre strategy. The Gwanggyo Power Centre will consist of 200,000m2 housing, 48,000m2 offices, 200,000m2 mix of culture, retail, leisure and education and 200,000m2 parking.

This diverse program has different needs for phasing, positioning and size. To facilitate this all elements are designed as rings. By pushing these rings outwards, every part of the program receives a terrace for outdoor life. Plantations around the terraces with a floor to floor circulation system store water and irrigate the plants. The roofs of these hills and the terraces are planted with box hedges creating a strong, recognizable, cohesive park. This vertical park will improve the climate and ventilation, reduce energy and water usage. As a result a series of overgrown green ‘hills’ appear in the landscape.

The site is surrounded by a beautiful lake and forested hills, the design aims to create a landscape on top of the new program that enlarges the green qualities and that links the surrounding parks by turning the site into a park.

The shifting of the floors causes as a counter effect hollow cores that form large atriums. They serve as lobbies for the housing and offices, plazas for the shopping center and halls for the museum and leisure functions. In each tower a number of voids connect to the atrium providing for light and ventilation and creating semi-public spaces. On the lower floors the atriums are connected through a series of public spaces on various levels linking the towers and serving the outdoor facilities of the culture, retail and leisure program. The Power Centre creates a dense urban program with a green regard.

The concept plan is currently at the Gyeonggi provincial authority’s Urban Innovation Corporation for further development and feasibility study, the entire new town will be a self sufficient city of 77,000 inhabitants. The estimated budget and timeframe are still in the process of being established, completion is envisioned for 2011. A consortium lead by Daewoo develops the project with local firm DA Group, which commissioned MVRDV to design the scheme. British firm Arup is involved as engineer.

Designer : MVRDV via IGreenSpot via WordArchitectureNews

[Press Release]
The MAZDA KAAN is an electric race car designed to compete in the E1 races, the pinnacle of international motorsports in terms of technology and popularity. In 2025, California freeways have been resurfaced with a sub-level electro-conductive polymer that powers the electric cars of the modern world. MAZDA’s patented electronic tire system uses this technology to power the KAAN to reach 250 mph with no harmful emissions!

The vehicles are piloted by individual drivers but teams are made up of thirty cars, all on the track together. Using strategies similar to those in cycling peletons, the tighter the group sticks together, the more aerodynamic and powerful it becomes.

Inspiration for the KAAN comes from electric fields and textures seen in nature, particularly those in a lightning bolt. The car is uniquely designed around its powerful electric wheels while the cockpit acts as a capsule to safely house the driver, allowing for tighter peloton formations and a team victory.

(Click the image for bigger view)

Designer : Jacques Flynn, Carlos Salaff, Minyong Lee, Greg Lee, Tim Brown, and Jordan Meadows

Here is some info from Zaha Hadid Architects:

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Site Analysis

The Farrer Court site is located in a strategic position within the residential area of Singapore, close to the amenities of Holland Road and the future MRT station. The absence of high rise buildings in the near surroundings and direct connection to the main traffic route of Farrer Road make this a prestigious and highly visible site across the whole city.

Site Proposal

ZHA’s Proposal for the Farrer Court site is generated by the study of the existing alignments and the main axis surrounding the site, which are brought in and connected to generate a series of construction lines highly connected to the neighbourhood. The ground landscape level is visualized as a very green layer, which wants to emphasize the presence of florid vegetation in the Singapore’s climate.

The site levels are re-organized into a series of terraced plateaus to maximise the area dedicated to communal site amenities. The orientation and placement of the buildings is optimized in relation to the local environment as well as to maximize views out towards the surrounding city and landscape.

Building Proposal

The program is organized into 7 towers, which grow from sunken private gardens within the site landscape. The lower floors kink in to highlight the point where buildings meet the ground, enabling yet a greater open area and the creation of highly private gardens which are quite unique given the scale and density of the development. The towers are subdivided into petals according to the number of residential units per floor, with a common principle a series of diverse and unique towers can be generated.

The petals are expressed in three dimensions thanks to vertical cuts which give definition to the building’s façades and, at the same time, allow for cross ventilation of most of the flats. The buildings culminate at the top with a series of fingers stepped at different heights, which blend the transition between the architectural fabric and the sky. Through rotating the buildings across the site, and the careful use of balconies and façade panelling a combination of self similar towers produce an incredible amount of diversity across the development.

PROGRAM: 7 high-end residential towers and landscape deck

CLIENT: CapitaLand, Singapore

ARCHITECT: Design Zaha Hadid with Patrik Schumacher

Project Architects Michele Pasca di Magliano, Viviana Muscettola
Project Manager Charles Walker
Project Team Effie Kuan, Bozana Komljenovic, Sophie Le Bienvenu, Helen Lee, Kelly Lee, Evan Erlebacher, Ludovico Lombardi, Annarita Pape schi, Hoon Lee, Clara Martins, Dominiki Dadatsi, Eleni Pavlido Federico Dunkelberg, Gorka Blas, Loreto Flores, Hee Seung Lee, Feng Lin, Jose M. Monfa, Sandra Riess, Selahattin Tuysuz, Zhong Tian, Ta-Kang Hsu, Emily Chang

CONSULTANTS: M&E Engineering (Concept) Max Fordham, London

Landscape Architect (Concept) GROSSMAX, Edinburgh
Local Architect RSP, Singapore
Structural Engineering Maunsell, Singapore
M&E Engineering BECA, Singapore
Landscape Architect ICN, Singapore
Quantity Surveyor DLS, Singapore

SIZE: Gross Floor Area 220.000 sqm towers + 70.000 sqm basement

Height of towers 150m

Designer : Zaha Hadid Architects via Dezeen

The basic concept that works on is that a parent can use to locate or keep a track of the child in a crowded location. It has 2 components, a bracelet, which is worn by the child containing a transmitter module that works at a range of up to 100 feet, and the other part is a watch style bracelet which is worn by the parent. This part receives the child’s signal and indicates the direction and the estimated distance on a small LCD display.

Not just that, with this one can keep a track of their child and also set a safe radius of distance as and when the child goes out this comfort zone, the same is indicated on the parent’s along with direction. Thus this gadget is very helpful for all those parents who would like to keep an eye on their kids at all the time.

Designer : DContinuum

With the enlargement of its production facilities, a manufacturing capacity of 100 vehicles will be achieved next year. A test vehicle awaits your participation in a test run too.

• Performance 96 KW at 8750 rpm
• Max. torque 117 Nm at 6000 rpm
• Top speed > 250 km/h
• Acceleration 0-100 km/h in 4.8 seconds
• Consumption ISO 7118 3.62l/100 km
• CO2 emissions 85 g/km

Source : MonoTracer

INFO Live’s interface is designed to follow simple human gesture of flipping and finger kicking. Understanding the human gesture and how we behave is the building block to design INFO Live.

INFO Live also learns about saving our earth, it uses less energy during manufacturing. PP as pars of the material for future recycling. Lean production methods that make sure no extra parts are being produce if there is no purchase order.

Source : NextGenPC