Considering how urban fabric is shifting, with more people craving access to nature than perhaps ever before, daring concepts are putting biodiversity at the forefront.
Self-Sufficient City
Still knee-deep into this pandemic, it’s hard to fathom the idea of another looming, yet that’s exactly what Vicente Guallart imagined during lockdown, when the founder of Barcelona-based Guallart Architects and his team entered an international competition to design a mixed-use, post-COVID development for China’s Xiong’an New Area. The firm’s winning proposal, for the “self-sufficient city,” melds the European streetscape with contemporary Chinese-style highrises and farmland. “We want to create a neighborhood that allows an ecological lifestyle within an urban environment,” explains Guallart. Although the solutions illuminated in the self-sufficient city already exist, “they have never been put together,” he adds, pointing out that the project’s ultimate goal is to foster “the quality of life, at a reasonable price, [rather] than the industrialization of a city without a soul.”
Encompassing four cross-laminated timber blocks built to energy-saving Passive House standards, the city will feature a mix of residential typologies, along with offices, a swimming pool, shops, and even a kindergarten and fire station, so that all the facilities one might need in quarantine are less than a mile away. Coworking digital factories that produce objects on 3D and rapid prototyping machines are also slated for the site.
Outdoor space, coveted in confinement, is a hallmark of the masterplan. Food-producing greenhouses, for example, will be topped by energy-generating sloped roofs. “Biodiversity is key in cities,” says Guallart, noting that he envisions each apartment’s large terrace to act as a thermal regulator with plants and commodious interior courtyards landscaped with trees and gardens. “We want to make cities that promote life.”
BiodiverCity
Copenhagen-based BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group—in collaboration with Kuala Lumpur architects Hijjas and the Singapore office of engineering company Ramboll—has crafted a masterplan on the southern shore of Malaysia’s Penang Island for a 4,500-acre bastion of sustainability and biodiversity. In early 2020, the Penang State Government, to bolster its Penang2030 vision for green living, launched an international competition seeking such environmentally focused proposals for its Penang South Islands development. BIG won with its idea for a vehicle-free destination that promotes social inclusivity, fosters cultural life, preserves nature, and promises economic security across three different manmade islands.
Encompassing parks, stretches of waterfront, and beaches and forests that are united by ecological corridors, BiodiverCity, as the project is called, will comprise mixed-use districts that connect through an air, land, and water network, a multi-pronged ecosystem of movement, as BIG founder and creative director Bjarke Ingels puts it. Channels, the first of the islands, will be anchored by a digital park devoted to technology initiatives, rounded out with a civic hub, Cultural Coast, that honors the legacy of Penang’s George Town, and a wave pool. Business-oriented Mangroves, defined by sheltered urban wetlands, will be the second, while Laguna, an archipelago of eight islands surrounding a marina, will be the third and showcase floating, stilted, and terraced housing.
Energy-efficient buildings will be made with bamboo, Malaysian timber, and “green concrete,” which is composed of recyclable materials, to promote a peaceful coexistence among the natural elements, says Daniel Sundlin, partner at BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group, while at the same time providing spaces for communal experiences that are steeped in Malaysian heritage.
Renderings courtesy of Guallart Architects and BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group
This article originally appeared in HD’s December 2020 issue.
