Steven Holl Architects,Tianjin, Ecology and Planning Museums, China

It was back in 2009 when we wrote a post about Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-City Investment and Development Co., Ltd (SSTEC), developing the first eco-business park of its kind in Tianjin Eco-City, China.

Today we run into this almost poetic project by the renown New York and Beijing based practice Steven Holl Architects.

Steven Holl Architects, Tianjin, Ecology and Planning Museums, Chine - Images by Steven Holl 

MVDRV - Eco City Montecorvo

We religiously read each post from the EcoFriend, especially the ones from the Eco Architecture segment and this week the following post, really cough our attention. Enjoy!The Eco City Montecorvo is a masterplan for a sustainable city by MVDRV envisioned on the two small hills of Montecorvo and La Fonsalalda. The development uses the south facing hills to provide beautiful views of the city and also maximize the use of both passive and active solar energy. The development will provide optimal conditions for solar energy generation using photovoltaic cells. Apart from harnessing solar energy, the development will also incorporate windmills that stand on top of the hills to catch the wind. Combined, the solar and the wind energy generators will have the ability to provide all the energy the 3000 unit housing community needs.Only 10 percent of the site is to be occupied by buildings, which minimizes the impact on the landscape and simultaneously minimizes building costs. Due to the height differences, each apartment takes maximum advantage of the views.The roofs of the lower situated slabs have been made accessible and offer possibilities to create a magnificent public space overlooking the landscape of the La Rioja. By producing all the energy needed on the 56 hectare site from renewable sources, the new neighborhood achieves a CO2-neutral footprint.

Sietch Nevada - A Futuristic Desert Oasis

In Frank Herbert’s famous1965 novel Dune, he describes a planet that has undergone nearly complete desertification. Dune has been called the “first planetary ecology novel” and forecasts a dystopian world without water. Although this science fiction novel sounded alien back then, the concept of a water-poor world is quickly becoming a reality, especially in the American Southwest.

Sietch Nevada is an urban prototype that makes the storage, use, and collection of water essential to the form and performance of urban life.
Inverting the stereotypical Southwest urban patterns of dispersed programs open to the sky, Matsys Designs, designed the Sietch as a dense, underground community.

A network of storage canals is covered with undulating residential and commercial structures. These canals connect the city with vast aquifers deep underground and provide transportation as well as agricultural irrigation.

The caverns brim with dense, urban life: an underground Venice.
Cellular in form, these structures constitute a new neighborhood typology that mediates between the subterranean urban network and the surface level activities of water harvesting, energy generation, and urban agriculture and aquaculture.

Eco Business Park, Tianjin China

Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-City Investment and Development Co., Ltd (SSTEC) will be developing the first eco-business park of its kind in China, in Tianjin Eco-City’s Start-Up Area.

The Tianjin Eco-City is a landmark bilateral project between China and Singapore, located in the Binhai New Area, the focal point for the acceleration of growth in the Bohai Rim, China’s powerhouse for business, science, technology and culture in the 21st century.With its strategic location, the Tianjin Eco-City is poised to realize its vision to be a centre of excellence for eco-activities and businesses that will involve companies that provide services in green financing, energy efficiency consultancy and eco-solutions.
Tianjin Eco-City, will also be an oasis of quality eco-homes and a prestigious address for high-value added services such as education, healthcare and urban solutions.

The Eco-Business Park, will occupy approximately 30 hectares of land and is expected to be the base for global eco-businesses in Tianjin and serve Northern China’s growing need for clean technologies and sustainable urban solutions.

SSTEC expects the business park to create over 15,000 white collar jobs which will attracts new residents and generate more economic spin-offs.

Alghadeer Sorouh - Mock Up Villas to Ensure Sustainability

Sorouh Real Estate, a leading real estate developed has announced the completion of the 9th mock up villa at Alghadeer Sorouh. Yes, the 9th mock up villa of what will eventually become a sustainable destination of three million square meters on the borders of Abu Dhabi and Dubai.
The first actual residences will be ready in early 2012 but for now Soroud needs to select the building contractor of the project and believe me its not going to be an easy task, hence the mock up villas!
The mock up villas have been built to scale by experts in sustainable architecture. Each is fully fitted out and located to study a whole raft of best practice building initiatives from around the world. A key consideration in the selection processes will be energy saving and insulation techniques which offer environmental and cost saving benefits to occupiers and the entire project, as well as quality, speed and efficiency of construction.
“We believe an investment in alghadeer Sorouh is an investment in a new mode of living for a new breed of commuter. We are working hard on solutions to guarantee the ongoing appeal of the project” said Samer Abu Hijleh, chief operations officer, Sorouh Real Estate. Alghadeer Sorouh will eventually be home to 18,000 residents, who will enjoy access to outstanding facilities including two kindergartens, two primary schools, a private international school, two secondary schools, seven mosques, sports clubs, community centers, retail outlets, numerous restaurants, cafés and cinemas, all surrounded by safe, pedestrian friendly parks, communal areas and under-road walkways.

For more on sustainable cities around the world:

Dongtan Eco City
Masdar City
Zhuhai Green City
Xeritown in Dubailand
Jumeira Gardens in Dubai

Dongtan City - Still on the drawing-board

The Economist gives an update on the supposed eco-city Dongtan, being built on an island outside Shanghai. After the downfall of corrupt former Shanghai party chief Chen Liangyu, one of the main backers of the project, construction has largely stalled:

A noticeable loser is Dongtan. Designed by Arup, a British design firm, to house 500,000 people, by 2010, when Shanghai hosts the World Expo, on a 8,600-hectare (21,250-acre) site, it was billed as a low-carbon alternative to urban sprawl and a blueprint for other eco-cities.

But four years on, not a single green building has gone up on the site. Arup’s Roger Wood says SIIC has opted to put construction on hold, pending further permits. He denies, however, that the project has been cancelled.
A new bridge and tunnel spanning the estuary is already completed and will open to traffic later this year. That should boost land prices on Chongming, and may give SIIC a nudge to develop—or sell—the Dongtan site.

It also raises the question, however, of what constitutes an eco-city.

Arup had envisaged a compact, mostly car-free community. Residents would live and work in green research centres and other such industries, buy local produce and use renewable energy. The new road link, however, puts Shanghai within commuting distance.

For more on eco-cities around the world visit:

Dongtan Eco City
Masdar City
Zhuhai Green City

Zhuhai - A green city in China

Recently we stumbled upon a really interesting article from Efficiency Freak regarding the efforts of Zhuhai, a city with its very own international airport and a formula one track, only an hour away from the cosmopolitan Hong Kong.

Welcome to Zhuhai, a city full of all the madness of modern China, and some of the hopes.

Zhuhai was what China cliche-lovers would call a “sleepy fishing village” (it had the same population as Oxford) before it had the fortune to be chosen as one of the special economic zones in the early 1980s.

Its incredible mayor, Liang Guangda, wanted to create a city unlike the get-polluted-and-rich-quick model, he wanted Zhuhai to become a serious international city, so he encouraged universities to open franchises here.

He also built great parks, a golf course, the international airport and the formula one track (but he annoyed Beijing in the process, so the last two are hardly ever used).

The city is, by Chinese standards, beautiful with tree-lined avenues and an incredible sea-front, which puts Hong Kong’s dire efforts to shame.

He shunned much of the low-budget filth-spewing factories that ruin southern China’s air quality and insisted on top notch computer companies which would encourage the city’s graduates from the six universities — the campuses of which are located in an incredible mountain setting — to stay and develop the city. And so the air is far cleaner than its near neighbours.
However, there are signs that some of this good work is being undone and the city is becoming more famous as a seedy tourist destination and is also getting ready for the futile Zhuhai-Macau-HongKong bridge.

But his example shows, as ever, that brave visionaries can make an enormous difference. The city is far from an eco-model, but it beats the filthy skies of Dongguan and the pipe dreams of grandiose publicity schemes such as Dongtan.

Xeritown - A sustainable City in Dubailand

Xeritown, a small development with a focus on sustainability, will attempt to work­ town squares, shops and living spaces into the desert climate, using efficient design techniques to cut down on the use of heat, water and energy.

Proposed to be built in the emerging Dubailand, a new extension of Dubai, the master plan of Xeritown consists of a number of dense urban clusters located within the landscape.

Designed to work in harmony with the environment of the region through site specific and climate sensitive architecture and planning, X–Architects and SMAQ, desided to built Xeritown across a north-south axis to exploit the cool breezes blowing in off the sea while the hot desert breeze is blocked out.

Inhabitants of Xeritown will also be protected by the dangerous desert sun since most of the buildings will be tall enough to block out the sun for most of the day, and walkways leading along shops and homes will have significant overhangs, so people can walk in almost complete shade. In places where buildings don't block out the sun, big flat circles that look a little like large masses of lily pads will hang over walkways.
The town will encourage a pedestrian-orientated lifestyle, and only two-lane streets will be made to significantly reduce the number of vehicles and pollution.
The architects were not just thinking about environmental sustainability, when working on Xeritown, they were also thinking about social sustainability and how different types of families, people of different ages, different incomes and different ethnicities could live in harmony.

The result? A town comfortable, enjoyable to live in and with streets that are built for people not cars.

Zira Island - Eco Community in Azerbaijan

Danish architects BIG Architects and Ramboll engineers have designed the masterplan for an incredible eco-community, carbon-neutral resort and residential development on Zira Island in Azerbaijan.
The architectural proposal was inspired by the country’s dramatic natural setting and the main goal was to create an organic skyline that merges buildings with the natural topography of the island.
The 10.8 million square feet eco resort, will be located in the bay of the capital city Baku, only a ferry ride away from a growing metropolis so dependent on oil and will set an example by making effective use of solar heat panels, photovoltaic cells, waste water and rainwater collection, and an offshore wind farm.
According to BIG, the development aims to be “entirely independent of external resources” an ambitious goal that will be achieved through a mix of traditional Azerbaijani building tradition and new technologies.
Developing sustainable communities around the world, like Masdar and Dongtan, has become the new norm in architectural development and should be continuously encouraged in every way.

Masdar City - Foster + Partners

In February 2008, Masdar (which means “the source” in Arabic) will break ground on the six-square-kilometer city that its backers say will be the first zero-pollution, zero-waste city. The city will be capable of housing 47,500 people, who are scheduled to start moving there in 2009. Construction is expected to take 10 years.
The vision of the city, designed by Foster and Partners, is to be a model for sustainable architecture.

A solar-photovoltaic power plant will deliver energy to buildings. Builders also envision using solar canopies that provide shade, as well as power.
The city will be placed to take advantage of the cool sea breezes, while a perimeter wall around the entire city will protect buildings from the hot desert air and noise from the nearby Abu Dhabi airport. No cars will be allowed in the city. People will get around through an electric light-rail system that will be linked to the center of Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates.
A desalination facility will be 80 percent more efficient than existing plants, and all wastewater will be purified and recycled to grow plants that could be used for biofuels.

Masdar City will be the home of the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, which backers hope will attract some of the best academics from the around the world. Also envisioned are research and development facilities from multinational companies and start-ups in the clean technology area.

CNET News, dated 18/01/2008 http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-9853581-54.html

Green City in Sanghai - Dongtan Eco City

Green cities seem to be the new initiative of development companies around the world.

One of the most promising being Dongtan the new eco-city planned for the island of Chongming, the third largest island in China, at the mouth of the Yangtze River, near Shanghai.

Planned to open by the time the Expo 2010 opens in Shanghai, it will house 50,000 residents, while by 2040, the city is slated to be one-third the size of Manhattan with a population of 500,000.

Dongtan will produce its own energy from wind, solar, bio-fuel and recycled city waste, and—in order to reduce its impact on the environment—will only allow hydrogen-fueled or renewable-energy-fueled cars on its streets.

The city will also be designed around a series of village-style neighborhoods to make it pedestrian rather than car friendly.

Jumeira Gardens: A Super-City Within Dubai

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. Conceived as “an integrated city within a city”, Jumeira Gardens is designed to be a mixed-use development that incorporates low, medium, and high-density zones for business, residences, retail, leisure, and recreation. Skidmore, Owings & Merrill master-planned the East Park Zone, while Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill master-planned the Atrium City area. Although plans are still being finalized, Meraas Development has confirmed that “‘Green’ buildings and construction, resource conservation and overall sustainability will inform every aspect of this new district, with tools such as intelligent infrastructure technology and cutting-edge eco design serving to reduce the district’s collective ecological footprint.” Chicago-based Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture are credited with designing scores of other structures that incorporate sustainable strategies. The centerpiece of Jumeira Gardens will be 1 Dubai, A tri-partite skyscraper that will rise to 3281 feet, making it the third structure tower in the UAE. Its soaring towers will be connected by a series of glass suspension sky-bridges. Park Gate comprises six mid-rise towers that are arranged in facing pairs. A hanging garden canopy stretches between each set of structures, providing shade and cooling the neighborhood by as much as 10 degrees centigrade. The smooth curves of 1 Park Avenue evoke Dubai’s historic relationship with the Arabian Gulf. The 1,800 foot tower will incorporate solar panels, wind turbines, and a variety of other sustainable strategies in its design.
Excavation for Jumeira Gardens has already begun, and the development is expected to take 12 years to complete.
+ Skidmore, Owings & Merrill
+ Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture
+ Meraas Development

source: World Architecture News , Inhabitat