Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM) was recently awarded the contract to create a stunning new Central Business District in Beijing. The project will integrate into the existing downtown urban district and will improve transportation infrastructure while introducing energy-efficient buildings green public space. The plan also provides a framework for new sustainable growth that would result in eliminating 215,000 tons of CO2 per year, which is the equivalent of planting 14 million adult trees.
How can a struggling country break out of poverty if it’s trapped in a system of bad rules? Economist Paul Romer unveils a bold idea: “charter cities,” city-scale administrative zones governed by a coalition of nations. (Could Guantánamo Bay become the next Hong Kong?)
The architecture of science fiction has profoundly changed urban design. When building cities of the future, our best guides may be places like comic book megalopolises Mega-City-1 or Transmet.
England is deserted, Australia and New Zealand have merged, and the man who bought Ireland has killed himself.
They were designed to make Dubai the envy of the world: a series of paradise islands inhabited by celebrities and the super-rich reclaimed from the azure waters of the Arabian Gulf and shaped like a map of the Earth. It was called The World.
As millions of tonnes of rock were dumped into the sea for the foundations, timely leaks suggested that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie were to buy Ethiopia, Sir Richard Branson was tipped to occupy England, while Rod Stewart would border him in Scotland.
Instead it has become the world’s most expensive shipping hazard, guarded by private security in fast boats and ringed by warning buoys to keep the curious away. A development that was meant to send Dubai’s star into the firmament of First World cities has been left to the mercy of the waves and the baking winds.
There’s an old joke that you know you’re in heaven if the cooks are Italian and the engineering is German. If it’s the other way around you’re in hell. In an attempt to conjure up a perfect city, I imagine a place that is a mash-up of the best qualities of a host of cities. The permutations are endless. Maybe I’d take the nightlife of New York in a setting like Sydney’s with bars like those in Barcelona and cuisine from Singapore served in outdoor restaurants like those in Mexico City. Or I could layer the sense of humor in Spain over the civic accommodation and elegance of Kyoto. Of course, it’s not really possible to cherry pick like this—mainly because a city’s qualities cannot thrive out of context. A place’s cuisine and architecture and language are all somehow interwoven. But one can dream.
Off-Grid Scenarios: solutions for the endless city was recently chosen by Mark Linder of Syracuse University, Stanley Tigerman of Tigerman McCurry Architects and Sarah Whiting of Princeton University as “best in show” at UIC, an annual award given to the top project of the school. The studio, which was led by Alexander Lehnerer of the ETH Zurich, was titled Chicago Rules: inclusionary regimes within the American city.
Mixed-used neighborhoods work because they provide a marketplace for mixed people. Each person brings along his own specialized economic know-how, and so knows how best to provide in details the building program for his specific economic activity. A neighborhood, in that sense, becomes mixed-used because it is the product of mixed users all contributing their part to its complexity.
Architecture can be tough on second bananas. A case in point: Edward H. Bennett, the co-author with the legendary Daniel Burnham of the Plan of Chicago, the tome of soaring prose, dazzling renderings and profound influence whose 100th anniversary will be celebrated Saturday.
As the population rises, underused and empty spaces are going to fill in. How well the transition works depends on shifts in demographics and infrastructure, as well as architecture. A studio of UCLA architecture students were asked to plot that transition. But before they could be architects, they had to be planners.
