Winners of the Next7 competition explore the possibilities of Earth's future environment
By Bustler Editors|
Friday, Apr 25, 2014
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Wondering about the future of the Earth's environment continues to raise concerns and curiosity in the public conscience. In Arch2O's "Next7" competition, participants got to share in their proposals one major condition that completely alters the world as we currently know it, as well as explore the meaning of sustainability.
The competition received 188 submissions from 27 countries. Proposals covered pressing topics including new technologies, globalization, adaptability, materials, aesthetics, and spatial organizations.
The jury selected three winners:
- 1st place (US$1,000): "Growing tomorrow - from inter to living matter" by Yuen Fung Cheung (Hong Kong) and Artur Nitribitt (Poland)
- 2nd place (US$500): "VUOTO" by Rawisara Chulerk, Nichakul Kulvanich, Tien Thongvanit, Prab Raktabutr (Thailand)
- 3rd place (US$250): "The last seed" by Abd-elrahman Elsayed Ahmed, Aly Magdy Mohamed Fouad, and Mahmoud Mohamed Hassan (Egypt)
Seven more proposals received honorable mentions. All competition entries will be showcased online and in an upcoming ARCH2O publication.
Check out the winning projects below.
1ST PLACE: "Growing tomorrow - from inter to living matter" by Yuen Fung Cheung (Hong Kong) and Artur Nitribitt (Poland)
Project description: "Urban and environmental Context: World urban population is expected to increase by 84 percent by 2050. Overpopulation threatens basic life-sustaining resources, access to clean air and clean water as well as energy use, waste and pollution produced, which will eventually lead to diminishes quality of life. Over 80% of world population is currentlyliving in urban areas, as our population grows bigger in number, the size of the cities grows bigger as a consequence of URBAN SPRAWL, the over development ongreen field puts extra pressure on our natural environment. Climate change is projected to become the fastest growing driver of biodiversity loss by 2050, followed by commercial forestry. The consequent loss and degradation of urban and peri-urban green space could adversely affect ecosystems as well as human health and wellbeing.
Social and cultural context: "Why is it that we don't seem to be able to adjust ou rselves to the physical environment without destroying it? .....You rush home to watch an electronic reproduction of life. You can’t touch it, it doesn’t smell, and it has no taste." (Philosopher, Alan Watts)
American nonfiction author Richard Louv stated that the future will belong to the nature-smart-those individuals, families, businesses, and political leaders who develop a deeper understanding of the transformative power of the natural world and who balance the virtual world with the real one. “The more high-tech we become, the more nature we need.” Perhaps the future is not about flying cars or wearable technology. The fast-paced world promotes technological consumerism brings new innovations, themes and trends. Maybe we should stay connect with the nature and start to design and live in smarter urban environments, combine urbanisation to return to our pastoral past through a green city which built with skyscrapers for living and working space vie with floating greenhouses or high-rise vegetable patches and green roofs. Maybe we should address the problem as Louv argues by reimagining our cities as engines of biodiversity and using urban planning to develop more walkable communities."
"The World Health Organization defines human health as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity”. An Ecological Economist Dr. Robert Costanza suggested a healthy ecosystem is thought of as one that is free from distress and degradation, maintains its organisation and autonomy over time and is resilient to stress. However, our urban spaces are overcrowded and polluted, what kind of city will we be living in?
Germany, Hamburg proposed the Landscape Axes of the “GrünesNetzHamburg” (Green Network) for The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) consist of green open spaces stretch from the surrounding countryside right into the city, it will constructed over the next 15-20 years to create pedestrian and cycle paths connect city’s existing green spaces and provide car-free commuter routes for all residents. Urban sprawl can be fought if we spread awareness of the problem, work to change our attitudes and living style to think globally, act locally. Being able to traverse a major city surrounded entirely by bikes, pedestrians, and green spaces is a way to achieve this goal.
Design philosophy: To improve the quality of the live and well being of urban occupants in overpopulated cities does not necessary means to move people away from the cities, if space and quality of space contribute to human well beings, we should reassess and restructure our space in the cities to improve its quality, instead of creating further irreversible damage to our nature by urban sprawling. The project taken the view that overcrowded cities can accommodate more occupants through carefully re-structuring of space use, and quality of city lives can be improved by encourage bio-diversity into the cities.
Our proposal is to design is built dwellings from the “blank gap” in urban with Protocell, a self-growing material in a way to collaborated with biodiversity action plan and car-free movement in order to responds to climate change and urban expansion, and underpins the health, liveability and wellbeing of the city and its inhabitants.
Urban density has been rising in the last few decades and this growth seems unstoppable. But it everything is finite so the expansion of cities will reach their limit sooner or later. Therefore after an era of “master plans” designed by “masters” by the table, we must start looking for small, local actions in order to use every single space wisely. Current Urban Gaps can be found in most of the cities around the globe. Gaps of urban planning, forgotten corners, abounded streets. "Think global, act locally" we should affect our nearest environment and neighborhood, while understanding the world-wide context of our actions. That is to say, the gaps in the cities need to be used, and urban and social problems fixed. At the same time, more and more megacities are introducing complex programs for sustainability. For instance, biodiversity plans or car-free districts are among those programmes. Biodiversity means to preserve local species by providing appropriate conditions for breeding and life. In the near future, we will pay much more attention to nature and the environment as we can assume expand of green parts of the cities into the other sites."
"Also, the clearing of forests for food production has been augmented by the industrialisation of agriculture and people are increasingly living in an unnatural environment. Only recently, during say the past three decades, have people begun to take the damage wrought by the industrialisation of production seriously and all the forms that takes. Our research focuses meeting line of inert buildings and living matter in urban gaps (in future cities/urban).
Growing Tomorrow- from inert to living matter: The only way to create genuine sustainable homes and cities is by connecting them to nature, not isolate them from it, like all organisms on earth which are constantly in touch and in conversation with the nature, live can be understood as different sets of chemical reactions in action through metabolism or photosynthesis. Scholars Rachel Armstrong and Martin Hanczyc develop a line of research that deals with what is in between the ‘living’ and the ‘non-living’, and developed a Protocell.
The Protocell is a simple chemical model of a living cell, it assembles itself from chemical reaction, the cells self-reproduce on the number of tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of molecules will grown into larger forms and it can be use for building structures, it can grown in any forms and therefore structure that didn't exist or impossible to manufacture before is now possible to be produced.
We propose to “grow” a certain amount of protocell-houses in the most densely populated areas around the globe, as part of local actions, towards better life and green environmental in cities. These protocell houses can be grown in the urban gaps to complement city fabric and become link between inert and living matter. Protocells are possible to be pre-programmed to grow into any shapes and sizes, our project explore this idea to implement into the architecture.
"The potential: Protocell could be pre-programmed to have a large variety of forms and characteristics, depends on chemical elements interact with. Therefore we are proposing the object, erected entirely out of self-growing material. Strength or translucency of the individual elements of the structure will be pre-programmed and develop while the building/growing process occurs.
Such a material is also possible to pre-program to grow in constant interaction with its surroundings, until a satisfied form is achieved. It will correspond the users’ needs, and response to changes in environment. This bottom-up construction approaches for architecture, contrast the current top-down methods which impose structure upon matter. Our proposal is responding to the increasing demand of better quality of city life as well as dramatic climate situation."
2ND PLACE: "VUOTO" by Rawisara Chulerk, Nichakul Kulvanich, Tien Thongvanit, Prab Raktabutr (Thailand)
"Project description: "How many things do you throw away each day? Imagine if one day, we throw away too much. So much that over million tons of garbage start pilling up on the streets until we cannot circulate around or even get into our houses anymore. Causing the whole city to evacuate and leave the once glorious town as a dumpsite. The sign of this situation once occurred in Italy during 2008-2010, when 250,000 tons of garbage start piling up on the sidewalks of Naples, caused by the Camora, the local mafia’s influence on municipal waste disposal business as well as bad management of landfills.
In 2050, the condition comes back with more extreme result, the officials cannot control the situation anymore and it rapidly take over the whole city, even the area around historically important sites are blocked out, forcing buildings to close down. In consequence, the government decided to close down the fully packed landfill around the city, causing almost a million habitants to evacuate due to the hazardous effects of degrading waste, leaving Naples as the new official dumpsite of Italy."
"Once the VUOTO landed, the center core’ drills through the waste pile and the streets surface, acting as support for the structure above while also pumping up fresh water for the living facilities. The fans at the pentagonal unit up top then runs the Methane gas collecting system that goes into the combustion unit at the center to generate electricity, as well as filtering the air for the dwelling ring, occupied by the refugees as their temporary living space. Carbondioxide will also be separated for the plantation section, which also helps converting carbondioxide into oxygen for the living units. When the complex is stabilized in place, the crane at the bottom descends to gather the waste from the ground, then move back for waste separation.
The crane will then spin to separate biodegradable waste that could be decomposed, such as paper and food, from other solid materials like metal, plastic and glass. The biodegradable waste will be rest in the compost unit for anaerobic digestion, to obtain additional methane gas for electricity generation. Its recedue will then be used as soil or fertilizer for plants in the complex. After the separation, only large solid materials will be left in the crane. It would then descend to the grinder[], which will comminute and separate the waste by materiality. Finally, the result will be compressed into small balls to minimize its volume before releasing back onto the street, ready to be picked up by the official waste collectors."
3RD PLACE: "The last seed" by Abd-elrahman Elsayed Ahmed, Aly Magdy Mohamed Fouad, and Mahmoud Mohamed Hassan (Egypt)
Project description: "In our project we expect that the 3rd world war will begin and the war will leave many effects. The worse effect will be “The Nuclear Winter”, It’s a climatic effect resulting from the emission of large amounts of the firestorms smoke and soot into the upper of the troposphere, which reduce the sunlight and cause cold weather for years. -The concept of “No Sun” will cause many problems like:
1. The earth won’t treat itself.
2. Death of plants.
3. Drop in temperature.
4. Microbes and diseases penetration.
Concept: Overview Our project is the last hope to survive, The only shelter for all people who are still alive and the final attempt to treat the surface of our planet by creating the new age of the natural life as the last seed. A rise of more than 10,000 meters, breaking the black blanket from the war to inhale the tropical sunlight above the Troposphere."
"Process Location: – Our project is located at the center of Africa because it is one of the least polluted areas in the world because it was far from the war zone, and the tropical forests which were there. In addition to the solar power of the tropical sun.
The Three Stages:
Our project consists of three parts:
1- The catcher
The higher part depends on the optical fiber technology which base on the principle of total internal reflection.
2- The shelter
It is the middle part where the people will live in units which move on superconducting coils.
3- The Healer
The lower part designed to heal the surrounded area of “the last seed” progressively by a chemical process between the exterior filters and the external atmosphere to make a new opportunity to live a better life."
Jury members included:
- Dennis Jones | Virginia Tech
- Andrea Maffei | Andrea Maffei Architects
- Sushant Verma | Zaha Hadid Architects
- Caroline Smith | UNStudio
- Nathan Melenbrink | University of Hong Kong’s Shanghai Study Centre
- Matt Davis | Arch2O
Images courtesy of Arch2O
Click the thumbnails below to see the Honorable Mentions.
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