In Finland, roads cover a whopping 16% of all land surface area (buildings stand for 4%). In tax expenses for an average tax payer, the cost of upkeeping merely the state highways, means that only military defence costs, social security as a whole, export support and state loan expenses come close to this cost.  Forget all about costs of education, environment,  immigrants etc, – THEY DONT EVEN COME CLOSE. Verokuitti.fi

In Hamburg, Germany, they decided to do something about this.

For decades, the A7 motorway, a major north-south highway that connects Germany with Scandinavia, has been a headache for Hamburg residents. The expressway is loud, it creates a physical barrier between neighborhoods, and because it contains heavy truck traffic, it lowers the surrounding air quality. To solve these problems, Hamburg’s government arrived at a brilliant solution: cover the expressway with a large green roof.

>inHabitat

The most exciting new tower in the world is under construction in Milan. At 27 storeys high, Bosco Verticale will be the world’s first vertical forest, with each apartment having a balcony planted with trees. In summer, oaks and amelanchiers will shade the windows and filter the city’s dust; in winter, sunlight will shrine through the bare branches.

The Bosco Verticale is a system that optimizes, recuperates, and produces energy. Covered in plant life, the building aids in balancing the microclimate and in filtering the dust particles contained in the urban environment (Milan is one of the most polluted cities in Europe). The diversity of the plants and their characteristics produce humidity, absorb CO2 and dust particles, producing oxygen and protect the building from radiation and acoustic pollution. This not only improves the quality of living spaces, but gives way to dramatic energy savings year round.
Each apartment in the building will have a balcony planted with trees that are able to respond to the city’s weather — shade will be provided within the summer, while also filtering city pollution; and in the winter the bare trees will allow sunlight to permeate through the spaces. Plant irrigation will be supported through the filtering and reuse of the greywater produced by the building. Additionally, Aeolian and photovoltaic energy systems will further promote the tower’s self-sufficiency.

The design of the Bosco Verticale is a response to both urban sprawl and the disappearance of nature from our lives and on the landscape. The architect notes that if the units were to be constructed unstacked as stand-alone units across a single surface, the project would require 50,000 square meters of land, and 10,000 square meters of woodland. Bosco Verticale is the first offer in his proposed BioMilano, which envisions a green belt created around the city to incorporate 60 abandoned farms on the outskirts of the city to be revitalized for community use.

CityVisison Venice, an international ideas competition.

Concrete ponds:

Venice Infill:

Green clean-up:

Venice For Sale:

Artistic eco sci-fi:

Sci-fi hard line:

CITYVISION competition is an international ideas competition, which challenges architects, engineers, designers, students and creative individuals to develop visionary urban proposals with the intention of stimulating the contemporary city. Through innovative ideas, which can improve the connection between the historical, present and future city, CITYVISION aims to create new ways to deal with architectural historiography.

The objective of the competition is to drive the imagination, by the use of new materials, echo-technologies, parametric software and territorial organizations for a future vision of the city.

The Judging Panel of the 2011 edition was composed by leaders of the architecture and design fields: BJARKE INGELS (BIG Architects)  Copenhagen / New York, NERI OXMAN (Material Ecology)  New York, ELENA MANFERDINI (Atelier Manferdini)  Los Angeles, MARIA LUDOVICA TRAMONTIN (Università di Cagliari)  Cagliari, BOSTJAN VUGA (Sadar Vuga)  Ljubljana. //aitoa

www.cityvision-competition.com

 http://persquaremile.com

What would the world’s landscape look like if it were concentrated into one megalopolis?  This graphic analysis illustrates the amount of land required to accommodate all 6.9 billion people based on the densities of cities across the globe.  The differences illuminate the adverse affects of suburban sprawl.

Reminder: Megapolis at Vanha Ylioppilastalo in Helsinki 15.10.2011

Today, we had the chance to hear an insipiring presentation by Rama Gheerawo (Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design) at the launch of Marja-Vantaa Service Architecture Competition. Rama writes, curates exhibitions, lectures and runs workshops on a people-centred approach to design for a variety of audiences, in Great Britain and internationally.

Architecture and design are more and more breaking into the field of designing processes, an area long guarded by logistics engineers. So far in Finland this field has lacked the talent to be able to engage with the people using the services. As Rama points out: we have 80 % of customer investment decisions made by women, while the people developing these services are to an 80%, men. How can these men know what they are doing?

One key factor in Rama Gheerawo´s talk is designing environments for all. Old people, wheelchairers, visually impaired and mentally challenged people must be able to use public space. In most cases, if we design the environment so that the people who exist at the “edges”, outside of the core target group we find success. If children, hippies, elderly, foreigners and people with dogs can use the service or product, we will make a product that is superior to the one only focusing on the key group (stereotypically the white male). Design has to adapt and be flexible to amore difference-inclusive world. This applies for gender, age, ethnicity etc, as well as for urban tribes: people with different lifestyles. Life style and culture is important for well being, and should not be pressed into an one-fit mold.

Freeweeling by Aaron `Wheelz´ Fotheringham

Training for seniors placed on a public square

Considering these points made by Rama Gheerawo, one rock we have to be vary not to stumble upon in all-inclusive design, is to try to find one grand solution that fits all the same.  This will inevitably be a mediocry, something made out of bowing to everyone, not stepping on anyones toes. The middle road is as dangerous as the exremes, only look at what we prduced in the 60´s and 70´s when we wanted the same new, (at the time fine) architecture made possible for everyone.  Toes have to be stepped on, if we will reach system change for example in our public services in screeming need of change. Instead of a grand plan, the architecture of processes has to be flexible to be able to adapt itself to different needs. To find these needs we as designers need to communicate with the users.

Adaptability in products, environments and services

The city of Vantaa is today launching a service architecture competition for the development of the area of Marja-Vantaa. What they are doing is not asking for ready made solutions, but seedlings of ideas on “hyvinvointipalvelut” i.e. processes that make us well. This is a great challenge to designers and architects to get footed into bars, hospitals, homes market squares and talk to people, find the problems and then show their creative talent of problem-solving. //aitoa

Future Marja-Vantaa area by Harris-Kjisik Architects

The “500×500 M Urban Walk” in the new area of Targ Sienny i Rakowy in Gdansk presented as a movement in space through a series of drawings. The path is marked on the map.

map

1.  2.   3. 4. 5.  6. 7.  8.   10. 12.       //aitoa

2. FLOW AND THE 500x500M URBAN WALK

An Urban Planning Methodology

The  work focuses on the kernel in Architecture and the Art of City Planning by creating a Flow of Movements through spaces of high quality. Flow in this work is both Inspiration, and Movement in Space/Time. A planning method is developed by comparing – in the same scale-,  a 500×500 m  movement in great cities, and then implementing the results in Gdansk. For us the kernel of Architecture is flow through spaces of high quality. In order to test this kernel visually in the Art of City Planning we tested an urban 500 x 500m walk that we know well in Helsinki. Next we compared Helsinki – IN THE SAME SCALE -  to some great cities, loved by poets and architects. Finally we applied the same method to the work in Gdansk.

This is the secret of the kernel.

Helsinki-Gdansk-Barcelona: the 500x500m Urban Walk:

Helsinki

Gdansk

Barcelona

THE 500x500M URBAN WALK -METHOD

Amsterdam

Bergen

Bern

Copenhagen

Dubrovnik

Gdansk

Gdansk new

Helsinki, Punavuori

Helsinki, Senat Square

Krakow

Prague

Rome

Stockholm

Tallinn

Telc

Trieste

Tunis

Venice

Visby

//aitoa

This will be the first in a series of blog postings on urban innovations on a specific site, a space/time set site with a strong sense of place and self. This is an attempt to go very site specific into urban planning, taking into account the mentality, history, people and subconsciousness of this specific place in space and time. This is a protest against universal trends anonymous to place, and coca-cola architecture. The case study is a project for urban intervention in Gdansk, Poland.

The planning area is Targ Rakowy i Sienny, The Hay and Crayfish Market area, just next to the historic part of the city of Gdansk. A connection inbetween old and new is created in the Node Squares: The spacially narrow New Hansa Squares.

The new Node Squares in the old Hansa City:

The Urban structure before and after:

//aitoa

A number of street artists around the world have taken to expressing themselves through an innovative practice known as Reverse Graffiti. Taking a cue from the “Wash Me” messages scrawled on the back of delivery trucks, they seek out soot covered surfaces and inscribe them with images, tags, and slogans by cleaning them with scrub brushes, scrapers and pressure hoses. What gives this art an extra interest, is the contradiction and absurdity of the averse reaction of most city authorities (the art form has been criminalized), while the constant dangerous pollution in our living environment, that manifests itself as dirt on surfaces, is accepted. Reverse graffiti is temporary; it fades into new layers of toxic pollution. Still, for example in Britain, artists are charged under the strangely sounding “Anti Social Behaviour Act”, and ordered to “clean up their act” and restore the dirty surfaces. By making them dirty again?

Reverse graffiti challenges our sense of morality. Brazilian artist Alexandre Orion turned a São Paulo transport tunnel into a kind of graphic charnel house, lined with skulls. He created the images, the project’s website explains, “by selectively scraping off layers of black soot deposited on those walls in the short life of this orifice of modernity.”

Jose de Sousa writes:

“Alexandre Orion raps on the door of our consciousness with his refined graffiti showing death ensconced in the vibrant city of São Paulo. In the underpass between Avenida Europa and Avenida Cidade Jardim, in a patient but determined intervention, Orion unveils his charnel-house from layers impregnation the walls of the tunnel. Skulls, one after another. From the ocular cavities of so many dead, his work loooks out on the living and interrogates people passing by; it quietly criticizes our omission, our comfortable acceptance of pollution… > continue, well worth the read “

more> BLDGBLOG

The Eurpan 10 winner for Augustenborg in Denmark is a way of bringing old memories of a people -the collective subconsciousness- into use in modern architecture.
Deve Architects show how with its rich medieval history and beautiful natural fjord landscape, Augustenborg has the potential to play an important role in the further growth and development of Als, also by the use of new energy forms; kinetic plates generating energy, ground-source heat pumps, wind turbines and biogas.

Environmental Plans
The two sides of the fjord utilize their contrasting natures to harvest energy in complimentary ways, and the embankment acts as a conduit for the transfer of energy between them. On the marina side, the open landscape is farmed for energy using ground source heat pumps, windmills, and biogas. The urban side uses the roofscapes to harvest solar energy and kinetic plates in the parking area to generate energy.

By preserving some of the existing industrial structures, and infusing them with some of the cultural relevance of a castle, it is possible to create a vibrant new extension of the city. Historic Augustenborg Palace initially dictated the shape and growth of Augustenborg, but now a Modern Castle is required to establish a true city center in Augustenborg that can serve the entire region’s cultural and technological needs. The new city center will seize the waterfront from industry and provide more intimate moments of interaction for all people within the natural environment.

more> Europan

//aitoa