[22] Future megapolis where village meets city.

My program will be to take over the Canary Wharf and design a housing complex for the vertical future city which will facilitate residents integration as opposed to megacity’s dissociation.

An urban hive of small family cells and reasonably big in-between communal spaces. I will be also thinking how to use every bit of space available and how using latest technology it could become a self sustained model of future dwellings. 

Hackers revenge on SOPA bill result in sabotaging control systems in Canary Wharf skyscrapers.

It was announced today that another strike by Stuxnet malware had disabled all controlling systems in the entire area of the Isle of Dogs. Hundreds of corporate banks buildings and residential tower blocks were sabotaged by this sophisticated cyber weapon causing chaos and disruption. Metropolitan Police spokesman said, all the control systems from traffic lights, electricity grid or even water supply was affected in most destructive ways. Luckily there have been no fatal casualties as apparently all the office workers were worn 15 before the attacks were carried out. Eye witnesses claim to see their computers and other electrical equipment connected to the internet busting with smoke or even flames almost instantly after the 15 minute notice. 

First analyses had projected losses of millions of pounds in damage to the property, industrial facilities and infrastructure of the affected areas of the Canary Wharf. As a result the entire population is being evacuated and the whole of the peninsula is being sealed off for an investigation. 

Canary Wharf has a history of insolvency.

Canary Wharf is located in the West India Docks on the Isle of Dogs. The name Isle of Dogs supposedly came about XIII century because there were royal kennels in the area. 

Beginning from the XV century as trade was expanding Docklands became a point of departure for merchant ventures.

In 1802 the West India Docks opened and were considered to be the country’s greatest civil engineering structure of its day.

It suffered severe damage during mass bombings during the Second World. Nonetheless, following post-war rebuilding they experienced a resurgence of prosperity in the 1950. 

New technology, containerisation and port industry decline meant that London Docklands couldn’t keep up with its competitors and by the early 1970’s most of the docks had closed - West India Dock closed in 1980. 

After the docks were closed in 1980 the British Government adopted various policies to stimulate the redevelopment of the area, the creation of the LDDC (London Docklands Development Corporation) in 1981 and granting the Isle of Dogs Enterprise Zone status in 1982. 

In 1987 the Canadian company Olympia and York agreed to construct a major office development on the Isle of Dogs, building began in 1988. 

In 2008 the global economical crisis swept over 5,000 jobs in Canary Wharf alone. 

Four years later second wave of financial crisis and government refusal to bailout banks, forces all of Canary’s financial establishments to move their businesses into a virtual environment. The LDDC is facing bankruptcy and selling of its assets at half of their value. Isle od Dogs is an abandoned ghost town. The site has a history of insolvency. 

Canary site plan.

[21] Voids in skyline of Greater London.

The architecture of central London is reasonably low, and due to the laws of preservation of historic buildings there are restrictions in constructing high-rise developments at certain sites. It is however rich in small parcels of land hidden in-between the buildings and even on top of them. I was investigating the voids in skyline of Greater London and just on the route of bus 243, from Holborn Station to Old Street Roundabout, I found 16 gaps between the existing structures capable to envelope some units of accommodation.

[20] Filling the gap. Developing life on abandoned parcels of urban land.

In recent years growing numbers of people gravitating towards city centres, lured by work opportunities and access to amenities and entertainment, had encouraged architects to reuse the urban land in new and exciting ways. Instead of building on previously undeveloped locations and urban fringes they are developing life on thin slivers of abandoned land within city centres. Since the property prices are shooting up the roof and grounds are so scarce every parcel of urban land [within build-up area] is precious. Another reason for this infill architecture are new lifestyle preferences, like shrinking household sizes or ageing population, meaning that there is a greater demand on single unit accommodation.

The Maison Saint-Cyr Brussels (1900) by Gustave Strauven 

http://www.immorp.com/Images/ambio/St_Cyr01.jpg

The Anderson House by Jamie Fobert Architects (2002) 

http://www.jamiefobertarchitects.com/#/projects/residental/anderson_house/

haarlemmerbuurt claus en kaan

http://blog.buildllc.com/2007/10/claus-en-kaan-modern-architecture-from-the-netherlands/

Ambi-Flux Tokyo by Akira Yoneda

http://www.sgtt.com.vn/Kien-truc-doi-song/Chi-tiet/141758/The-gioi-dang-sau-nhung-bo-mat.html

Golden Nugget Graz, Austria by INNOCAD

http://www.domusweb.it/en/architecture/innocad-golden-nugget/

http://php.innocad.at/subsite/golden_nugget/index.php?bild=6

[19] New York Tower by Studio Daniel Libeskind.

The New York Tower project is a proposal for a residential tower at One Madison Avenue, overlooking Madison Square Park in Manhattan. The design features a series of spiralling gardens extending the green of Madison Square along the facade of the tower. The tower is set back from its neighbours — maintaining views and maximising light and air. 

The New York Tower will become a major addition to the skyline of Manhattan, standing amongst the historic Met Life Tower and the Empire State Building.The building is in its early stages and will reach a more definitive deadline when the proposal enters the public review process. Studio Daniel Libeskind is working with Elad Properties on this project.

Project Brief. As seen: <http://daniel-libeskind.com/projects/new-york-tower> [Accessed 17 Nov]

http://daniel-libeskind.com/projects/new-york-tower/images[

[18] Conceptual home farming. Design Food Probe by Philips.

Brining village to a city. Phiplis Designs has taken the concept of mini aquaponic farm to the next level. This food growing system is based on the principals of hydro & aquaponic plant growth where greens are grown under artificial light in mineral solutions and water fertilized by fish droppings.

It seems the best way of making use of a space when growing inside of the buildings is to go upwards and create a vertical installations, layers of food within the buildings. This system creates a possibility for an ecological food growth in the city and if put into use it will result in a much lower food footprint of future metropolises like London.

Philips Food Probe. As seen: <http://www.design.philips.com/philips/sites/philipsdesign/about/design/designportfolio/design_futures/design_probes/projects/food.page> [Accessed 16 Nov]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au2Bueiy6MQ

[17] Sociopolis: Project for a City of the Future.

'Social aspects.
From our point of view we must try to free ourselves from the idea that there is a specifically social kind of architecture. One of the aspects that I am sure will develop increasingly in this century is the idea that all architecture will be social. That is to say the social aspect will, in fact, be the domain where architecture, the new technologies and the interaction with nature takes place - our predominant field of work. It will no longer make sense to speak of an architecture as a social architecture, architecture as a whole will have to be social.'
Guallart, V., et al, 2004. Sociopolis: Project for a City of the Future. Actar/Architectektur Zentrum Wien p. 150.

Sociopolis cover. As seen: <http://www.homfree.com/chuloh1/?p=15462> [Accessed on the 16th Nov] 

[16] Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance.

The movie Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance directed by Godfrey Reggio, consists primarily of slow motion and time-lapse footage of cities and natural landscapes across the United States. It contains neither dialogue nor vocalized narration, its tone is set by the juxtaposition of images and music by Philip Glass.

[15] Urban rooftops dwellers.

An examples of roof-habitation can be found all over the world. From beehives and football pitches to driving schools and swimming pools, humans are slowly beginning to move upwards and make a usage of an enormous possibilities that lay above our heads. They are mostly privately built dwellings which are the extensions of the building’s last floor but that’s only a start. Some architects like Werner Aisslinger have come up with solutions like LoftCube which is basically a portable house whose weight had been calculated for transport by helicopter. FPS Architecture perch a prefab metal container on the roof and connected it to the main house via a set of stairs, creating an economic and ecologic extension of a designer's workshop.

Beekeeping

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/aug/07/urban-beekeeping

http://www.life.com/animals-pictures/88790911/urban-beekeeping-on-east-london-rooftops

Buenos aires

http://weburbanist.com/2010/01/28/going-up-radical-subversive-urban-rooftop-dwellings/?ref=search

LoftCube

http://www.loftcube.net/main.html

Hong Kong rooftops communities

http://peperoni-books.de/portraits_from_above.html

Warehouse Rooftop in Bradford by Kraus + Schoenberg.

Gap between two Victorian warehouses in Yorkshire by Kraus + Schoenberg.

Family home in London by Richard Rogers.

http://weburbanist.com/2011/03/04/lofty-living-11-modern-additions-to-urban-rooftops/

Skyroom by David Kohn Architects

http://www.dezeen.com/2010/10/13/skyroom-by-david-kohn-architects/

Olympic hotel. Room for london by Design Initiatives 

http://weburbanist.com/2010/12/31/a-room-for-london-cloud-shaped-temporary-rooftop-hotel/

[14] Uber-modern Tokyo & poverty struggling Dhaka. Alienation vs. Community.

The way in which we have started this years project was to identify a problem and respond to it. I started to investigate the worlds biggest issue which is overpopulation and growth of megacities. I was looking at the statistics of how the population rate jumped from 1 at the beginning of XVIII century to 7 millions in 2011, and how it more than doubled in just 30 years (between 1970 and 2000). Was I also found that is that in 2008 we have reached the point where urban dwellers outnumbered those living in traditional rural areas. And as the time progresses and at this rate it will only get bigger so there are prognosis that in 2030, three in five people will live in the city. 

I started to speculate what the city of the future would look like. I was researching the films (5th Element, Blade Runner and Alien) as best examples of designing for future urban fabric, as those cities were really conceived (either physical or 3d models). I was really drawn to the idea of city growing on the city like in 5th Element. Were this 23rd century metropolis is turned into a vertical city where its original essence of New York survived. Unlike in China now were cities no longer have the sense of its own past but are swallowed by steel and glass giants, where you have to demolish old to build new. Heritage and conservation is nonexistent. 

I started to investigate the worlds biggest megacities (crowded, polluted, noisy but also most exciting and stimulating) like Tokyo (being the biggest) but also Dhaka in Bangladesh (being poorest) or Mexico City (the highest cime level). And I started to pick up on weird things that are happening there. For example, the Tokyo is so vast and overpopulated it is becoming more and more dehumanized, robotic and mechanical in terms of social relation ships, were people are rented out for friendship. Whereas the Dhaka’s slums are much more normal ad friendly because of the closeness of its inhabitants and also because there is so much happening outside their huts - cooking and social activities are much more alive there that in uber-modern Tokyo. Same in Mexico City where you have people dancing in the streets on Sundays, eating together in tacos bars and making friends as they go alone. 

We are becoming urbanised so quickly our genes are not keeping up with us, maybe we are not ready to live in such vast metropolises. Issues of alienation, depression etc.

My program will be to design a housing complex or single housing unit for my vertical future city which will facilitate residents integration as opposed to megacity’s mechanical coldness.

So, an urban hive (one building) of small family cells and reasonably big in-between communal spaces. I will be also thinking how to use every bit of space available - building roof for small football pitch etc. In an essence how to bring the village back to the city (scapes).

[013] Vertical City Cluster. City growing on the city.

With more & more people living & migrating to the cities we only have three options:

spread out,

go underground,

go vertical.

What if the city grows taller and instead of swallowing itself it grows on itself? What if in order to save on travel and be more centralized all citizens could live in a vertical condensed city kernel.

[12] Futuristic Architecture in Film/Blade Runner

A vision of futuristic dystopia of Los Angeles in 2019. In the opening shots, as the camera pans over a 700-storey skyscraper and the sky glows with industrial smoke, fire and acid rain, the city is as magnificent as it is disturbing. It has numerous similarities to Fritz Lang's Metropolis, including a built up urban environment, in which the wealthy literally live above the workers, dominated by a huge building—the Stadtkrone Tower in Metropolis and the Tyrell Building in Blade Runner. The director [Ridley Scott] took an inspiration from a variety of images form night skyline of Hong Kong, french comic book Heavy Metal [Metal Hurlant] to  Edward Hopper's painting Nighthawks.

A still from Metropolis. As seen:<http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2009/nov/05/architecture-film-riba> [Accessed on 2 Nov]

Edward Hopper's 'Nighthawks'. As seen: <http://www.artic.edu/artaccess/AA_Modern/pages/MOD_7.shtml#> [Accessed on 2 Nov]

Moebius and Philippe Druillet, 1974. Metal Hurlant. As seen:<http://www.comicbookbin.com/Metal_Hurlant008.html> [Accessed on 2 Nov]

Blade Runner film stills.

[11] Futuristic Architecture in Film/Fifth Element

In the Fifth Element the production design and future New York was developed by Jean Giraud aka Moebius and Jean-Claude Mézières who are both French comics creators. And it is clearly visible in the movie, this futuristic comic architecture of the eighties. What is really great about the image of the Big Apple in 23rd century is that instead of replacing existing structures they have constructed new additions to the existing ones not only on top but also below the old buildings and that they have sliced the island into vertical canyons. The circulation in this upright city is envisioned on vertical level with hovering crafts instead of vehicles as we know them. Since the plane of this metropolis was shifted from horizontal to vertical, it has exposed its belly of once-hidden infrastructures of subway shafts [the metro transportation system is forced to be integrated vertically into the buildings] and urban utilities, giving it an industrial and chaotic machine-like appearance.  

The city has, like in the past, been forced to grow taller but its essence survived.

 

http://www.passion-estampes.com/deco/mezieres-new-york-eng.html

http://livre.fnac.com/a831794/Valerian-Les-Extras-de-Mezieres-T2-Mon-cinquieme-element-Jean-Claude-Mezieres

Fifth Element movie stills.

[10] Population Density & Urbanization

World population is urbanizing rapidly and, in this respect, 2008 was a momentous point in world history.  In 2008, for the first time urban dwellers outnumbered those living in traditionally rural areas. But the current level of urbanization varies greatly across the world, as too does its rate of increase. In the hundred years up to 1950 the greatest changes took place in Europe and North America. Relatively few large cities developed elsewhere and most of these were in coastal locations with good trading connections with the imperial and industrial nations. The main feature of the past half a century has been the massive growth in the numbers of urban dwellers in the less developed regions.

The annual rise in the percentage of the world’s population living in cities has been accelerating steadily since the 1970s and it will be running at very high levels until at least 2030. As a result, by then, 3 in 5 people will be urbanites compared to 35 per cent in 1970 and 50 per cent in 2010. In absolute terms, the global population more than doubled between 1970 and 2000. There is a broad contrast in the level of urbanization between the more and less developed regions, but also a great deal of variation within them. In the more developed regions as a whole, three-quarters of the population now live in urban areas. 

The Growth of Large Cities

Alongside the rise in the world’s urban population has occurred a massive increase in the number and size of cities and ‘megacities’. In 1950, New York was the only agglomeration with over 10 million inhabitants, and there were still only three cities of this size by 1975 - New York, Tokyo and Mexico City. By 2000, there were eighteen and there are expected to be twenty two by 2015. Urban areas are also becoming more diffuse and polycentric [having many centers, especially of authority or control], making the task of defining separate cities on the ground even more difficult.

2010, Collins World Atlas, London, Harper Collins Publishers.

[09] Future City. Population Growth Rate

World population is currently undergoing the biggest transformation that it has ever seen, but this process is impacting very unevenly. While overall numbers have been growing extremely rapidly since 1950, almost nine-tenths of the increase has been taken in the less developed regions, especially southern and eastern Asia, while Europe’s population is now estimated to be in overall decline and ageing rapidly. 

Population distribution.

People are distributed very unevenly over the face of the planet. Over a quarter of the land is area is uninhabited or has extremely low population density, notably the polar regions, the Amazon basin and the dry deserts of Saharan Africa, southwest and central Asia, and Australia. 

Population growth.

Over the past half century word population has been growing faster than it has ever done before due to medical advances and massive increase in agricultural productivity made possible by the Green Revolution [G.R. refers to a series of research, development, and technology transfer initiatives, occurring between the 1940’s and the late 1970’s, that increased agriculture production around the world. Increased use of various technologies such as pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers as well as new breeds of high yield crops were employed in the decades after the Second World War to greatly increase global food production]. The latest trends in population growth at country level emphasize the continuing contrast between the more and less developed regions. Annual growth rates of 1.5 per cent or more remain common in Latin America, Africa and southern Asia. A number of countries would lead to the doubling of population in 23 years or less. Ten countries account for 60 per cent of the world’s population growth, with India and China responsible for over half. 

2010, Collins World Atlas, London, Harper Collins Publishers.