The future is green
Articles
19.09.09
2019 year.
High-rise buildings grow by leaps and bounds. Cities are increasingly reminiscent of the huge blocks of computer called Earth. The polluted air does not allow to breathe freely. They say the world is moving forward but why all the steps are back?
Maybe not all of them?
PHOTO: JASON LANGLEY
The activities of architects have long gone beyond “just build”, “just build fast”, “just build a lot”. Architecture is an art that makes our planet more habitable. Imagine what the skyscrapers of the future can be! And while you’re fantasizing, we’ll tell you which skyscrapers are being built right now.
Well, hello, Bjarke Ingels.
They call him Starchitect. He changed the idea of modern architecture. His company BIG has 43 completed projects, 20 projects “under construction”, 24 projects “in progress” and more than 50 new concepts. Even though Bjarke is also the chief architect at WeWork. The so-called “main point” of his work is quite simple — Bjarke is guided by the idea of a practical utopia. In such a world, architects build “superstable” houses that interact with the environment and work by the rule of two “e”: economy and ecology. Architects should not only consider the conveniences of the residents but also be mindful of such caring about resources such as water, energy, and heat.
PHOTO: JONAS BIE
Netflix released a movie series called Abstract: The art of design. The fourth episode is about Bjarke. When they asked him how his episode should begin, he said: “Let it be a documentary edition of the film ”Inception”. Because often dreams cannot be realized due to some kind of restrictions, while in a dream everything is real. Top-level architecture is the realization of complete fish stories. Why we can not make a garden inside a 30-story box? Someone would say that we are crazy.”
BJARKE INGELS IN “ABSTRACT: THE ART OF DESIGN” NETFLIX
“If we do only what we are asked for, we will be like all other architects. It’s better to do what no one else has suggested before. What goes beyond any scope. We have to learn this.” Bjarke Ingels
We can turn the world into a nightmare or a beautiful place. In films about the future, modern cities look like a mixture of equally tall, gray buildings with no place for trees, green and all living things. Bjarke’s green projects say “No” to such a future.
1. Copenhill, Amager Bakke in collaboration with SLA Architects
Status: under construction
Photo: Rasmus Hjortshøj
Look, this is the largest building in Copenhagen and the most environmentally friendly factory in the world that produces energy by burning waste. Another Bjarke’s completed dream. In the house of his childhood, there was a small roof where children could easily climb, but which of the parents would allow this? Architecture can realize any desire, so here is a green roof with an artificial ski slope, hiking trails, and observation points. On the outside, there is the world’s highest climbing wall of 85 meters. The green trail under which waste is burned — a metamorphosis of the threat into the hope.
2. Singapore Tower in collaboration with Carlo Ratti Associati
Status: under construction
3D Visualization: Alberto Bottero, Gary di Silvio, Gianluca Zimbardi
Could you ever imagine that Singapore’s forest would grow inside financial concrete walls? That 30-meter forest will warm a 280-meter-high cold structure? There is no need to get out of the office to breathe some fresh air. An inner oasis will become a place for work, random thoughts and nonrandom inspiration. Outwardly trees break out of the windows, recalling the primary — they are life.
3. Mars Science City in collaboration with scientists, engineers and designers from the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre
Status: in progress
3D Visualization: BIG
Welcome to Mars.
Not the one that is 400 million kilometers from our planet, but the one in the United Arab Emirates. It is the largest research city that has ever been built — 56,810 square meters. Martian national architecture at the cost of $140 million. A science campus is being built to test human adaptation to Martian space. There are laboratories, a territory for growing products and a museum, the walls of which will be printed on a 3D printer using sand. As a result, the team will try to live on earth’s Mars for a year.
4. Hualien Residence
Status: under construction
Photo: BIG1 000 square meters, Taiwan, the so-called Penrose architecture. Green-glass mountains were artificially designed to attract residents for living in this area of the city. The project is currently under development, but the first house has already been built.
5. EPIQ Tower in collaboration with Uribe & Schwarzkopf
Status: in progress
Photo: BIGThis is the second BIG’s project in Ecuador’s capital. The design of the building in the urban area Parque La Carolina is based on the pink houses of the neighboring — the Old Town, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Thanks to the corner windows, almost every part of the structure offers views of the city or the inner park with a swimming pool.
6.The Lanescraper
Status: concept
Renders: BIGA skyscraper in Melbourne is similar to the game “Jenga” but in gigantic scale and without any falls. As the architects say, the industrial territory of the city mainly consists of gray high-rise buildings that lack life. Two foundations, two rods rebelled, linking between itself and at the same time leaving space inside. On each floor there are trees and flowers, each metal block has its own green life.
P.S. For those who don’t know what to watch after work: Abstract: The art of design by Netflix, BIG Time: Historien om Bjarke Ingels, 2017.