Federal Foreign Office in Berlin Germany

Since the fall of the Wall, Germany's foreign office has become master of gently promoting 'Brand Germany', with Berlin as the jewel in its decidedly understated crown.

Urban Forest Wins Streetscapes in a New World Competition

The international competition for a New Urban Streetscape in Beijing, China was organized by New World China Land Limited – one of Asia’s largest development corporations – in collaboration with Di Magazine, a leading architectural review published in Beijing. The designated site area divides New World’s recently built commercial center, located on Chongwenmen Street.

The key sponsor, New World China Land Limited, is based in Hong Kong, with a wide range of projects currently under construction - including commercial, residential, hotel and resort developments throughout the People’s Republic of China.

The competition brief described the design objective as a search for an environmentally responsible public space that would also propose a new paradigm for expanding the number and quality of parks, plazas and gardens in Beijing.

The SITE New York office was invited by WaHa Studio in Toronto, Canada (li Wang and Marc Halle) to head a Canadian/Chinese team of architects and landscape designers – including WaHa, Yang Yang and Ronghui Li – with the purpose of proposing a concept for the New World competition. This project is the result of a SITE New York and WaHa Studio collaboration.

Premises for the design approach:

The burgeoning growth of central Beijing has either destroyed or disrupted a large number of the city’s original one-to-three story residential neighborhoods – especially in the most vulnerable and historic Hutong areas. Large-scale developments have imposed an imbalance between commercial expansion and the maintenance of traditional communities. It has also increased air pollution, visibly exposed the gap between rich and poor, exacerbated the level of street crime and decreased the amount of leisure and garden space within the central city.

In addition to social, cultural, contextual and ecological considerations, the SITE/WaHa design approach to the New World Plaza has been based on Beijing’s radical contrast of scales – from intimate residential streets to massive commercial zones. It is our team’s view that one of the main values of horizontal surfaces in the cityscape is to use streets, parks, plazas and gardens as means of mediation between neighborhoods, building heights, economic levels and territorial functions.

Project description:

In designing the New World public space, the SITE/WaHa “Urban Forest” concept has been influenced by an observation that the existing site is roughly shaped like a growing tree, with a crown of extended branches. It can also be seen as similar to a river, with many tributaries, or linked to the cardiovascular system of a human body. In addition, since the entire Beijing street system is based on a classic grid, the paved areas in this design are used for a special iconographic significance. These horizontal surfaces have been dematerialized and fragmented into casual, ribbon-like patterns, reminiscent of Chinese calligraphy and landscape painting. While intentionally ambiguous, the plaza imagery is proposed as a nature-based and culturally referenced source of symbolism for a rapidly expanding metropolis.

This Urban Forest approach transforms the widest part of the site’s tree-like profile (facing Chongwenmen Street) into a major pedestrian plaza, surrounded by trees. Cast-in-place ribbons of concrete cover the walking surfaces, creating a tree/river/vein-like imagery. This arterial network circumscribes a series of irregularly shaped spaces, used for planting zones, water features, seating areas, earth mounds, and various paving materials.

As the main plaza narrows in width – passing underneath an East/West pedestrian bridge - its horizontal surfaces gradually metamorphose into a large mounded configuration. This raised area, proposed as a web-like structure in concrete with glass and landscape infill, shelters an arcade of small shops and restaurants. One of the principle innovations of this approach is the gradual transformation of a horizontal public space into a mountain-like building, which then returns to a ground-level walking surface after bridging over Lianzi Xiang Street. The main features of this concept – an evolution from plaza to architecture, inside and outside treated as simultaneous events, dense forest areas in the cityscape and an infinitely flexible paving design – are readily applicable to other parts of the city.

Both East and West corridors, for the entire length of the plaza, are covered with forests of trees and ground cover. The purpose is to create the visual and horticultural experience of urban woodlands, while simultaneously offering shaded sanctuaries for walking, recreational activities and relaxation in outdoor cafes.

At the highest elevation - where the walking corridor passes under the pedestrian bridge – this section serves as an overpass, spanning Lianzi Xiang Street. An escalator provides access from the bridge to the top of the mounded plaza, thereby connecting two distinct shopping zones. At the East end of the site, this walking zone gradually decreases in height and width, concluding with a tree-shaded avenue for smaller shops and eateries.

Contextual and environmental advantages

From a conceptual and philosophical perspective, the fragmented imagery of the Urban Forest establishes a selection of universal themes for Beijing. These iconic references are applicable to the New World commercial center, as well as other neighborhoods in the city’s future public space development. They also provide a source of visual and functional variety, a choice of elevations for people watching, and supplemental architectural enclosures for commercial enterprises.

The landscape palette for Urban Forest is selected from regional trees and ground cover. This choice also recognizes the four-season characteristics of Beijing in its use of ginko, persimmon, poplar, and savin trees.

There are a number of environmentally responsible features, including a “forest floor” paving and walkways made of permeable materials, with water salvaged by catchments at plaza level and on top of surrounding rooftops. The collected water is stored in cisterns under the elevated sections of the plaza. Additionally, Photovoltaic solar panels generate electricity for adjacent buildings and the pedestrian areas. This power source fuels virtual portals for ecological information nodes, located throughout the public areas. Park lighting is provided by L.E.D. “forests of street lamps,” in the form of randomly distributed, vertical clusters of tall poles, illuminated from top to bottom.

In summary, the horizontal surfaces and mounded configurations of the Urban Forest establish a universal (but also site-specific) concept - including a tree branch • river tributaries • vascular system • Chinese calligraphy • regional landscape imagery - for Beijing’s New World center. This iconography is expressed vertically and horizontally, physically and symbolically, experientially and ecologically.

The Large Hadron Collider is nearly ready

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a 27 kilometer (17 mile) long particle accelerator straddling the border of Switzerland and France, is nearly set to begin its first particle beam tests. The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) is preparing for its first small tests in early August, leading to a planned full-track test in September - and the first planned particle collisions before the end of the year. The final step before starting is the chilling of the entire collider to -271.25 C (-456.25 F). Here is a collection of photographs from CERN, showing various stages of completion of the LHC and several of its larger experiments (some over seven stories tall), over the past several years. (27 more photos @ Boston.com's Big Picture) & the LHC main site

Ecobay, Estonia's new sustainable masterplan

the schmidt hammer lassen architects firm is currently designing the masterplan of ECOBAY, a new town situated on the Paljassaare peninsula near the Estonian capital Tallinn.

With its vast vistas out over the Baltic Sea, the site has huge potential, given its proximity to the city centre and the Nature 2000 nature reserve.

The intention is to create a modern, multifunctional, mixed use development with all the possibilities and services required of a diverse and vibrant community, including housing, schools, local shops, businesses and daycare centres.

Sustainable living

Sustainability is the driving force behind ECOBAY for the team of architects, urban planners and consulting engineers working on this ambitious masterplan.

“We are convinced that we must find solutions to the challenges we have in our society – both social and environmental challenges. How do we for instance create a sustainable masterplan? How do we ensure a diverse city with an appropriate social mix – and a city which is active around the clock? And how do we create buildings that are essentially open to the outside world? These are some of the challenges we have been working to solve in ECOBAY,” says Morten Holm, partner in schmidt hammer lassen architects.

This sustainability agenda has led to a number of concrete initiatives. For instance, a multiple mix of many different functions within the community dramatically minimizes the need for transportation – most key destinations are just a walk or bike ride away. Also geothermal energy (i.e. earth’s heat), wind energy from small scale wind farms and surplus energy from nearby wastewater facility will all be utilised in ECOBAY.

In addition, the masterplan will address transport infrastructure in detail, specifically looking at the possibility of providing a new tramline.

An organically shaped masterplan

Another factor which will ensure low energy consumption is the careful spacing of buildings, maximising solar gain and at the same time minimising heat loss due to overshadowing. This has created a masterplan with buildings of varying heights. In other words, climatic studies of sun and wind have been taken in to account from the very start to ensure a sustainable basis for the new community.

Though the masterplan seems organic and almost romantic in shape, it is actually quite rational in the way it deals with the harsh winds blowing in from the Baltic Sea. Instead of a rigid urbangrid, a system of “dunes” spreads across the entire site.

The actual housing in ECOBAY will have different degrees of energy-saving features – some houses will achieve as much as 70% energy reduction.

City of the future

The overall aim at ECOBAY is to collaborate with all relevant decision makers to set new standards for future sustainable urban development.

The developer, ECOBAY OÜ, is planning a full scale development of the 481.000 sq meters masterplan within a period of the next 15-20 years. The scheme will accommodate up to 6.000 people, living and working in ECOBAY.

The ECOBAY masterplan is developed by schmidt hammer lassen architects in close collaboration with Buro Happold Consulting Engineers and Møller & Grønborg.

Still, such idealized modern developments are hardly new, and even le Corbusier designs such as these have been subject to controversy. The presentation of an organized and efficient vision of modernity has staunch critics (most notably the late Jane Jacobs) raising concerns that they may limit the organic self-organizing capacity of a city when left to grow on its own accord. Since these super-funded cities are currently in the process of creation, it has yet to be seen how their communities will grow and develop.

Above pics credited to Bustler. Except for the maps, those two were all me and MS Paint.

Foster + Partners Green Complex in Singapore

they need something like this in DC. Clean up an entire block and build something on a smaller scale.

Architecture firm Foster + Partners won an international competition to design a green complex that will fill an entire city block in downtown Singapore. This complex will be on the leading edge of green design. Incorporating arrays of solar cells on the buildings’ facades.

Ribbon-like canopies (also covered with thin-film solar cells) will start at the base of the complex, and rise up the exposed east and west elevations of the towers, where they form a series of vertical louvers. These will filter the sun and transform the towers into a series of vertically linked greenspaces. The slanted facades are oriented to catch the prevailing winds and direct air flow down the building to cool the ground level spaces.

The canopy will protect a series of internal streets, sunken courtyards and tiered gardens lined shops and cafes. Extensive sky gardens create a lush interior at the top of the towers.

Many other green elements are incorporated into this complex: there’s a rainwater harvesting system, a geothermal heating system, chilled beams and ceilings, and a huge ice storage system for cooling (see diagram below). And check out this company Agile manufacturing in Ningbo, China, I'm pretty sure they make stuff. Sewing Contractors Contract sewing of Computer Bags, Backpacks, Food Delivery Carriers, Soft Coolers, CD Cases, Cosmetic Cases, Sports Bags, Camera Bags and Promotional Bags.