The Seven Peaks of Azerbaijan is a master plan for a Zero Energy city with housing, culture and leisure facilities on Zira Island situated within the Caspian Sea. Located within the crescent shaped bay of Azerbaijan’s capital Baku,  Zira Island is designed to be a sustainable model for urban development, and an iconographic skyline recognizable from the city’s coastline. Each of the Seven Peaks house a neighborhood derived from the geometry of a famous mountain in Azerbaijan. Individually each…

If the industrial production society era had an aesthetics based on simplicity, repetition or the assembly of additive systems, for our era we would like to propose an architecture that is not concerned with its apparent figure, is characterised by a certain incorporeal. An architecture of energy in which the visible form is simply the materialization of environments through mere energy dissipation. A building is no longer more than the material form adopted by a particular energy configuration: a…

Along with shopping malls, petrol stations and branches of McDonalds, the old Chinatown renders all cities boring and alike. It is nothing more than restaurant streets and fake traditional buildings, representing a kitsch image of contemporary China with no real life inside. It is a historical theme park that poisons the urban space. There must be a shock therapy to remedy this situation. Superstar: A Mobile China Town is MAD's response to the redundant and increasingly out-of-date nature of…

Stack City is a speculative project that exploits the future as a domain for experimentation with urban form. It is primarily concerned with the convergence of technology, infrastructure, and urban space in our future, post-oil cities, and seeks to define new, sustainable ways of life that might emerge from this condition. This exploration is carried out by projecting forward the development logics emerging in the new cities of the United Arab Emirates and increasingly prevalent elsewhere. However, the project…

The project starts from the reflection about human being life cycle, and the need of questioning the subject housing/shelter in a global way. This house has been developed to serve a various number of users; the possibility of building the house based on a family structure, contemplating its natural evolution, and exploring the self-construction. Inhabitable space quality, eco(nomic) and resistant materials, solar orientation justification, natural air circulation, rain water collect; all these premises are priority themes for each climate…

The first project as a result of the Masdar Initiative is a new six million square meter sustainable development that uses the traditional planning principals of a walled city, together with existing technologies, to achieve a carbon neutral and zero waste community. Masterplanned by Foster + Partners, the initiative has been driven by the Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company, and will be a centre for the development of new ideas for energy production. Masdar responds to the urban identity…

Little DK is a test tube in which to demonstrate that sustainability is not a question of science fiction but rather applied science. By following the natural propensity of each program we have organized the entire 100.000m2 block so that each program claims its optimum position in the whole. The optimum location has been determined by solar orientation, urban adjacencies, proximity to symbiotic neighbours and requirements for access, scale, sunlight, views etc.

The Australian suburb was born out of our dependance on the car. With Peak Oil rapidly approaching the epoch of the automobile with soon come to an end and with it so will the Australian outer suburb. Where will suburbanites live when there is no other means of circulation to their homes? What will we do with our abandoned and decaying suburbs? And most importantly, what will we do with the 50% of Australians that are over-weight due to…

“The mirror has no memory, and cannot retain an image unless it is applied to its surface. And, unlike the photographic negative it is incapable of multiplying the image reflected in its surface – unless that surface is fragmented and its integrity destroyed.” - Robert Hopper The CASA NÃO CASA is a solar house, invisible in the landscape It’s a house that blurs in the landscape and at the same time a Solar house. All the façade turns to…

Seoul Commune 2026 investigates the viability of an alternative and sustainable community structure in the overpopulated metropolises of the near future. The imagined community is integrated within the ever-accelerating developments of the digital environment and ongoing rapid social change. Seoul Commune 2026 presents a concrete architectural and urban proposal that entirely reconfigures, and consequently develops the existing “towers in the park” form. Seoul Commune 2026 unites towers and the park in a balanced way. It forms a complex network…

Punt verd, within a 1.7 million euros, is the most important building integrated in the “Nuevo Plano Integral de Gestión de Residuos de Mercabarna” (Mercabarna’s New Integral Plan for Recycling Waste). The basic goal of this plan is to reverse the percentage of the recycled waste from the actual 30% to 70%. The installations of Punt Verd occupy 6675 m2, and consist in a recycling plant made out of two main areas for wholesalers and retailers. Two principal systems…

Wikiplanning is a workshop method that applies the consensus-building process of wikis such as Wikipedia to urban design. The aim is to facilitate more substantial interaction between architects and “ordinary” people, so that laypeople can make positive and constructive contributions to the urban planning process, instead of just complaints and objections. Wiki Planning is part of a wider attempt to consider what the implications of web 2.0 might be on architecture and planning, and whether or not social media…

There was more than 10 000 tons of illegal waste lying around in Estonian nature. In october 2007, as a group of active citizens, we realised that something drastic needs to be done. We developed a special software and geomapped more than 10 000 dumping sites all over the country. And on 3rd of May 2008, engaging hundreds of organisations and more than 50 000 volunteers, we cleaned it all up in just 5 hours!  

Garbage architects Jan Korbes and Denis Oudendijk operate on the borders of design, art and architecture and create new products from old materials. They provide new life for discarded objects. Origin for designs are found in the object itself. By listening to the objects’ history and desires, they discover new ways of usage. They internationally work in commission for institutions, non-profit organizations, and individuals, but also have lots of fun creating just for themselves. MILLEGOMME millegomme can hear the…

Garden house with office and storage function. Client and his son were intesively involved in the design proces which resulted in custom, playful and children-friendly details. Onsite designed and built with materials of the softly demolished old garden house and other local waste materials as car tyres and insulation glass.  Functional four-season garden house with office and storage spaces. Re-used wood, car tyres, and insulation glass, stainless steel trays, size 8x3x3 meters Our client was in need of additional…

Paradise is a solar powered temporary site installation commissioned by Harvard University's Graduate School of Design. The three salvaged minivans are planted with ethnobotanical plant species proven capable of providing excellent nutrition for human beings, as well as supplying other substances and materials useful to our species. These plants are considered "heirloom" varieties because of their long history of usefulness to humans, but they are currently threatened with extinction. Major seed companies prefer varieties that are easier to grow,…

VF - Type O (Vertical Farm - Type Organic) can offer the perfect solution to the main crises the world faces today such as deforestation, population increases, climate change, pollution, depleting resources, dwindling ecology, decreasing food supplies, urban heat island effect and more. VF: 12 Floors of indoor faming space + 2600m2 per of Indoor Farming per floor + over 30,000m2 of quality controlled Indoor Farming in Total Orchards + 25000m2 of outdoor quality controlled area  Organic Links: the…

The urban environment and the resulting high-rise buildings need to play a more important role in the city. The new skyscraper will be able to produce commodities to support its occupants and surrounding urban population. Functions of hydroponics, urban farming, and urban community food production will result. A large portion of the tower consists of residential apartments/condos interspersed with areas of commodities such as fruits, vegetables and cash crops. The ground levels of the tower combine a “Farmer’s Market”,…

Cities are dynamic entities where the abandoned territories are mutable, in keeping with economic interests, urban plans, diverse occupations, etc... Urban vegetable gardens are spontaneous appropriations of neglected territories. They are an impulsive way, through which the local inhabitant reverts neglectfulness into something productive. Their development doesn’t obey to any predefined strategy, but rather to scattered tactics, that take advantage from the particularities of the context where they are inserted, to create an immediate answer far from any conventional…

How do you turn the problem of a polluted site into an architectural potential? A third of our budget was allocated to remove our polluted topsoil. By covering the site with a wooden deck we could leave the soil where it was and invest the money on the building rather than the site’s polluted topsoil. The result is a public landscape of social functions surrounded by water on all sides.??Two very different users had to share the facilities: a…

After living a few years in the United States, my attention was caught by a handful of people who chose to escape the wasteful aspects of more typical American living by ignoring the pristine suburban lawn aesthetic, reducing their contribution to the human footprint, and advocating environmental awareness in general. I started looking for more of these “Eco Heroes” and upon finding many living throughout Berkeley and Oakland, California, I began photographing them to document their work. In this…

From our point of view, this concerns the articulation of aspects ranging from the physical (urban, infrastructural and environmental), social (economical, cultural and existential), ecological (considering three kinds: mental, social and environmental) and those related to citizen´s safety, and the contemporary persona problematic, appointing on local development from a socio-spatial conception of productive territories. This is in direct relationship with the privileged adyacent neighborhoods of Gavea, Leblon and São Conrado, establishing a very particular situation of inclusion-exclusion.  Like this,…

Designing is a tool for change. I rethink our interaction with spaces, objects and each other, exploring habits within society and how they can be exploited to create pro environmental behaviour change. Skips offer fleeting chances for everyone to intervene in a material’s journey to landfill. This body of work makes use of materials found in skips as well as the framework the skip offers for claiming space, especially in packed urban environments. The outcomes of this process are…

Group of collectives (Democracia, Todo por la Praxis, y Recetas Urbanas), in partnership with “Asociación el Fanal” in the construction of some benches for a football field and recreational activities, in a neighborhood with a problematic socioeconomic situation and an exterior image degraded by a media campaign of exclusion and penalization. The proposal, with different actions in the organizational structure and in the imagination of the neighborhood, is greeted with enthusiasm by members of the association as well as…

Currently more than 40% of Caracas’ inhabitants live in informal settlements or shanty towns know as barrios. The massive exodus from rural areas to the city as a consequence of the oil boom in the 50’s largely influenced the origins of these unplanned neighborhoods of uncontrolled growths. Located at the South West of the city, with an area of 400 ha and 95,000 inhabitants, the Barrio La Vega y one of the most extensive and lived-in informal settlements in…

“Low Cost – Dream Home – Low Environmental Impact”, these are the three key principles (the first financial, the second social and the third environmental) behind the €100,000 Home research project that launches a new concept of residential housing. The project is an attempt to find an effective solution to the issues of affordable costs, low pollutant emissions and genuinely attractive housing. The house has a bright, lively design that readily adapts to the needs of different residents and lifestyles,…

The car park for the press on the Cologne fair ground is located at the spot where the connecting road between Deutz and Mühlheim passes under the bridge Zoobrücke surrounded by streets with different functional and spatial levels. A bewildering but also typical situation of unaccounted for urban space. A functional site in essence, devoid of particular attractiveness - urban „leftovers”. The triangular carpark has a short, open side towards the Deutz-Mühlheimer-Strasse, and a longer and spatially more active…

It is both necessary and urgent to encourage projects that have global strategic potential, so that they can be locally implemented in order to face current global sustainability challenges such as climate change, water scarcity and poverty. The Ecohouse project was created in 2002 with that in mind, together with the individual contribution each citizen can and should make to these objectives. It seeks to demonstrate the performance of thermal and lighting comfort passive techniques, as well as water…

This project is about rethinking public transport in occidental cities and particularly in optimising the use of taxis. The idea is that when someone would stop and go in an empty taxi, if he or she wishes, a display outside would show the direction where the taxi goes and the number of seats free inside, so anybody going in that direction could stop the taxi, go in, and eventually pay only his/her proportional part of the trip done. This…

The whole proposal for the eco-boulevard in Vallecas can be defined as an urban recycling operation consisting of the following actions: insertion of an air tree-social dynamizer, over an existing urbanization area, densification of existing alignment trees and reduction and asymmetric arrangement of wheeled traffic circulation. Superficial interventions reconfiguring the existing urbanization (perforations, fillings, paint, etc.) that defaces the executed kerb development. RECYCLING THE NON-CITY The Suburban Development of Vallecas had all the very poor characteristics typical of suburban developments.…

Located in the heart of a neighborhood with a strong artistic vein, where galleries and street walls offer a great variety for new expression and occupation forms, this studio building occupies a site that’s marked by frequent floods. Like a living body, the building questions – inside its context – the construction as a finished and manufactured object, bringing to light different phases of its evolution under the action of dynamic interconnected entities (rain / recovery / pumping /…