In the future, the term ‘ziggurat’ will no longer refers to the temple towers of the ancient Mesopotamian: Timelinks, a Dubai-based pioneering environmental design company, has chosen it to describe the sustainable city of the future. Using the basic idea of a pyramid structure, Timelinks has created renderings of a 100% self-sustainable and totally environmentally friendly super-structure. The city is planned to house more than 1 million inhabitants and will be a true architectural colossus.
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There are many ways to help make the world a greener place, and Nike’s Reuse-A-Shoe Program is doing just that, by collecting, recycling, and reusing old sneakers to make new athletic surfaces. Cities and institutions all over the world are combining forces to collect shoes for this program. Nike’s Reuse-A-Shoe Program recycles used sneakers into athletic surfaces, such as basketball and tennis courts. One city, Elk Grove, California, has already collected 4,000 pairs of used athletic shoes, in an effort to keep them out of landfills.
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Rotterdam-based architects MVRDV recently won the Gwanggyo City Centre Competition with their design of an incredible new city just south of Seoul, South Korea. Envisioned as a verdant acropolis of organic ‘hill’ structures, the proposed complex is a fully self-sufficient city for up to 77,000 inhabitants.
The Dutch firm MVRDV has designed a fully sustainable city in the center of Gwanggyo, which is located near Seoul in South Korea. The project, Gwanggyo Power Center, looks like something from the movies: is a series of large hill-shaped structures, with outdoor terraces and plantations for storing water. The vertical design and landscape will improve the climate and ventilation and reduce energy use and water. The concept provides space for housing, offices, shops, and educational facilities. An internal irrigation system stores extra water from the buildings and uses it to sustain these green facades.
The Gwanggyo Green Power Center is completely self-sufficient, and can accommodate 77 thousand inhabitants. Also, the project will also be effective in reducing dependency on automobile or train travel and building a strong sense of community. The estimated budget and deadlines are still not defined, but the project’s completion is scheduled for 2011.
The project is innovative and intriguing, and although it may seem a bit far-fetched, this city centers may become a new future trend. It is important to stress the need for self-sustainability and energy efficiency in our future cities, and the Gwanggyo Green Power Center is a great start.
The Universal Exposition of 2015 will change the city of Milan, as well as Italy as whole. Expo 2015 brings with it great potential for both Italy and the future.
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“In 2015, Milan will transform into a magical city,” This is how I explained the 2015 Universal Exposition on the program Nea Polis on the Italian TV network Rai 3. Milan is a magical city full of new technology that will soon become a reference of innovation and design.
Many Expos in the past have left large changes for the host city. Brussels was given the Atomium, and France was left with the Eiffel Tower. This iron monument was completely innovative for its time. It was avant-garde, unexpected, and even unappreciated by some. It now stands as a monument of innovation and art. This Expo in 2015 will stand in history as the point in which Italy redefines itself as not only a nation of ancient art and ancient civilizations; it will show that it is a nation that is headed for the future and that it has what it takes to be one of the front runners, one of the very best in the fields of engineering, innovation, and design.
When I was planning the project for the Italian candidacy for Expo 2015, I designed innovations such as sidewalks with built in sensors to adapt to you and your feet as you walk, buildings painted with nanotechnology infused paint that changes color as the day progresses, and sunglasses which allow you view the city as it was centuries and millennia ago. At the Expo, we will be marveled by technologies and innovations that seem as unreal as these ideas. But that’s how we move forward, by taking ideas and figuring out how to make them reality. But when people ask me which solutions, out of the 25 that I designed, I treasure the most, my response is the first holographic park in the world that will be capable of displaying buildings and monuments up to 30 meters (about 98 feet) high. It will show the things that made Milan the city it is, the people that helped found it, but it will appear out of thin air, and can be shut off like a light switch.
An exposition that demonstrates where the world is going. That is how the 2015 Expo in Milan is being referred to. We’ll refer to that date to come up with new innovative solutions. We have a lot to look forward to and much to watch out for at the 2015 Expo that is only 5 years away. Milan will most definitely be magical with all of the wonderful and never-before-seen technology at the Expo. There will not be any card ticks or rabbits being pulled out of hats; the magic is in the innovation it took to bring all of those ideas to life.
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