The Architecture of the City

Ma Yansong of MAD recently presented a 600,000 square meter urban design proposal for the city of Nanjing titled, “Shanshui Experiment Complex,” at the 2013 Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism / Architecture in Shenzhen, China. The concept takes into account the culture, nature and history of Nanjing while reconsidering the methodology in which Chinese cities are built.

Yasong’s vision of a natural urban environment calls upon traditional Chinese values, veering away from a purely functionalist approach to city-making. Thus, the rigidness of the “box” is replaced with flowing lines that rhythmically rise to create a series of smooth spaces and volumes resulting in a more natural (looking) skyline.

Construction has started on a cave hotel resort by Atkins that will nestle into the rockface of an abandoned water-filled quarry near Shanghai, China.

Once complete, the hotel will offer around 400 rooms, as well as conference facilities, a banquet hall, restaurants, a swimming pool and a water-sports centre.

The building will use geothermal technologies to generate its own electricity and lighting, while greenery will blanket a roof that extends just two storeys above the edge of the quarry.

Sustainability is integral to Atkins' design of this unique resort, built into an abandoned, water-filled quarry.

Sky City in Changsha, China, will be 2750 feet tall, 220 stories, housing 30,000 people in 4450 apartments, with excavation and construction slated to begin in June, 2013.

Aiming to accommodate a growing population, the skyscraper is considered a "pragmatic" building, designed for efficiency, affordability, replicability.

The Sky City concept significantly reduces the per capita use of land, and the associated CO2 emissions generated, thus providing a means of large-scale development with a significantly lower impact on the environment.

As a result, a resident of Sky City will be using 1/100th the average land per person- learn more about this innovative building concept and its sustainable features at Treehugger.

Although China has the largest agricultural output in the world, supporting more than 20% of the world’s population, only 15% of its land can be cultivated, of which only 1.2% permanently supports crops. The total land area used for farming is also set to fall as more and more land is used for development, though Spanish architectural firm Javier Ponce Architects has come up with an innovative solution. 

Its design concept, titled ‘Dynamic Vertical Networks’, consists of 615-foot tall structures to be used as farms located in close proximity to urban areas like Hong Kong, in order to keep food distribution costs low. The structures will be made of lightweight, recycled metallic materials, in a shifting floorplate design inspired by “traditional shifting terrace concepts in Chinese rice farming”. Crops would be grown hydroponically, to create a soil-free environment. The plants will benefit from high levels of natural sunlight from the unobstructed, open design. 

Beijing-based Decode Urbanism Office has designed a tower with a façade composed of multiple wind-driven generators.

Thousands of wind turbines will produce enough energy to power the entire building. At night, the diamond-shaped generators are lit with thousands of LED lights incorporated into the building envelope.

The 350-meter (1,150-foot) structure, in Taichung City, China, will house the city’s Department of Urban Development, as well as commercial activities.

The tower’s façade, inspired by the plum blossom — China and Taiwan's  national flower – reacts to changes in direction and intensity of the wind, creating a truly dynamic visual effect. Similarly, mechanical wind power generators have LEDs, illuminating the façade and producing a pulsating flow of light, whose intensity and color adjust to correspond to changes in temperature and season.

The wind harnessing capability, along with the lighting that responds to local atmospheric conditions, makes this conceptual tower a true “decoder of nature.”

China's next new city will be designed by US firm KPF, next to Hunan's regional capital, around a 40-hectare lake.

Adjacent to Changsha, the ancient capital city of Hunan, the design implements the sort of urban innovation that creates a sustainable and truly habitable environment.

"We can introduce integrated urban innovation," von Klemperer says, "we can combine water transport with localised energy production, cluster neighbourhood centres, advanced flood prevention and water management, and urban agriculture. Meixi is an experiment in future city planning and building. It will serve Changsha as a new CBD, but it will also serve as a paradigm for other Chinese city planners. It's a kind of live test case."

The firm seeks to achieve these goals through its dense, mixed-use urban, plan, with integration with surrounding mountains, lakes, parks and canals. Meixi Lake will eventually be home to 180,000 inhabitants, living in "villages" of 10,000 people, clustered around the canals...