Townshift Competition proposal / Paisajes Emergentes

Feb 2010

By Sebastian J — Filed under: Awarded Competitions , Canada, Paisajes Emergentes

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Colombian architects Paisajes Emergentes received second prize for their proposal for the Townshift International Competition in Canada.

More images and architect’s description after the break.

The structure.

Certainly the least interesting thing that a vertical tower can do is to display a welcome sign. Vertical structures can support diverse¨and specialised functions such as communications, energy collection, weather forecasting and are always the most interesting places to experience great views over distant landscapes.

The Fleetwood marker is a dematerialized tower, it is lighter than air and it’s structure ties it to the ground instead of supporting it’s own weight: It is made with clusters of weather balloons filled with helium.

What is interesting about balloons is that with enough cubic meters of helium they can replace traditional static structures based on heavy steel. The tower ends up being lighter than air. It is not a skyscraper, it is more related with a zeppelin or the now common helium balloons used around the world to serve as viewing platforms. It is something that will be affected by the weather, like a vertical cloud, or simply something very strange happening in the sky welcoming the city´s visitors and inviting them to climb up to have a better view of Mount Baker.

The installation:
“We drive an astonishing 6.3 billion miles every day in the U.S. If the kinetic energy generated by moving vehicles was captured at any given moment, it could produce enough electricity to power over a quarter million homes each day.” Fraser highway will be covered with a kinetic carpet systems already available. It’s length will be enough to power the installation and some pilot houses in the city with completely clean energy from the pressure of the passing cars. The vertical balloon clusters of the tower will be in correspondence to the horizontal areas of the highways destined to harvest the energy. The electricity generated by the cars movement will illuminate the installation at night showing a contemplative vertical color light show of what is happening on the highway.

Cite:
Jordana , Sebastian . "Townshift Competition proposal / Paisajes Emergentes" 25 Feb 2010. ArchDaily. Accessed 25 May 2012. <http://www.archdaily.com/51164>

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Dwight Schrute says:

Hey Stephen, you know whats better than a triceratops? Only every other dinosaur that has ever existed.

# February 25, 2010 at 16:56

blowback says:

Dwight – I’m all for regenerative braking and Kinetic Energy Recovery Systems but these are not “clean” sources of energy but are merely cleaner sources of energy as they do not create new energy, they just recycle existing energy so if the original energy comes from fossil fuel, it is still “dirty”. There are far more effective ways of recycling kinetic energy than building pads into roadways such as electrifying all railway lines and using regenerative breaking or building KERS into new vehiclss and retrofitting it to existing vehicles.

# February 26, 2010 at 17:58

Katya says:

I agree Stephen, their statement is pretty general and slightly incorrect, but on the right track.

The current kinetic energy technologies only capture energy when vehicles are coming to a stop, like at traffic lights or rest areas (they transfer the braking energy into the motion pads on the roads).

So as long as Fraser highway has traffic lights every 200 metres they’re onto a winner!

Beautiful project.

# February 25, 2010 at 17:00

Dustin says:

Wow, this is a very original idea, I haven’t seen the first place proposal but it must be very good judging by this project.

# February 25, 2010 at 18:12

Marvin says:

you would think.. but no, it’s nowhere near the quality of this proposal. The winners for all 5 sites were chosen from Vancouver. Great job Townshift, way to make it not-obvious. You can see all the winners here : http://www.townshift.com/finalists.php

# February 25, 2010 at 19:13

Felipe Góes says:

YES ! Great design !

# February 26, 2010 at 11:10

camil pelaez says:

muy bonito! felicitaciones por el trabajo y la presentacion Sebastian, Luis, Edgar…

# February 25, 2010 at 20:36

dariusz says:

Very cool.. like something from the 60′s (presentation) but great idea today!

# February 26, 2010 at 04:28

Viquitronix says:

A shame they didn’t go for this proposal, it was probably over the budget. This is a proposal that would have transformed the city, not like some ugly letters along the road…

# February 26, 2010 at 05:00

nop says:

this is a fresh architecture ! i like the idea, original, and inspiring.
this is not like just ‘lateness’ or new ‘form’ of building.
design thinking !

finally

# February 26, 2010 at 05:18

POD says:

Why do they think it would be so vertical straight? :) Think it would actualy look like party baloons dancing in a wind, and whole city would have a circus atmosphere :)

# February 26, 2010 at 06:04

corto says: