Atkins-designed Cadre International TOD Centre. Image Courtesy of Atkins
Atkins has been selected to design a transit-oriented development (TOD) master-plan along the new Jakarta-Bandung high-speed rail (HSR) corridor, the first HSR project in Indonesia. Set for completion by 2019, the corridor will extend 142.3km, stimulating economic growth along the corridor while re-allocating traffic to de-congest the region.
The TOD masterplan will integrate smart planning, land value capture and development/station integration, with Atkins specifically covering "masterplanning, transit oriented development, architecture and urban design, landscape design and station integration for Halim and Manggarai areas."
The Project of a Collective Line: Santa Cruz in Bolivia is an agro-export region dominated by transnational corporations. Image Courtesy of USGS
The following article was first published by Volume Magazine in their 47th issue, The System*. You can read the Editorial of this issue, How Much Does Your System Weigh?, here.
In 2006 Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, Brazilian President Lula da Silva and Argentinean President Néstor Kirchner proposed the construction of a gas pipeline connecting Venezuela to Brazil and Argentina, called the Gran Gasoduto del Sur. Although the project was never built, its path through the Amazon rainforest foregrounds the violent nature of resource extraction. At the same time, the project raised unique questions regarding the architecture of collective politics, particularly if understood in the context of the last fifteen years of political transformations throughout Latin America.
Home to vast geographic features like the Gobi Desert, Mongolia is not a country associated with its urban environment. But after economic reforms following the withdrawal of the Soviet Union in 1990 and the discovery of vast reserves of coal, gold and copper, a large portion of Mongolia’s historically nomadic society has recently begun to settle down, particularly in the capital city of Ulaanbaatar, where nearly half of the country’s 3 million residents now live.
Unfortunately, the infrastructure of the city hasn’t yet had a chance to catch up to these rapid growth patterns, resulting in sprawling slum-like settlements consisting mainly of traditional felt tents - known as gers - encircling the city. Civic buildings throughout these neighborhoods are rare, and even travelling within the city is difficult due to the lack of official maps.
The Land Art Generator Initiative is delighted to announce that LAGI 2016 will be held in Southern California, with the City of Santa Monica as site partner. This free and open call ideas competition invites individuals or interdisciplinary teams to design a large-scale site-specific work of public art that also serves as clean energy and/or drinking water infrastructure for the City of Santa Monica.
After 12 long years and a series of construction headaches, Santiago Calatrava’s $4 billion World Trade CenterTransportation Hub has finally opened to the public. Once widely regarded as a symbol of hope for post-9/11 New York, the project’s ballooning budget and security-related revisions gradually soured the opinions of the public and top design minds including Michael Graves and Peter Eisenman, and provoked a multitude of mocking nicknames ranging from “Calatrasaurus” to “squat hedgehog” to “kitsch dinosaur.” All the while, Calatrava urged critics to reserve their opinion until the project’s opening. Now that day has arrived - did Calatrava receive the vindication he was insistent would come? Read on for the critics’ takes.
Since infrastructure is the embodiment of long-term investments, its impact in determining the organization of flows extends well into the future, both for developed and developing countries. Whereas the former are confronted with the need to maintain and renew highways, electrical grids, sewage systems, and the like, the latter are scrambling to meet the needs of their own expanding populations. In both cases, massive investments for retrofitting or for new infrastructure are key to sustaining the human habitat. This topic: “Infrastructure Space” will be the focus of the 5th International Forum for Sustainable Construction in Detroit, USA from April 7 to April 9, 2016.
Signs for the Curonian Spit by AKETURI ARCHITEKTAI. Image Courtesy of Architect Algimantas Zaviša Charity Foundation
The Curonian Spit in Lithuania contains six main villages: Smiltynė, Alksnynė, Juodkrantė, Pervalka, Preila and Nida, all connected by a single narrow road surrounded by water on both sides. As such, buses are the only public transportation that can connect all six villages. As part of an annual seminar to elevate the architecture of the Curonian Spit, a series of 5 bus stops, within the Neringa region of the spit, have been planned for construction. Specifically chosen to improve the cultural and social function of a typical piece of infrastructure, each bus stop uniquely elevates the qualities of the village it will be built for. See the five planned stops after the break.
Rendered VIew. Image Courtesy of Sasaki Associates
Located on four man-made islands in Iskandar Malaysia, “Forest City” is set to be South-East Asia’s largest, mixed use green development. Designed by Sasaki Associates, the master plan has an estimated investment of S$58.3 billion (US$40.9 billion) and is expected to bring around 220,000 jobs to the area. Located near the economic centers of Southeast Asia, the new Forest City is ideally placed to become a hub of commerce and culture. Designed to encourage live/work culture, it is composed of “financial institutions, high-tech research and development facilities, headquarter offices, and a variety of creative industries that establish an innovative and sustainable employment base for the region,” write the architects. Read more after the break.
What if a power plant could also be a home, an office, or even a park? That is the question behind Cypher CO2ling Plant, a conceptual design developed by Kawan Golmohamadi, Shilan Golmohamadi, and Soad Moarefi. Power plants are a ubiquitous and inevitable byproduct of modern lifestyles, but they are typically located in remote areas, far from where the power is actually needed, due to their unsightly appearance and the emissions associated with combustion-fueled energy generation. Cypher CO2ling Plant proposes an alternative scenario that utilizes the infrastructure of the power plant’s cooling towers to support mixed-use development, while also mitigating the less desirable aspects of energy generation.
“One of the World’s largest aviation projects, Istanbul New Airport’s air traffic control tower will be an iconic structure, visible to all passengers traveling through the airport. We were looking for a striking design fit for a 21st century airport while remaining sensitive to Istanbul’s unique heritage. We received excellent designs from all over the world and are delighted to announce the AECOM and Pininfarina team as the competition winner,” said Yusuf Akçayoğlu, chief executive officer of İGA.
From the Publisher. Rail lines, bridges, highways, waterways, and off-ramps—larger than life but part of it, infrastructural systems are the enduring forms of urban evolution, multiplying as cities grow and requiring expanding swaths of territory to accommodate more and more monofunctional requirements. What if the very hard line between landscape, architecture, engineering, and urbanism could find a more synthetic convergence?
Map of Delhi's nullah network. Image Courtesy of Morphogenesis
The city of Delhi has a transportation problem. The streets are crowded and dangerous, and with 1,100 new vehicles being added to the roads each day the city is suffering from the consequences. Last year, New Delhi was rated the most polluted city in the world by the World Health Organization, with nearly 3 times the particulate matter of Beijing. Noise levels throughout the city consistently exceed regulations set by the Indian Central Pollution Control Board, and heavy traffic means increased travel times and perilous pedestrian conditions. Even walking the last mile from a bus stop to a destination has become a game of chance.
At the same time, the river upon which the city was founded, the Yamuna (a main tributary of the Ganges), has been polluted to the point where it has become little more than a glorified sewer drain. Illegal settlements without sewage systems pollute the river directly, and even within the regulated systems, 17 sewage drains empty directly into the Yamuna. For a city already struggling with water shortages, polluting a main water source is akin to throwing salt into a wound. However, a proposal by Dehli-based Morphogenesis Architects attempts to tackle all of these issues through the revitalization of the river and its canals, known as nullahs.
Santiago Calatrava has been commissioned to design a trio of bridges in the Chinese city of Huashan, east of Wuhan. The three steelbridges - Xihu, Xianbi and Lincong - will span 1.5 kilometers of the city's new Yangtze River canal, providing access to pedestrians, cyclists and vehicles.
“Architecture is one of the art forms best able to improve and revitalize cities both artistically and functionally,” said Calatrava. “The Huashan project is a clear example of how an urban element, key to the successful growth of the city, can at the same time improve the quality of life for its citizens, thanks to an integration of all three bridges and the creation of boulevards on the banks of the canal.”
iGA has shared a glimpse of 6 proposed designs competing to be the Istanbul New Airport's Traffic Control Tower. With designs by Zaha Hadid, Moshe Safdie, Grimsaw-Nordic, Massimiliano Fuksas, Pininfarina-Aecom, and RMJM Architects, the competition seeks to chose an innovative tower that is "inspired by the authentic symbols of Turkey."
“We are developing a unique project inspired by the local architecture. That is why we have organized this contest, hoping that Airport Traffic Control Tower design would symbolically contribute great deal to Istanbul New Airport and also will be the most important figure of Istanbul. We particularly asked contestants to get inspired from icons of Turkey. Currently we are evaluating the submitted projects and will be announcing the results as soon as possible,” said Yusuf Akçayoğlu, CEO of İGA.
Update: The deadline has been extended to January 4, 2016.
The creation of the Erie Canal was a paradigm shift for American progress in the 19th century, leveraging hundreds of miles of canal networks capable of generating cities out of swamps and ushering in a new era of exchange. Over a century later, what was the Erie Canal through Central New York has been capped over with urban development and sprawl. We are now presented with the opportunity to reposition Erie as the vehicle for a globally relevant, ecologically turbocharged urban corridor. The Elevating Erie ideas competition seeks proposals that consider our current global biodiversity challenges in urbanized regions by developing solutions specific to the Erie Canalway Trail along Erie Boulevard East connecting DeWitt to Syracuse.
Los Angeles, as we know it today, was made possible by massive infrastructure projects that provide reliable sources of water to the otherwise semi-arid region. The mastermind behind many of these infrastructure projects in the early twentieth century was William Mulholland, the self-taught engineer who rose through the ranks to become the Chief Engineer and General Manager of the Bureau of Water Works and Supply (the precursor to today’s Los Angeles Department of Water and Power). Mulholland is most commonly remembered for the construction of the Los Angeles Aqueduct, which piped water to the city from the Owens Valley, over 200 miles away. But Owens Lake was drying up faster than expected, and the aqueduct was threatened by both earthquakes and sabotage from angry landowners and farmers in the Owens Valley who orchestrated dynamite attacks on the waterway, in what became known as the California Water Wars.
Mulholland needed a backup plan, so he turned to building reservoirs, most of which still function to this day. Tom Scott’s video above tells the story of how one of those reservoirs, and the failure of the dam that held it back, shaped the development of Los Angeles itself. When the St. Francis Dam collapsed in 1928 the ensuing rush of water killed at least 450 people (though some estimate the total is closer to 600), destroyed 1,200 homes, forever altered the reputations of Mulholland and the city’s water infrastructure, and ultimately cemented the boundaries of the city and its neighbors.
Millau Viaduct, France / Foster + Partners. Image via Foster + Partners
If Lord Foster—perhaps one of the greatest architects of our time—feels as though he has "no power as an architect, none whatsoever," people tend to take notice. His support, thoughts and opinions, he tells The Observer'sRowan Moore, are his most influential tools: "advocacy, he says, is the only power an architect ever has." Their conversation, held ahead of the Urban Age Global Debates which are currently taking place in London, also touches upon the importance of infrastructure, the social role of the architect, and the growing—if not undervalued—urgency to readdress sustainability within the profession.
