ULTRASTUDIO MEDINI
in collaboration with Hannes Kofler
|2017|
The task of this design class was to create a future scenario for the 100YC Biennial in Malaysia 2017, to push
the boundary towards a city of the future. To plan a whole city from scratch gives the opportunity to over think
the urbanism of the past and present. Our project is meant to question critically the phenomena of urban
centralization and decentralization. and which possible impact it could have on the metabolism of the city.
The present city model relies on the rational grid, density and decentralization when it comes to production(agriculture,
outsourcing...) Our antithesis to this existing model is a triangulated system, which not only forms the main infrastructure,
but furthermore defines certain areas. Yet those areas are not meant to be filled with buildings, but instead they
are areas reserved for food production and leisure. With the diminished distances between food production and consumption
the metabolism of the city would change for the most part. The buildings are standing on top of street intersection
in order to use this unused space. The building is an approach to combine various technologies in order to create
a self sustainable and ecological system. It is defined by the outer hull and by its inner structure, which holds
the outer hull and is the inner infrastructure at the same time. The facade as a tensile structure consisting of
thousands of semitransparent panels, which are able to provide sun protection, which is an important issue in this
particular area and to convert sunlight into electricity. They are able to open up and close dependent from the orientation
to the sun. Inside of the hull bioluminescent algae (pyrocistis fusiformis) are placed. They convert carbon dioxide
into oxygen, whilst glowing through the night. They are meant to flow through pipes, which could fuse together to
create walls.