Ecotower
What is the humane connection? -as part of an Eco-system. “We need in particular to get beyond those habits which made the city a thing to be engineered with the aim of containing and controlling social processes. Planning methods, with their strong utopian antecedents, have often presumed a fixed spatial order underpinning an idealized social stability. They have conceived an ideal correspondence between spatial form and a regular, mechanical social purpose, and imposed that form, fixing fixtures in an often banal or repressive caricature of the exact utopia concerned” Future City, Stephen Read. Utopia is an ideal community or society possessing a perfect socialpolitico-legal system. The word Utopia means “no place”. How to approach Eco-tower? The idea and evolution of form; as Architecture, as Use, as Atmosphere and as Identity. As art of Experience? The architecture is to be Question and it should go along the lines of Question. Not to give an Answer but to find the Question of what is the Architecture. Question the Architecture of this and when this is the Architecture. Then question how best to Answer. The cycle of the building and its community inhabitants. The use of the building as an instrument. This Eco-tower is not a building it is a master plan? The building is an object of function. Is the presentation about: the sculptural form, as consequence or, performance and event of the inhabitants daily sceptical?
The Eco-tower is located within Munich’s 1972 Olympic Park. To the east is a grassed landscaped public recreation area, south and west is residential neighbourhoods. Directly west of the site is a main roadway into and out of Munich’s city centre. To the north are the main stadiums of the Olympic park, a motor ring road and the Olympic village. The Eco-tower will radically alter the site context. This is the starting leader in the design concept of the Eco-tower. To pull both east and west in, twisting them around and pushing them up out of the ground. This will help integrate the Eco-tower into the area creating a context at human scale which will give a blurring of street scape from city to the vertical village.
Vertical Village
Circulation
An anthropological approch Eco-tower is a vertical village with the daily needs of living. An inhabitant can work, socialise, been entertained and recreate all in the same building envelope as their home. This is a vertical village, where people encounter their neighbours, and through common ownership partake in the operation and function of the Eco-tower. Their daily cycle is linked to the cycle of the Eco-tower.
Interconnectivity is very important for a community. Eco-tower achieves this by creating many destinations with many routes. On the street levels there are different social functions, ranging from shops to kindergardens along side larger entertainment spaces. Eco-tower has three modes of circulation; Express elevators which stop on alternative floors, atrium pods which stop on every street level and stairs. A continuous green circulation space rotates up through out the Eco-tower. This provide a park like area for recreation, and semi-public community gardens.
Green Spaces Eco-tower will utilise as much space as possible for vegetation, this is for food production, bio-diversity and private personal choice. The green spaces are physical connected by walkways and stairs. Their form and shape are designed for deeper sun light penetration and reduction of external wind forces.
Creating Context The scale of Eco-tower will affect the site. The concept pulls in both the east landscape and west residential pushing this twist up the design. By blurring this edge around the Eco-tower a human scale is formed, which leads the city’s street life through a shopping arcade and continuing up the vertical village. A public tram line connects the tower to the city in the south east corner which travels through the landscaped recreational area and forest to the south of the Eco-tower.
Structure & Facade Developement
The facade system is a double envelope ETFE cladding which helps to control the internal environment through stack effect and solar gain. The ETFE’s are attached to the megastructure by mechanically fixed fibre composite secondary structure. Between the external and internal envelope is Photobioreactor tubing. Placed at intervals this these tubes pump nutrient-laden water that produce Algae using photosynthesise which provide research into the future science technologies of biofuel.
The mega-structure structure is the fixed platform for the changing diversity of community life. It is a composite fibre diagrid structure, 1.5x1.5x0.05m, located on the external façade and the central atrium. There is structural floors every 16m which is 1m thick and every 55m is a 5m thick structural rigger floor. The maximum span of these floors is 26m. The floors use a recycled concrete balloon-two way-hollow core floor slab. The mega-structure allows for a mechanical fixed, post and beam prefabricated housing typology that is with in the 25m fire escape distance. These typologies, 18x18m can be changed and altered throughout the Ecotower life span.
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The mega-structure structure is the fixed platform for the changing diversity of community life. It is a composite fibre dia-grid structure, 1.5x1.5x0.05m, located on the external faรงade and the central atrium. There is structural floors every 16m which is 1m thick and every 55m is a 5m thick structural rigger floor. The maximum span of these floors is 26m. The floors use a recycled concrete balloon-two wayhollow core floor slab. The mega-structure allows for a mechanical fixed, post and beam prefabricated housing typology that is with in the 25m fire escape distance. These typologies, 18x18m can be changed and altered throughout the Eco-tower life span.
The mega-structure structure is the fixed platform for the changing diversity of community life. It is a composite fibre diagrid structure, 1.5x1.5x0.05m, located on the external faรงade and the central atrium. There is structural floors every 16m which is 1m thick and every 55m is a 5m thick structural rigger floor. The maximum span of these floors is 26m. The floors use a recycled concrete balloon-two way-hollow core floor slab. The mega-structure allows for a mechanical fixed, post and beam prefabricated housing typology that is with in the 25m fire escape distance. These typologies, 18x18m can be changed and altered throughout the Ecotower life span.