STEFANO CASATI W1614582 University of Westminster
GARDEN OF EARTHY DELIGHTS
HIERONYMUS BOSCH I decided to start my project from this mesmerizing piece of art. The painting organized into there different moments, the left panel represent the creation of Eve and Adam. The landscape is untouched and the nature dominates the world. The central panel sees the offspring of Adam and Eve. The human race gorging on the products of nature, letting themselves be absorbed by lust. The right panel differs completely from the previous two and depicts hell populated with nightmarish creatures. This sequence of states, from heavenly to demoniac captured my interest, since a direct comparison can be drawn with the direction in which our planet is heading. In the past we have been and we are still spoiling the natural resources available to us and now we are facing unprecedented consequences.
In a world where cities are increasingly crowded, pollution levels are rising at an unprecedented rate as well as sea levels, where will be living and how? Inspired by the “Garden of earthly delights” by Hieronymus Bosch, which depicts an unpleasant and almost infernal future, where the Eden and all its resources have been spoiled and consumed by the human race, Sitopia takes place. The reality of today is heading towards that nightmarish last picture, our resources are slowly disappearing whereas the number of people populating megalopolis is increasing, needing, as a consequence, more infrastructure, services and goods than ever before. Given this panorama, how can modern cities face these challenges? How can they supply all we need to survive and prosper? Sitopia is a design, which is strongly influenced by the work of Paolo Soleri and his concept of Arcology; Antonio Sant’Elia, who designed the “new city” as a consequence of the futurism movement in Italy; Archigram and their “plug-in city” and finally by the Metabolist movement in Japan. SITOPIA
CAROLYN STEEL Sitopia – is a made-up word, from the Greek sitos, meaning food, and topos, place. So it means ‘foodplace’, as opposed to utopia (‘good place’, or ‘no place’) a term used since Plato to describe an ideal – and therefore unattainable – community. Food is what connects us all to each other and to the natural world, which makes it an incredibly powerful medium for thinking and acting collaboratively. It encompasses all of life – not just what is necessary, but also what makes live worth living.
Sitopia is in a symbiotic relationship with the city of New York, where it will take place, in particular in the heart of ;anhattan: Central Park. It focuses its main purpose in the production of food, in order to create a constantly growing organism, which increases in size, and changes and adapts to the needs of the existing and future population. The design uses abandoned shipping containers to create pods, which will allow units to live in as well as producing vegetables using aeroponic technology. The modularity and structural strength of the containers allow to arrange them into a wide variety of layouts, which will then be organised into a ninety degree grid, creating a limitless structure. The city has no defined shape, it develops following a strict geometrical organisation creating a single layer of units, which divides the exterior from hollow centre. Sitopia aims to be innovative in the way we think, produce and consume food, creating a platform that will allow the flourishing of indoor agriculture, tacking one of the major sources of CO2 emissions, which is the food production and transportation industry.
CHARTER
VEGANISM
ENERGY
FOOD
SELF SUFFICIENCY
REDUCTION OF CARBON EMISSION
SYMBIOTIC TO AN EXISTING CITY
FOOD PRODUCTION
FOOD SUPPLY FOR THE CITY
PRESERVATION OF NATURE
RE-ENGAGING WITH THE PEOPLE MIGRATING FRMO THE COUNTRY TO THE CITY
HISTORICAL REFERENCES
ARCOSANTI PAOLO SOLERI Arcosanti is a projected experimental town with a molten bronze bell casting business in Yavapai County, central Arizona.
The goal of Arcosanti is to explore the concept of arcology, which combines architecture and ecology. The project has the goals of combining the social interaction and accessibility of an urban environment with sound environmental principles, such as minimal resource use and access to the natural environment. NEW CITY ANTONIO SANT’ELIA The “New City” has to start and grow contemporary to the new ideology of movement and the machine, loosing the stasis of the traditional urban landscape. The design of Sant’Elia develops thematics such as aerial connectivity between cities, the errand house, the dominance of the sky. The city is a vertical development with every building connected with each other.
NEW YORK CITY
NYC Location 40.43 N | 74.00 W Population 8 550 405 Boroughs Bronx Brooklyn Queens Staten Island Manhattan Surface 59.6 km2 Population 3 940 000 | weekday 2 900 000|weekend day 1 600 000 | residents Central Park Surface 3.41 km2 Bodies of water Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir Surface 0.42 km2 Capacity 3 800 000 m3
NEW YORK CITY
RAISING SEA LEVEL The sea level rise since 1993 has been estimated to have been on average 2.6 mm and 2.9 mm per year ¹ 0.4 mm. Additionally, sea level rise has accelerated from 1995 to 2015. Widespread coastal flooding would be expected if several degrees of warming is sustained for millennia. Sustained global warming of more than 2 °C (relative to pre-industrial levels) could lead to eventual sea level rise of around 1 to 4 m due to thermal expansion of sea water and the melting of glaciers and small ice caps. Melting of the Greenland ice sheet could contribute an additional 4 to 7.5 m over many thousands of years.It has been estimated that we are already committed to a sea-level rise of approximately 2.3 metres for each degree of temperature rise within the next 2,000 years.
2 degrees 4.5 m 4 degrees 9.1 m 6 degrees 15 m
SUN’S SHAPED FORM
Following the same approach used for the first semester project, the design starts to take shape using the sun path of a specific location, in this case New York City. The sun path allows the design to be strongly related to the surrounding in which it is placed. One of the major outcome from using the sun geometry is the ability to create an inform geometry that allows maximum gain of direct sun light. In the images shown on the right, the first series, top to bottom, follows the path of the summer solstice (21st of June), it creates a series of ribs which cast minimum shadows on the one adjacent. The second series is composed of two buildings, the taller one follows the summer solstice path, while the shorter one follows the winter solstice (21st of December), using this composition the amount
SUN CITY
Sun City is designed following the principles mentioned previously. Between the two lines of building the level go underground, creating a series of terraces and a sunken garden and a reservoir . The buildings are arranged in order to maximise directly sun exposed surfaces, on which vertical farming would take place. Services, industries and public spaces are located below ground. The low building are residential, while the tall one are mix used, retail, offices and residential. The section in the following page will give a deeper explanation of the city vision and how it might be arranged.
EDEN MODEL
The model shown on the side are representative of a different scheme, which is also related to the sun path and uses the module developed for the brief one project. The scheme will be place in the major lake of Central park, in order to access water constantly. The gradient in height aims to create a seamless link to the park, raising vegetation for recreational purposes and slowly mixing it with productive landscapes. The city will have an hollow centre where the main services will be place and the vertical circulation. The sloped surfaces will be sloped to allow hydroponic green houses to be installed.
EDEN CITY
South view of the city. The tallest building reaches over the 1000 m in order to generate enought surface for the productive landscape to produce enought food to feed the entire of New York. The structure on which the hydroponics systems are attaches is a mix of carbon fiber reinforce steel and tension cable. As well as the growing pods even the residential units will be hang to this structure.
EDEN CITY
Plan view. AT this point in the design the city emerged is only a shape imposed onto the site, with no link to the surrounding and lacking in the quality of a city. The missing fabric, the poor relationship with the rigid grid of New York and the absence of density and inhabitation led me to step back in the design process and reconsider the main element which are at the core of a city and in particular of the city I envisioned.
CURVE CONSTRUCTION
In the following pages I will look back at single unit and their arrangements, in order to create a modular structure which can accommodate the various activities expected to take place in the city. In this page I look at the creation of a curve based on the golden ratio, which will generate symbiotic shapes.
MODULAR UNIT
This study shows how the individual unit can be arrange to form a bigger unit, which can be connect to orders. This fractal system allows the shape to continue to grow and expand.
METABOLISM
Metabolism was a postwar Japanese architectural movement that fused ideas about architectural mega-structures with those of organic biological growth. NAKAGIN CAPSULE TOWER The icon of Metabolism, Kurokawa’s Nakagin Capsule Tower was erected in the Ginza district of Tokyo in 1972 and completed in just 30 days. Prefabricated in Shiga Prefecture in a factory that normally built shipping containers, it is constructed of 140 capsules plugged into two cores that are 11 and 13 stories in height. The capsules contained the latest gadgets of the day and were built to house small offices and pieds-à -terre for Tokyo salarymen.
CONTAINER ARCHITECTURE
With the green premise growing in popularity across the globe, more and more people are turning to cargo container structures for green alternatives. There are countless numbers of empty, unused shipping containers around the world just sitting on shipping docks taking up space. Shipping containers are in many ways an ideal building material. They are designed to carry heavy loads and to be stacked in high columns. They are also designed to resist harsh environments, such as on ocean-going vessels or sprayed with road salt while transported on roads. Due to their high strength, containers may be adapted for secure storage. All shipping containers are the same width and most have two standard height and length measurements and as such they provide modular elements that can be combined into larger structures. This simplifies design, planning and transport. As they are already designed to interlock for ease of mobility during transportation, structural construction is completed by simply emplacing them. Due to the containers’ modular design additional construction is as easy as stacking more containers. They can be stacked up to 12 units high when empty.
VERTICAL FARMING
Vertical farming is the practice of producing food and medicine in vertically stacked layers, vertically inclined surfaces and/or integrated in other structures (such as in a skyscraper, used warehouse, or shipping container). The modern ideas of vertical farming use indoor farming techniques and controlled-environment agriculture (CEA) technology, where all environmental factors can be controlled. These facilities utilize artificial control of light, environmental control (humidity, temperature, gases...) and fertigation. Some vertical farms use techniques similar to greenhouses, where natural sunlight can be augmented with artificial lighting and metal reflectors.
It is estimated that by the year 2050, close to 80% of the world’s population will live in urban areas and the total population of the world will increase by 3 billion people. A very large amount of land may be required depending on the change in yield per hectare. Scientists are concerned that this large amount of required farmland will not be available and that severe damage to the earth will be caused by the added farmland.
Unlike traditional farming in non-tropical areas, indoor farming can produce crops year-round. All-season farming multiplies the productivity of the farmed surface by a factor of 4 to 6 depending on the crop. With some crops, such as strawberries, the factor may be as high as 30. Furthermore, as the crops would be sold in the same infrastructures in which they are grown, they will not need to be transported between production and sale, resulting in less spoilage, infestation, and energy required than conventional farming encounters. Research has shown that 30% of harvested crops are wasted due to spoilage and infestation, though this number is much lower in developed nations. Despommier suggests that, if dwarf versions of certain crops are used (e.g. dwarf wheat, which has been grown in space by NASA, is smaller in size but richer in nutrients), year-round crops, and “stacker� plant holders are accounted for, a 30-story building with a base of a building block (2 hectares (5 acres)) would yield a yearly crop analogous to that of 1,000 hectares (2,400 acres) of traditional farming.
URBAN FARMING
BOWERY FARM NYC This indoor farm produces one hundred times more food than a regular farms, using 95% less water and zero pesticide. Growing in a complete controlled environment allows to grow 365 days a year. The vegetables produced here grow more that twice faster, more crop cycles and more products than in a regular field. Scientist at the farm optimise growing condition for each plant and a computer system collects data controlling the quality, growth and even the flavour. SQUARE ROOTS FARM This farm takes place into shipping container. It is composed of 10 containers, each of them is climate controlled and uses LED lights to support hydroponic farming. They use red and blue spectrum of light, which are the one that the plant need to grow. Each container holds the equivalent of 2 acres of farm land, which is equal to a football pitch.
AEROPONICS
Aeroponics is the process of growing plants in an air or mist environment without the use of soil or an aggregate medium (known as geoponics).
Aeroponic culture differs from both conventional hydroponics, aquaponics, and in-vitro (plant tissue culture) growing. Unlike hydroponics, which uses a liquid nutrient solution as a growing medium and essential minerals to sustain plant growth; or aquaponics which uses water and fish waste, aeroponics is conducted without a growing medium. In addition, the use of mist, which transports the nutrients to roots reduces the weight of the system.
spray
nutrient solution pump
growing chamber
CONTAINER STUDY
Freight containers are a reusable transport and storage unit for moving products and raw materials between locations or countries. There are about seventeen million inter-modal containers in the world, and a large proportion of the world’s long-distance freight generated by international trade is transported in shipping containers. In addition, it’s estimated that several million of these containers have now been discarded due to the shipping cost of sending them back to their port of origin. Their invention made a major contribution to the globalization of commerce in the second half of the 20th century, dramatically reducing the cost of transporting goods and hence of long-distance trade.
MODULE 1
LIVING UNIT Containers | 2 Surface | 72 m2
GROWING UNIT Containers | 16 Surface | 1747.2 m2
MODULE SIZE W | 14.4 m D | 12 m H | 36.6 m
LAYOUT 1
LIVING UNIT Containers | 3654 Surface | 263 088 m2
GROWING UNIT Containers | 29 232 Surface | 51 079 997 m2
LAYOUT 2
LIVING UNIT Containers | 3546 Surface | 255 312 m2
GROWING UNIT Containers | 28 368 Surface | 49 564 569 m2
LAYOUT 2
LIVING UNIT Containers | 408 Surface | 14 688 m2
GROWING UNIT Containers | 2 856 Surface |4 366 252 m2
LAYOUT 3
LIVING UNIT Containers |630 Surface | 45 350 m2
GROWING UNIT Containers | 4 410 Surface |6 738 480m2
MODULE 3
LIVING UNIT Containers | 3 Surface | 108 m2
GROWING UNIT Containers | 20 Surface | 2184 m2
MODULE SIZE W | 12 m D | 12 m H | 36.6 m
LAYOUT 1
LIVING UNIT Containers | 748 Surface |84 672 m2
GROWING UNIT Containers | 7 840 Surface | 17 122 560 m2
LAYOUT 3
MODULE 4
LIVING UNIT Containers | 2 - Crossed Surface | 63 m2
GROWING UNIT Containers | 16 + 2 Crossed Surface | 2080 m2
MODULE SIZE W | 12 m D | 12 m H | 38 m
MODULE 5
LIVING UNIT Containers | 2 - Crossed Surface | 63 m2
GROWING UNIT Containers | 14 Surface | 1528.8 m2
MODULE SIZE W | 12 m D | 12 m H | 41 m
EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL VIEW
LIVING UNIT Containers |78 Surface | 4 914 m2
GROWING UNIT Containers | 546 Surface |834 288 m2
SERVICE DIAGRAM
Vertical and horizontal Circulation Geothermal energy Reservoir water Water in the form of mist Food produced Grey waters Black waters Water recycling system
TYPICAL UNIT PLAN 1m
TYPICAL LEVEL PLAN 3m
TYPICAL MODULE SECTION 1m
TYPICAL CLUSTER SECTION 1m
GROWING SEQUENCE
Year - 5
Year - 10
Year - 25
Year - 50
Year - 75
SIDE ELEATION
FRONT ELEVATION