Magic Mountains

"Green" design is certainly getting a lot of attention lately. Personally I'm not sure whether its just a passing fad, or a genuine response to growing problem, but it certainly is producing some interesting work. The focus of this post is the joint Danish-Chinese exhibition from the Venice Architecture Biennale, which seeks to explore the problem of;

"“How can China proceed with its ambitious project to improve living conditions for its population without exhausting the very resources needed to sustain a better life?"

The Danish-Chinese team consisting of architects, researchers and planners has created four proposals towards sustainable development in Chinese cities. What caught my eye was the Magic Mountains proposal - an urban design for a new "green" central business district within the city of Chongqing. As well as being some nice eye candy, the project raises some interesting concepts.

"The GCBD district resembles the natural skyline of Chongqing, but with inhabited mountains. The mountain-peaks match the high density centres; the mountains lower reaches resemble traditional Chinese neighbourhoods. The valleys are green open spaces accommodating the "“living machine", a system for treating wastewater and generating renewable energy."

"The inhabited mountains will reduce energy consumption by supporting passive cooling in summer and passive heating in winter. They are interconnected by a system of bicycle and pedestrian paths, and an efficient public transport system to minimize the need for transportation by car. Magic Mountains reduces the overall consumption of resources and energy by 22% and subtitutes 11% conventional energy for renewable."

It all seems like quite a utopian vision for a city, but also a vision that does not seem too difficult to implementiment. I'm not sure about the massive habitation structures, but the idea of a living landscape integrated so closely with cities structure seems exciting - what would the pros and cons of such a development? What if an entire city was to exist like this?

In a modern city, is there still a need for buildings to be tightly packed? With a project like this, where essentially a sub-city is created from scratch, alot of city planning would be done beforehand, hopefully establishing effective transport systems and clustering related areas together. If these items are in place, I don't see why the use of large public landscapes throughout a city would be impractical - especially considering the benefits of such an environment.

The benefit of such a development would not be for the environment of the earth, but for the environment of the city and its citizens. Even a cities worth of such an environment would be a miniscule creation against the massive amount of environments that are destroyed for farming, logging, mining and the like. However, the benefits for the citizens and the overall city would be huge. Having these public spaces on such a large scale would give the city an amazing feeling of life and identity. Play areas, native flora, private spaces, cultural spaces, educating spaces - the possibilities to do with such areas are really endless.

Imagine a city where you could go for a walk and discover someplace new. A city where you wouldn't have to travel to the country to "get away from it all". Would people not have a better standard of life, and the city be globally recognized for having such a unique identity?

Although it may seem that doing this concept on a city-wide scale goes back into the realm of that utopian vision of the future where man once again lives in harmony with nature, I would like to think that this project shows such ideas are not so far-fetched. It sure would be interesting to see implementedented, even if just on a small scale.

I recommend checking out the other Danish projects, as well as the rest of the Biennale.

This entry was posted by Philip, on Sunday, September 24. You can leave your response.