Architects present a green vision of Adelaide's future

[Prince George]

From AdelaideNow: Architects present a green vision of Adelaide's future

Rather scant article, I wonder if we can find the actual paper from Hassell?

A FRESH, green vision for Adelaide in 2030 features plants everywhere, taking over the city's rooftops, walls and even cascading down multi-storey car parks. The creative response to the State Government's 30-Year Plan for Greater Adelaide, released on World Environment Day today, comes from design, planning and architecture firm Hassell.

Senior associate and landscape architect Sharon Mackay said she was excited about using the plan to drive a spectacular transformation to sustainable city.

Without a serious rethink, the level of growth proposed in the 30-Year Plan would place immense pressure on city infrastructure, Ms Mackay said, but it presented a chance to retrofit and redevelop the scene.

"It will encourage people to embrace sustainable city living, where they are surrounded by plants and animals, no longer require a car and can source fresh, local produce within 500m of their front door."

"But it must start with creative government policy that actively supports an integrated approach to urban planning and provides incentives to the community and developers to be partners in this vision."

Ms Mackay was responsible for innovative green roofs and walls in the Adelaide Zoo's new entrance and function centre.

Hassell wants the State Government and the Adelaide City Council to act on sustainability.

Managing principal Mariano DeDuonni said it was time to stop urban sprawl and consolidate city living, making it attractive, affordable and practical for people of all ages, incomes and living arrangements.

The Adelaide of tomorrow should have "an interconnected network of green space including rooftops that provide accessible space, help mitigate extreme heat days during summer and provide corridors that enhance biodiversity as well as water capture and reuse," he said.

There were other advantages: Walkable cities are healthy cities.

[SRW]

I know it's only meant to be a thought-provoker, but I couldn't help but get a good chuckle out of the accompanying image:

Rundle Street U-Park goes high-rise farm!

[Straze]

Electric cars, trains, trams and trucks. Solar powered homes, offices, businesses and factories. Plant more trees around our road and rail corridors. Improve public transport in our city, encourage people to ride their bikes and let them take them on our trams and buses. Rip up roads that are just not needed, i.e. Southern Expressway and replace with a train line all the way to Willunga. Don't panic.

[Prince George]

I know it's only meant to be a thought-provoker, but I couldn't help but get a good chuckle out of the accompanying image: <snip> Rundle Street U-Park goes high-rise farm!

I don't recall if I read it in one of Koolhaas's books or on ArchDaily or BLDGBLOG, but there was a plan laid out for building something much like this in Rotterdam - a multi-level vertical farm growing products to be sold in the ground-floor market.

[SRW]

I know it's only meant to be a thought-provoker, but I couldn't help but get a good chuckle out of the accompanying image: <snip> Rundle Street U-Park goes high-rise farm!

I don't recall if I read it in one of Koolhaas's books or on ArchDaily or BLDGBLOG, but there was a plan laid out for building something much like this in Rotterdam - a multi-level vertical farm growing products to be sold in the ground-floor market.

I've heard of a few proposed in Japan also, though I'm not aware of any that have come to fruition. For what it's worth, I think it's a novel idea, especially in the above sense of finding new uses for (hopefully) redundant infrastructure, but even generally as way of achieving local, sustainable produce.

It's just the image I had in my head of crossing over from the Mall with livestock grazing lazily overhead that elicited a chortle.

[Prince George]

I got in touch with the good people at Hassell about this vision piece and Tim Horton kindly sent the PDF of the presentation that they made. I've attached it, and here's the text on the first page.

Imagine a future Adelaide where city growth has been designed to lock in environmental sustainability, promote biodiversity and improve the health of the residents that live there. Where a ‘green’ transport system meets the communities’ needs and the roof tops of our buildings have been transformed into living ecosystems that support food production, flora, fauna and places for our own recreation.

The future liveable Adelaide will have been retrofitted and reinvented using the world’s leading research in wastewater management sustaining ‘green’ infrastructure that is fused with the parkland surrounds through planned green corridors. Landscape Architect Sharon Mackay and Architect Tim Horton, both Senior Associates at HASSELL, believe that Adelaide has the potential to become a sustainable city through smart planning and design, leveraging off our existing natural and heritage assets.

“The 30 Year Plan projects growth of 27,000 residents in the city by 2030, requiring 15,000 new dwellings. We need to start now if this growth is not to place pressure on our infrastructure, open space and natural resources. Getting it right offers an unprecedented opportunity to invent our future now”

“Adapting our cities offers the pay-back of improving the way we live. A truly liveable city is attractive to new residents, globally competitive and genuinely environmentally sustainable. The Adelaide of tomorrow should improve – not diminish – the quality of our life”

The key to achieving this liveable city starts with creative government policy that actively supports an integrated approach to urban planning and provides incentives to the community and developers, to partner in the vision.

Policy approaches adopted in other cities such as Berlin, Portland and Chicago provide targets, tools and financial incentives to encourage sustainable development.

Walkable cities are healthy cities. And in a nation that spends around $58bn on obesity, walkable cities are fast becoming recognised for the savings they deliver to the community in improving public health and reducing health care costs. It will be walkable and pedestrian friendly, with a central zone that gives preference to green public transport, pedestrians and cyclists. Public car parks within the walkable zone will be retrofitted to accommodate food production and retail. The city will seamlessly integrate public transport, cycle networks and open space corridors. A network of green space will include rooftops that provide accessible space , help to mitigate extreme heat days during summer and provide corridors that enhance biodiversity and capture rainfall.

We will have a new city form that reflects a confident, vibrant culture; one that supports new forms of working and living. One that values courtyards, terraces and outdoor rooms more than internally focused boxes, connecting with the landscape. A city that demonstrates an urbanism that can coexist with nature rather than opposing its natural order. This will take determination, imagination and intelligence, and will only occur by design.

“A liveable city can balance an increased population while providing an ecological framework for environmental, social and economic stability.”

HASSELL has been leading the way with recent projects such as the Adelaide Zoo Entrance Precinct, where sustainable design practices have been demonstrated through the implementation of living walls and roofs, stormwater capture and reuse and connecting the development to its parkland surrounds.

[Prince George]

And while looking at an article about Prof Lee, I noticed a link to this story (practically on the same day) about the Australian exhibition heading to the Venice Biennale.

Australian architects imagine cities of the future

CITIES under the ocean, buildings made out of mould, a futuristic "spine" that runs from Tasmania to the mainland and a roof on top of Melbourne. Those are some of the ideas dreamed up by Australian architects as part of a project to imagine what our capital cities might look like in a hundred years.

Now + When: Australian Urbanism will be the Australian Institute of Architects' major exhibition at this year's Venice Architecture Biennale. The "now" section includes stunning aerial shots of Australian cities at dusk, while "then" focuses on how they could be transformed in the future.

Both the photos and designs will be projected against an enormous screen in stereoscopic 3D, letting viewers with special glasses see the images shift as they move around the room.

One of the most striking visions of the future is Multiplicity, by Melbourne's John Wardle Architects along with writer and filmmaker Stefano Boscutti. In Multiplicity, the idea is to build upwards, not outwards, from Melbourne's city centre. A giant platform above the city is suspended by pylons between buildings, offering a space to grow food and giving shade to residents from rising temperatures in coming years.

Stefan Lee, a principal at John Wardle, said working with Boscutti had led the team to consider incorporating ideas from unusual sources like films and novels.

"He was the agent provocateur of the project. The old maxim of architects is that form follows function, but he was talking about form following fiction," Mr Lee said.

The sustainable city

While Multiplicity may look fantastical, it was inspired by real problems faced by city planners.

"There's a lot of debate in Melbourne about where the boundaries of growth should be for the city, and how much population growth there should be," Mr Lee said.

"We thought it would be interesting and kind of provocative to think about what would happen if somebody proposed a much higher density — kind of a hyper-density — in the CBD."

Mr Lee said his team was influenced by contemporary discussions about creating "greening grooves" in cities. The architects wanted to see how far they could push that idea.

"In Chicago and New York in the US they've been talking about doing that, and even in Melbourne there's examples of it starting to happen," Mr Lee said.

"But we thought, what if you actually think about that on a grand scale and even think about it in terms of agricultural production?

"So we imagined there was this pastoral landscape sitting above the CBD which people could get access to, but was also a very productive space."

Mr Lee said that while the concept might not take off — or even be feasible — it did offer a new way of thinking about how to make Melbourne sustainable.

"It's not necessarily proposing that this is a solution for Melbourne's density issues, but what it is raising is some principals about how we might address sustainability," he said.

"Melbourne's ecological footprint at the moment is something like 28 times the actual geographical area of the city.

"If we can reduce that and compact our agricultural zone and our energy production into one vertical space above the city, then perhaps we can start to reduce our impact on the environment."

[dbl96]

like to hear something more about what the "spine" to tasmania is. any ideas?