Get Started for FREE
Sign up with Facebook Sign up with X
I don't have a Facebook or a X account
 Your new post is loading...
Scoop.it!
As a part of its EMBARQ Sustainable Urban Mobility initiative, the WRI Ross Center for Sustainable Cities has created a global reference guide called Cities Safer by Design “to help cities save lives from traffic fatalities through improved street design and smart urban development." Via Lauren Moss 
No comment yet.
Sign up to comment
Scoop.it!
The Ambitious Cykelslangen by DISSING+WEITLING enables Copenhagen's vision to become the best cycling city in the world by the end of 2015. The 235-meter-long orange snake meanders 5.5 meters high above sea level from Havneholmen through the mall Fisketorvet, ending at Kalvebod Brygge. This “snake” is actually a ramp and a bridge, called the “Cykelslangen — The Bicycle Snake,” that provides more than 12,000 bicyclists with a safe route through this busy district every day. The architecture firm DISSING+WEITLING was asked to design a ramp to replace a nearby staircase. Instead of just designing a simple ramp, they went a step further and designed a bridge. The result is a destination and focal point that can be seen for miles from the air and has also completely transformed the area for all who enjoy it. Via Lauren Moss
Scoop.it!
For over a century, writers and architects have imagined the cities of the future. In the late 1960s, architect Paolo Soleri envisioned “arcology” - a word that combines “architecture” and “ecology," with a goal of building structures to house large populations in self-contained environments with a self-sustaining economy and agriculture. “In the three-dimensional city, man defines a human ecology. In it he is a country dweller and metropolitan man in one. By it the inner and the outer are at ‘skin’ distance. He has made the city in his own image. Arcology: the city in the image of man.” (Paolo Soleri)Via Lauren Moss
luiy's curator insight,
July 8, 2013 7:42 AM
For over a century, writers and architects have imagined the cities of the future as giant structures that contain entire metropolises. To some, these buildings present the best means for cities to exist in harmony with nature, while others forsee grotesque monstrosities destructive to the human spirit. In the mid-20th century, engineer and futurist R. Buckminster Fuller imagined city-enclosing plastic domes and enormous housing projects resembling nuclear cooling towers. These ideas are impractical but they explore the limits of conventional architectural thinking. Science fiction writers and artists often imagine future architecture that oppresses the human spirit. Megastructures such as the pyramid-like Tyrell Buildings of “Blade Runner” dominate a decrepit skyline. The decaying old city is simply covered with layers of newer, larger buildings in a process of “retrofitting.” Beginning in the late 1960s, architect Paolo Soleri envisioned a more humane approach. The word “arcology” is a combination of “architecture” and “ecology.” The goal is to build megastructures that would house a population of a million or more people, but in a self-contained environment with its own economy and agriculture. “In the three-dimensional city, man defines a human ecology. In it he is a country dweller and metropolitan man in one. By it the inner and the outer are at ‘skin’ distance. He has made the city in his own image. Arcology: the city in the image of man.” (Paolo Soleri) In 1996, a group of 75 Japanese corporations commissioned Soleri to design the one-kilometer-tall Hyper Bulding, a vertical city for 100,000 people. Existing in harmony with nature, the Hyper Building was designed to recycle waste, produce food in greenhouses, and use the sun’s light and heat for power and climate control. The structure was designed for passive heating and cooling without the need for machinery. An economic recession put the brakes on the project and it was never built. Soleri’s arcology concept is being put to the test in the Arcosanti experimental community being built in Arizona. Construction began in 1970. When complete the town will house 5,000 people. Buildings are composed of locally produced concrete and are designed to capture sunlight and heat. To be built in the desert near Abu Dhabi, Masdar is a 2.3-square-mile (6 sq km) planned city of 40,000 residents. Buildings are designed to reduce reliance on artificial lighting and air conditioning, and the city will run entirely on solar power and renewable energy. Begun in 2006, the project is planned for completion around 2020-2025.
Fàtima Galan's curator insight,
July 9, 2013 5:44 AM
Amazing and beautiful analysis!! Believe it or not, the science fiction also has something to teach us about the city of tomorrow. |
Scoop.it!
Andrea Constantini is an Italian photographer and graphic designer, and founder of PhotogtaphizeMag, an independent, free, electronic magazine. He believes that “photography in the modern has received the gift of digital”, a gift that he uses in his beautiful works. In his architecturalized collection, he emphasized the idea of the human mind is made for being constantly elsewhere, this being one of the single, most important distinctions between a “conscious man and an instinctive animal”, giving us the ability to overcome the boundaries of not only social restraints, economical differencies and other such daily struggles, but also infinite concepts such as space and time... Via Lauren Moss
Francoise ROCAFORT's curator insight,
June 22, 2015 1:50 AM
Cityscape Portraits | Andrea Constantini
Scoop.it!
Mapmaker Max Roberts has created a new way to map out subway lines. Conventional maps usually emphasize “straight lines, clean angles and geographical accuracy”. Unlike those maps, Roberts’ circular design is a blend of “aesthetics and usability”. Via Lauren Moss
|
