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Unlocking America's Core |
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LATERAL OFFICE | RUNWAYS TO GREENWAYS Reykjavik, Iceland. 2007. Competition Finalist. The design proposal for the Vatnsmyri area of Reykjavik seeks to simultaneously acknowledge the rich history of the site while looking forward into the promising future of this unique city. The premise of the project is to use landscape voids as a catalyst for urban development. The project begins by establishing ‘no-build’ zones in the figure of the runway to identify three primary axes. Each former runway is converted to a ‘greenway’ that concentrates a primary trait of Reykjavik’s future. The three greenways are programmed as : civic, production and recreational. Park and Civic Greenway The north-south greenway responds to the ecology of the Hljomskalagardur Park and Lake and the Nautholsvik thermal beach to the south. A series of micro-ecologies, including wetlands and hills extend along this wide public greenway and are accompanied by communal civic program. The ecology and civic greenway is conceived of as a dot-matrix of cellular ecosystems, organic rooms, landscape surfaces of hard and softscape, gardens and pools. The matrix does not conceal its artificial nature, which affords it a rich variety of texture, material, density, topography and atmosphere. As the nature of the Park Greenway changes over its length (north to south) – from wetland, to leisure park, to urban square, to botanic garden, to marina, the open space is paired and dotted with corresponding civic institutions: a public library, community centre, aviation museum, transit station, science museum, geology centre and aquarium. The wetlands cross-pollinate with the civic programme and serve to cleanse the water, act as a watershed, and control soil erosion. Furthermore, they become the home to a rich diversity of ecosytems and their associated wildlife. As such, the wetlands and civic institutions are designed into a symbiotic relationship. Production Greenway The east-west greenway is a landscape of production. It extends the dense forestation of Oskjuhlid Hill and generates new connection with the water’s edge at the west, terminating in a small port. Along its length is program capable of producing food and energy, in a bid to make Vatnsmyri and Reykjavik, as ecologically self-sustaining as possible. The greenway is treated as a barcode of interdependent production activities, with changing densities of fish farming, greenhouses for fruit, vegetable and flower production, allotment gardens, markets and tree farming. Fish Farms are located on the Western end of the strip and are serve both a local populace through an adjacent market and an international market with a distribution port. A series of greenhouses line the edges of the existing runway and create cluster of outdoor “rooms.” Interspersed are modest community garden and farm plots which subdivide the space and integrate the adjacent communities into the strip. A second market, proposed at the triangle intersection, serves to sell these vegetables and flowers to the Reykjavik community. A dense forest continues the barcode and creates wood for the initial construction phases. This forest gains more permanence in successive phases and is used to absorb carbon dioxide and offer oxygen to the new development. The production strip is organized as a sustainable system of intake and yield. For instance, the nutrients in the waste water from fish farming is utilized in the greenhouses or the excess heat from the below grade infrastructure is recycled into the greenhouses. Geothermal water is used to join these activities and create slow public/ reflecting zones and faster pace/ circulation zones. This network of geothermal pipes runs below the runway but emerges through the surface to mark critical spaces. This network densifies to create warm outdoor rooms and heat the greenhouses or fish farms. Clean water from the ecology runway is coupled with geo-thermally heated water to create accurate temperatures for each of the specific activities. Also running below the production runway is a large scaled computer server farm. The vast geothermal energy in Iceland make it ideal for such a development, due to the large cooling and energy requirements of a server farm. Server farms require no daylight but generate large amounts of heat which is then used to warm the greenhouses above grade. Companies such as Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo are already considering the potential for server farms in Iceland, which would help transform the city even further into a global technology and information hub. Here the memory of the airport is reconceived and forms the foundation for the production strip. The server farms link Vatnsmyri to World through housing digital information as the airport once did. Recreation Greenway The northeast-southwest greenway establishes a recreation corridor for four new Vatnsmyri neighbourhoods. The greenway, subdivided by the road network into recreation ‘rooms’, defines spaces for formal and informal activities: soccer fields, running tracks, basketball, tennis and volleyball, local schools and playgrounds. The recreation runway exploits the potential of these rooms by infilling each with a unique program and figure which will be shared by the surrounding community. The grouping of these figures along the greenway allows for a variety of activities at various scales – from chesspark to soccer stadium, from spa to schools. The recreation greenway terminates at the old transit camp, converted into a leisure camp and spa. |
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