New Balance in 2090

60%completed by Jan. 2010, Using Googleearth and Photoshop

Introduction
Global warming happened in 1980’s. As Mark Lynas speculated, in only a few decades it completely changed the landscape of Earth so put human civilization into a grave danger. (Mark Lynas, 2008) Nonetheless, when global warming brought catastrophes, destroyed the old urban systems, it also brought new opportunities. On the ruins of the old world, many urban and architectural conceptions are carried out, such as 3d city, skycar city, hyper tower, and capsule dwelling etc.. As a record of people’s living condition in 2090, this essay will discuss global land use function, urban model and architectural form in this drastic renovation.

Four Stages of the new balance

Before the arrival of a new balance in 2090s, there were four stages in human race’ responding to global warming. The first one was a collective denial. At the beginning, global warming only impacted on the marginal zones of human living environment. The disasters caused by climate change appeared to be only a series of random phenomenas, so the majority of society was blunt to it. Even the minority had become aware of its possible disastrous consequences, before the reality came, the majority kept focusing on their immediate interests. The second stage was great chaos. When the gradual accumulation of local changes finally led to drastic global catastrophes which human could not interfere, the society was suddenly full of collective panic for the coming of doomsday. People lived in mass riots for taking advantage of society turbulence and local wars for living resources. The third period was a global migration. The weakness of human technology used to resist natural catastrophe completely exposed at that time. Climate refugees numbered in the hundreds of millions, therefore they had to migrate from the sanded field and flooded land to the last habitable latitude zone, which was between 40°N and 70°N. Finally, a new balance between the human and the nature came. Due to the rising of temperature, the high latitude area today has tropical climate. The relatively increased grain production finally is able to meet the demand of the greatly reduced world population. To locate the four stages in a time line, the collective denial happened in early 21st century, the great chaos broken out 30 years later, the global migration followed closely and the new balance comes in 2090 and is expected to last about a century.

Shifts of Global Landscape

90%completed by May 2010, Using Photoshop

A cause and effect chain
As Mark Lynas analyzed, when the catastrophe of Global warming happened, it followed a cause and effect chain. On the continent, evanishment of mountain glacier finally caused shrink or even exhaustion of main rivers. The break of rivers resulted in desertification of forests and farmlands in their basin perimeter, and lead to rapid expansion of desert. Simultaneously, in the ocean, massive melting of continental glacier caused significant rise of sea level, which lead to wide submersion of all coastal regions. (Mark Lynas, 2008) All of these eventually caused massive mortality in global population, large immigration all over the world, and changes in international land use. Although due to the complexity coming from the combination of climate phenomena, topography and geomorphology, the result of these changes seems to be unpredictable, the physical logic hides behind these phenomena is doomed.

Industry in Desert

Global scenario

The solution from science fiction disaster movies
In early 21st century, science fiction disaster movies were very popular. Various catastrophes had been simulated in these movies, as well as the possible response strategies. Some of them particularly suggested the feasible architectural forms and urban morphologies in different disasters, for instance, the villages on cliffside from The Time Machine, the underground town from City of Ember, the machine city from The Matrix, and the abandoned earth from Wall.E etc. . Ironically, when the global disaster caused by global warming actually came, the dramatic science fiction plot, which were the most forward researches in managing global catastrophic situations, became real. The implement of these utopian conceptions brings beauty and romance into the dystopian world. These new cities and architectures are artificial wonders in the recession of human civilization.

Global land use system
In the old world, land value was normally judged by criteria in various aspects, so the process of evaluation was relatively complex. However, the evaluation system has been largely changed. During global warming, most resources of cultivated land and fresh water in the world be consumed, so the need for food cultivation become the unbeatable factor. But other evaluation standards, such as the commercial value and the location dominance, are not crucial at all. In the new judgement system, the potential capability in cultivation becomes the most decisive factor in evaluating the value of a land. Hence, the remaining lands are categorized into three classes: the arable land, the social land and the industrial land.

The arable land
The first class land includes remaining farmland, arable land, high precipitation area and the lands with surface fresh waters or groundwater. They are reserved and protected as the last cultivation resources for the food consumption of the entire human race.

The industry land
The third class land is all kinds of desert areas, where the temperature is too high, lack of fresh water and food supply for human living. These areas are used as industrial production lands. Manufactories were planned and constructed in new way. Component-based and unitized design becomes the common practice in the extreme environment. Based on this principle, as the material input ports and manufacture units, a series of factory rings with similar structure were located near every mining deposit. At the same time, as the transportation component and output port, a conveyer belt was designed to connect all the factory rings together. From mining to product packing, artificial intelligent supervisor, remote-controllable machines and automatic production line were introduced and integrated into the system, to create an unmanned system. In this process, only few human members are settled on the conveyer belt within an artificial indoor environment, playing roles of higher supervisor and maintainer.

Completed in Apr. 2010, Using Photoshop
The closest Factory Ring is quoted from a drawing The Hub by Ian Grainger, the distant ones is quoted from a drawing Helios by Rudolf Herczog

New London 2090

60%completed by May 2010, Using 3dmax and Photoshop
The Walled Island is a re-combination of the Atlantis City in Stargate by Diston

The social land
The second class land is the areas with habitable temperature but uncultivable terrain. They are flooded areas, tidal plains, rocky mountains and the existed inland cities, which became main human settlements. In the existed inland cities, because of the inrushing refugees in huge numbers, population density rapidly raised. As a result, the urban form was completely changed from horizontally developed towns to vertically grown metropolis. New urban systems were quickly built on other terrains to accmmodate the overflowing population. These new cities have significant differences with horizontally developed cities in urban composition, which will be detailedly discussed later in a case study.

New London Plan

Completed in Aug. 2009, Using Googleearth, AutoCAD and Photoshop

Urban scenario

New London
In the past, the major cities in the world were mainly distributed in the coastal areas of continents. Today, the sea level has averagely risen by approximate 25 meters, which means most of these cities were flooded. These flooded city zones is classified as the second class land, and new urban systems are built on the ruins of existed city spaces. This essay will take London, which was threatened by tidal flood for long and eventually submerged by the middle of this century, as an example to further discuss the urban regeneration process.

Greater London is in the Thames basin. Inner London, the lowest area, locates in center, surrounded by outer London, the higher areas. Therefore, when North Sea in-welled into the basin, the Inner London was completely drowned. At the same time, the Outer London was transformed to an archipelago system, made of twenty-nine isles in different sizes. These remaining islands became the most primary human settlements, on the other hand, 83% lands in London were submerged by the sea water. In the flooded part, taking the different depth of the sea water and the underwater topography as parametres, water areas are divided into three categories, according to the difficulty for reusing. The remaining islands and the places where used to be open spaces and high grounds now become community area, as they are easiest to rebuild new architecture. The areas with dense buildings, where are relatively hard to reuse, become energy supply field. And the new traffic system are built on the places used to be rivers and roads.

Fig.1 Transform of urban space

Urban Model of London 2090

Completed in Aug. 2009, Using Photoshop and AutoCAD

Urban Model

Community system

Walled islands

The new formed islands in Outer London area become the most primary human settlements. They function as economic and political center of the city. The population density on these pieces of land reached 100,000 people per km2. Dams, encircling each of the islands, were built to prevent water coming in and get back lower lands from the sea.

Hyper towers

As another major way, a structure with 400 stories and 1600 meters height, housing a population of 256,000 people was built to create living space in the sea. It is a self-contained city, hosting its own hospitals, schools, parks, a range of entertainment and retail options, and able to process its own waste. 25 of them were set mainly along the international waterways with a freight terminal installed on bottom. Therefore they also function as input ports and distribution centers of the city’s industrial products supply.

Float villages
In the long-term process of North Sea submerging the Thames basin, narrow boats were used as temporary houses to settle refugees. Because of the continuous scarcity of housing land, part of refugees could not get a stationary house for long. They gradually got used to living on the boat and turned it to a permanent place for living. Eventually these people became a semi-nomadic group in the city. When a certain number of narrow boats temporarily concentrate in an area, they form a float village. These docking areas were set on the clear water near the intracity water routes, where normally above the ruined parks and squares with few underwater buildings. At time passed by, markets are emerged among these floating villages.

Pier towns

During the submerging, the tidal shore kept shifting. However, this area was still the first choice for setting temporary refugee camps. In order to avoid the tide, the camps were set on massive structures of pier, spreading on the shore. When sea level rise finally tended to be mitigation, the shore stopped moving at last. Before the balance came, most of refugees got their new houses and left. The rests settled down and gradually turned the camps into a series of satellite towns around the basin. Finally, located in-between the farmland and the city, these towns become input ports and distribution centers of city’s food supply.

Urban Zones and Waterborne Routes of London 2090

Completed in Aug. 2009, Using Photoshop and AutoCAD

Energy supply systems
Due to the rise of temperature, in 2090, the climatic pattern in Thames Basin has been transferred from temperate maritime climate to tropical maritime climate. When North Sea in-welled into the basin, continuous sea wind followed. In order to fully utilize the natural advantages, wind farms were built as one of the main energy supplies in new London. Generally the wind velocity of sea wind is 8-10 meters per second. In this situation, small sized wind turbine with a rated power of 20kw, was appropriate for making use of this wind power resources. 131.6 km2 of wind farms were built, with a matrix of 625 small wind turbines in each square kilometer. The production energy in total is 7,050,000,000 kWh per year, which meets approximately 21% of the total consumption in new London. The rests energy resource is produced by other new energy power generation such as nuclear energy and tidal energy. Because the installation of a small wind turbine only requires an area of 0.4m2, a matrix of them could be easily installed in the ruined city where other larger construction could hardly be built. Hence building wind farms is an important way of re-exploiting the ruined areas.

Public traffic systems

Water transport network
Advanced water transportation network was perfect in the new flooded London. This network includes two parts: international waterways and intracity routes. Merged into the sea, the Thames River and Lee River are largely extended, both in navigable width and depth. After cleaning the ruins along the rivers, ocean ships can easily get to the inlands through them. Their importance in national transportation is greatly enlarged. These two extended rivers make of the international waterways. On the other hand, the intracity routes are set for daily transportation, which includes ferrying services and commuting trips. Most of these routes are set on clear sea surface. The minority of them are built through the ruined Inner London area, above the underwater roads and canals. These routes connect all the components in the urban model together.

Air transport system
Beside the water transportation system, an air one is built simultaneously. Because the usable lands are too valuable to support the long airstrips for the large airplanes, they are massively culled. Instead personal light-weighted low-altitude aircrafts, which can vertically take off and land on a small square, are widely used. Similar traffic system had been vividly presented in the movie The Fifth Elements. More systematically, in 2006, MVRDV brought a better proposal, Skycar City. In this proposal a series of low-altitude aircrafts were designed, in a range from personal skycars to public skybuses. The packing structures for these aircrafts were also developed. (MVRDV, 2006) Today a more advanced air traffic system has been built based on these early researches. A network of airlanes are set up to reduce the load of water transport, and an air rescue team is established as the main force in city’s emergency response system.

A Brief History of Early Hyper Tower

Fig.2 A brief history of early hyper towers (MVRDV, 2005)

Hyper Tower

A brief history of early hyper towers
A long history of architects’ practice for building an ideal city within one gigantic high rise structure, eventually leads to the appearance of the Hyper Tower. The history could be backtracked to the early 20th century, when Theodore Garrett advocated for “A mammoth structure, towering into the clouds and containing within its walls the cultural, commercial and industrial activities of a great city.” (Rem Koolhaas, 1978) After that, inspired by the prosperity of American skyscrapers, architects from different countries continually brought their similar or relevant proposals in the whole century. Finally, disregarding the place where the proposals are developed, they gradually improved into the conception of a hyper tower.

Three main types of early hyper towers
According to the chronology, three types of early hyper towers can be clarified. The first one was a single tower with various functional space vertically distributed. This was the primary type of hyper tower. The shortcoming of this tower is that when the enlargement in height and scale is needed, the traffic between different function zones becomes too heavy to be solvable. Hence when the height reached 1,000 meters or the accommodation exceeded 50,000 people, it would meet its application limits. The second one was a structure of pyramid. Opposite to the first one, it is an utmost stable structure. Theoretically this structure of pyramid could be infinitely enlarged without changing the shape, as elements could be added to each of its four surfaces symmetrically. This process of enlargement would form a series of concentric layers where different functions would be distributed on, which brings a conception of function layer. However pyramid occupies immense base area corresponding to its height, therefore, its scale would be confined by the terrain conditions. Later, appeared in the end of 20th century, inter-connected towers beaten the previous two types of tower with the highest density and complexity. Horizontal distribution of different function towers and the vertical function division in each tower coexist here, giving birth to a three dimensional city.

The Function Model

An explanation written in Dec. 2009

The Hyper Tower in 2090
“Hyper tower or vertical city is based on the concept that a city could have more space for open space or nature conservation at ground level if the city was expanded vertically rather than horizontally”. (MVRDV, 2005) It is an outcome of maximizing density on minimum land. Therefore, with no usable land for horizontal expansion, hyper tower is inevitable in new London. Furthermore, it evolved to be more self-sustainable and more isolated from external environment in a catastrophic environment. It is a structure with a nuclear power station in the center and a series of concentric function layers surrounded. The function layers include: residential layer, traffic layer and social layer. Near the core, the personal space for every inhabitant is provided in residential layer to ensure their basic living requirements. At the surrounding, working space, communication space, and entertainment space are set in social layer to meet their higher demands for social activities. And in between, the traffic system connects the residential and social layers together both vertically and horizontally. This sequence follows a natural rule in fruits, which keep the seeds of life in the core and the nutriments at the pulp. Also this arrangement distributes the sunshine and functional space efficiently. Retails, restaurants, and plazas obtained the most sufficient sunshine, because residents were expected to spend most of their daytime in this area. Contrarily, residential layer with living capsules exclusively, is fully adopted by artificial illumination, because residents were expected to stay in their personal room only in bed time. In short, it could be seen as a diversified first type tower or a compacted third type tower group, with concentric function layers which is similar with the ones in pyramid.

Hyper Tower in 2090

Built in a crisis, no time for rotation, distortion or spiraling, all returns to the nature of hyper tower: maximizing density on minimum land.

A Vertical City

80%completed by Feb. 2010, Using 3dmax and Photoshop

Internal Structure
There was a popular mistake in city planning, especially in new town planning. Simple and static divisions were given to define a city in functional regions, however, the nature of a city is complicated and dynamic. Consequently this deviation caused anti-site defects in urban development, for instance, the dead city phenomenon of city central area and the traffic indigestion in commuting time. This unwise tradition in planning of horizontal city was also inherited in early design of vertical city. The first hyper tower proposed by Theodore Garrett was simply “divided vertically in four functional sectors with industry in the bottom, offices in the second quarter, living in the third and a hotel in the fourth.” (Rem Koolhaas, 1978) This similar flaw limited the development of vertical city as well. In contrast, hyper tower in 2090 is an open structure which is more agreed with the essence of city, a dynamic system. It mainly embodied in three aspects, more comprehensive function distribution in social layer, new separation in pedestrians and vehicles in traffic layer, and exchangeable dwelling capsule in residential layer.

Daily Social Module

80%completed by Feb. 2010, Using 3dmax and Photoshop

Social Layer
Social activities are composed by office work activities, commercial activities and entertainment activities, and they also could be seen as large amounts of personal activities and small amount of collective activities. According to the latter, social layer is correspondingly composed by two parts, daily social modules which provide services for large amounts of personal activities, and four centers in terms of ecological centre, entertainment center, financial center and traffic center, which are set for different collective activities.

Daily social module
A daily social module is a large atrium with front side open to the external environment, and back side open to the traffic layer. The other two lateral sides are crowded with small offices, retail stores, cafes, restaurants, and clubs etc. which are connected by multi-level sidewalks. Walking bridges, plazas and small parks are set between them. This spatial pattern is inspired from the atrium space of gargantuan multilevel shopping complexes in Asian cities, which “bring public to ‘higher grounds’” and may be a new form of 3D city, as MVRDV group indicated in KM3. (MVRDV, 2005)

Four centers
Four centers are set on four corners of hyper tower. Ecological center is located at the south-facing corner, biological technology plants there use sunlight to break down parts of the human waste and compost for recycling back into the soil. Entertainment center is consisted of theatres, cinemas and a stadium. Financial center provides large office space for collective office work. And traffic center contains a multistory parking structure for personal aircrafts and a public port for both water traffic and air traffic

Virtical Buses

Completed in Dec. 2009, Using 3dmax and Photoshop

Traffic Layer
“Since 1920s, architects began to locate pedestrian streets on different levels than motor roads.” (MVRDV, 2005) However, in a 3D city like hyper tower, the separation of pedestrians and vehicles is achieved in a new method. Every horizontal floor in the tower is designed as a pedestrian area, while motor traffic is only applied in vertical communication among floors.

Horizontal pedestrian traffic
A main floor is set every 9-meter height with accessory floors in every 3-meter. In each main floor, different traffic space is in respective scales. The aisles in residential area would be 3meters in height and 3meters in width, while the platform for vertical buses requires 27 meters height and 12 meters width. A pedestrian plaza even needs bigger and higher space. To fit the continual changes of space scale, staggered floors are adopted. They are connected by stairs, ramps and pedways, to form a comprehensive pedestrian system.

Vertical motor traffic
Vertical motor traffic is composed by two parts: vertical buses as global service and elevators as local service. Vertical buses run through the entire tower, stop every ten main floors. Complementarily elevators travel in-between every ten main floors, pause at the accessory floor.

Living Capsules and Corridors

Completed in Nov. 2009, Using 3dmax and Photoshop

Residential Layer
The exhaustion of housing land led to the implementation of housing equalitarianism, in which rated housing space is equally distributed to every homeless citizen. Further, the urgency of providing houses to millions of refugee forces the rated housing space to be fully modularized as an industrial product. This conception of “capsule dwelling” was firstly proposed by Warren Chalk in 1964. He designed a capsule house with components which “would be tailored and able to be updated as technology moved forward, and as the dweller changed his needs.” And when “snugly and efficiently locked together they were capable of total inter-changeability.” (Archigram, 1994)

A dwelling machine
To be total inter-change, the residential layer is designed to be a dwelling machine, a huge transit system of the capsules with 400 floors. On each floor, 32 branches extend out from main structure. On every branch large mechanical conveyer belt is equipped, and on each conveyer belt 20 capsules are fixed. Freight elevators are used to load the capsules between conveyer belts, in a closed rail of loading cranes along the central structure. In the exchange system, the conveyer belt A carries capsule A’ to its inner end, detaches it and leaves it on a freight elevator, then the freight elevator transports it to floor B. After that, the loading crane on floor B picks capsule A’ up and carries it along the rail to the inner end of conveyer belt B. Finally, capsule A’ would be put at a vacancy on floor B. At the same time, along an inverse path, capsule B’ is transported to the initial location of capsule A’.

Capsules

60%completed by Apr. 2010, Using 3dmax and Photoshop

Capsule dwelling
A capsule equipped with basic living facilities is the home for every inhabitant in hyper tower, which is 3m×3m×3m in volume. Although each resident can only occupy one capsule at one time, he/she can update the components in the capsule and change its location as his/her wish. When two people get married, they move and combine their capsules together and equip new components which are more suitable for family life. In the family, each child owns a capsule attached to the family capsule, which will be unattached when it grow up. People, shared social or family relationship, love to move their capsules together to enjoy their social life, and spontaneously form the local community.

Reminiscence

The Streets in old days, 80%completed by Aug. 2010, Using 3dmax and Photoshop

Collection of Sculptures, 80%completed by Aug. 2010, Using 3dmax and Photoshop

Architecture Pieces, 80%completed by Aug. 2010, Using 3dmax and Photoshop



The Collection of Art,completed by Aug. 2010, Using 3dmax and Photoshop

Virtual Scenes

Completed in Aug. 2010, Using 3dmax and Photoshop

Holographic scenes
In the movie Magnetic Rose by Katsuhiro Otomo, visions in memory could be vividly reproduced with holographic scenes. These virtual scenes offered visuals, sounds, odors, and any form of information simulating the real feeling in life. These holographic scenes created a virtual world. In the hyper tower, such a technology caters the reminiscent mood spread in the public psychology after the disaster. The beauty in memory becomes the best painkiller to alleviate the suffering brought by disaster. With it, Londoner can go picnic on the meadow in Hyde Park again. With it, the immigrant refugee can to back to their homeland.

Sunset at Oasis Bar

Completed in Aug. 2010, Using 3dmax and Photoshop

Conclusion

Because of global warming, the living space of human race has been sharply shrunken. In the last reserved land, the dusk of human civilization comes. Nonetheless in this period of decline, people still re-surveyed the changed world and re-established global production system. Supported by this system, on the ruins of old world, people re-built magnificent cities and mega architectures. These artificial spectacles are the beauties of the golden hour in human civilization history. In this golden hour, people indulge in the flourish of the past and enjoy the last peace before the dark night of barbarization falling again.


Bibliography
Archigram, 1994, Guide to Archigram 1961-74, London: Academy Editions

Mark Lynas, 2007, Six degrees: our future on a hotter planet, London: HarperCollins

MVRDV, 2005, KM3, Barcelona: Actar

MVRDV, 2006, Skycar city, a pre-emptive history, Barcelona, New York: Actar

Rem Koolhaas, 1978, Delirious New York, New York: Monacelli Press