Start 19.02.2013
Every year a one square kilometer of territory will be the subject of the competition. This area, to house 100,000 people living and working, sets the stage for tremendous research and investigation into urban density, verticality, domesticity, work, food, infrastructure, nature, ecology, structure, and program – their holistic integration and the quest for visionary paradigm will be the challenges of this urban and architectural invention.
This new environment will have a full slate of live-work-play provisions, with the residential component making up to 50% of the total floor space.
In the third of this series of competitions, the theme of “Everyone Harvests” will be explored.
By year 2050, food production is projected to increase by about 70 percent globally and nearly 100 percent in developing countries in order to meet the needs of the world’s expected 9 billion-strong population (UN Food and Agriculture Organisation).
However this incremental demand for food worldwide is facing growing challenge with competition for land and water resources, with quarter of all land of the planet being highly degraded (United Nations).
With projections of nearly 80% of the world population to reside in urban centres by the year 2050, the brief is seeking for potential solutions for an entirely new approach to urban agriculture. The proposals should provide visions for a sustainable production of a safe and varied food supply that can first fulfil the basic needs of the daily food consumption of the city and if possible, produce surplus that can support the needs of other cities as well.
The understanding of “harvesting” will be extended to include energy and water resources. The solutions should seek to introduce innovative ways to effectively utilize resources, such as minimizing water, saving energy and their associated costs related to urban agriculture.
Participating teams are to select their site of one square kilometer within the larger territory marked out in the information sheet.

Everyone Harvests Design Competition

Vertical Cities Asia - Hanoi

Teaching

Start 16.09.2014
The design studio focuses on the development of a functioning and replicable housing prototype for a real site in an informal settlement of Cape Town, South Africa. The studio will respond to the need for dignified, affordable housing and leverage the potential of modular construction, strategic urban planning, community capacity building and industry systems. Each student will individually develop a prototype through all scales – from connection details to urban plans – and undertake a holistic series of topics – including material studies, passive strategies, economic models, and scale mockups. Taken together, these projects will form an overall body of research with the potential to manifest itself in a built prototype in Cape Town.
With a population of over 50 million and the continent’s largest economy, South Africa is often seen as a source of relative stability and prosperity in the region. Yet economic inequality remains high. Around 1.5 million households (approximately 7.5 million people) live in 2,700 informal settlements scattered across the country, which faces an overall shortage of 2.5 million houses. While the government’s rxecord on housing delivery is laudable, the scale of need means informal settlements will remain for the foreseeable future. In response, authorities have slowly begun shifting the focus to incremental upgrading, including committing in 2010 to improve the quality of life of 400,000 households in well located informal settlements by 2014 through improved access to basic services and land tenure.
The studio research and design will engage itself in an ongoing project to develop and implement design innocations for rapid and incremental informal settlement upgrading. The goal is to provide practical strategies to alleviate a national crisis, while remaining embedded within community-driven processes around resource allocation.

Designing Housing for South African Settlements

Empower Shack

Start 18.02.2014
This studio’s aim is to develop individually designed buildings for performance and cultural education in the city of Barranquilla, Colombia. We will ask if architecture integrated in an urban context can change the lives of underprivileged people by developing building-types and programs developed out of a particular local context. Cases in Medellin and Bogota show successful examples for investigating local cultures and translating the findings into physical spaces. Through an analysis of the urban context and an exploration of cultural, educational and recreational building typologies, students will design their own architectural proposals for a city facing great dynamics and transition. Taken together, these projects will form the overall strategic vision – a network of houses of culture to transform the city of Barranquilla into a “Fábrica de Cultura,” a cultural factory.
The Brillembourg &#x26; Klumpner Chair of Architecture and Urban Design, in collaboration with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO), will address the problems and identify the potentials of Barranquilla in order to propose sustainable architectural solutions to the challenges that face this emerging city in transition.

Designing for an Emerging Colombian City

Fabrica de Cultura

March 17 - 24
During Seminar Week, students will travel to PORT OF SPAIN as an integral part of the EMERGING &#x26; SUSTAINABLE CITIES design studio.  This trip will be an opportunity to advance research and understand the city and the site; it will be an opportunity to expand analysis, challenge conventional understandings, and test conceptual prototypes.  This week will not only serve as a vital step in the conceptual development of the project theses, but also as a critical study of the architecture, urbanism, culture, social exchange, and mobility in Port of Spain.
 **Enrolment in this seminar week is NOT required but is highly recommended for students in the EMERGING &#x26; SUSTAINABLE CITIES design studio.  Space is unlimited for students enrolled in the design studio; if enrollment is full online, please contact the Brillembourg/Klumpner Chair to enroll.
**If you are not enrolled in the Studio but would like to pariticipate, please contact the Brillembourg/Klumpner Chair for available space.

Location	Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago
Team	Prof. Alfredo Brillembourg & Prof. Hubert Klumpner, Lindsey Sherman, Michael Contento, Lea Ruefenacht
Collaborators	Inter-American Development Bank, City of Port of Spain, Department of Environmental Systems Science

Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago