Tuesday, September 30, 2014

Shenzen's Crazy Awesome Cloud City! (but will they actually build the arcology?)



Many of the world’s cities are hundreds, even thousands of years old. They evolved from the bottom up as populations changed and demanded change. A new road here, new building there. The result is striking and wild—a kind of physical history.

But what if you could start New York or London from scratch?

To see skylines of the future—look east. Perhaps nowhere is urban growth happening more rapidly than in China. Home to a burgeoning list of megacities (population over 10 million), the country is wide open to ambitious and imaginative urban design.

n a recent contest, the city of Shenzhen went looking for creative proposals for a financial district (think London’s Canary Wharf) including three skyscrapers, a scattering of cultural buildings, and a green space linking it all together.

The co-winning design is a massive complex called Cloud Citizen that’s nearly as wide as it is tall. The structure forms a fused city skyline complete with three towers—the tallest of which would be the second highest in the world (680 meters)—and a series of giant floating skyways. Cloud Citizen would house office, commercial, leisure, and cultural space and include suspended public plazas and roads.

The FB page of the design (find the picture which is totally wrong for the market!)

No comments: