AA project-- Qi ao Island problem-Jorge Ayala

To become generic/ thematized

Qi Ao Island is threatened to become another generic or thematized Chinese urbanization that spread across farmlands.

A concrete example is Henqin Island, one of the 146 islands of Zhuhai, which will be promoted for investment from Hong Kong and Macau. Since late 2005, "Las Vegas Sands" has openly discussed its multi-billion plans to develop Henqin Island into a convention and resort destination.

Risk of flood
The main cause of a probable flooding in the island is the destruction of its mangroves reserve, due to increasing population pressure, increased coastal erosion, increased impact from storms, conversion to shrimp and fish farming, decreased agriculture, decreased aquaculture pond production, infrastructure and tourism, as well as pollution.
Coastal roads, subway tunnels, drainage pipes, housing, and just about everything else we will build along the coast is extremely vulnerable to higher high tides and storm surges.

1,153 square km of land surrounding the Pearl River Delta in Guangdong Province, China may be engulfed by rising sea levels by 2050. The cities worst affected will be Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong province, alongside Foshan and Zhuhai Coastline. "Climate change will negatively affect the economic development of Guangdong, which is currently one of the biggest consumers of energy and producers of greenhouse gases", said Du Raodong, an expert at the Guangdong weather centre.

Source: Jorge Ayala

OMA ROADMAP 2050

Roadmap 2050: AMO (Español) from OMA on Vimeo.

OMA_WEST KOWLOON CULTURAL DISTRICT

OMA's plan for Hong Kong West Kowloon Cultural District from OMA on Vimeo.

Intersection of the animal realm and the human landscape

The work of Portland-based artist Josh Keyes is unique and eerily fascinating. His paintings bring animals into a human landscape, perhaps after being driven out of their native habitat. However this landscape isn’t a fairy tale, it’s gritty and futuristic. In this future it feels as though the humans have abandoned the cities and left the creatures to fend for themselves, to adapt in this foreign landscape. Some biographical text from his website:

Alternately passionate and playful, outraged and absurd, the artwork of Josh Keyes is memorable both for its resonant imagery and the haunting themes those images convey. Vividly imagined and exquisitely realized, his work is at once highly personal and very much of its time. While it spans a variety of approaches, Keyes’ overall subject matter remains consistent, evincing a fascination with the intersection of the animal realm and the built human landscape, and the imperiled role of wilderness in a rapidly changing global environment.

  

Perhaps these pictures aren’t really all about animals but about the conflict between nature and society within our own human consciousness. Keyes’ images, in their way, suggest that the division between an intricately self-absorbed society and the connection to nature within us is an artificial one that can no longer be sustained. One can read his work as a plea to let the natural collective consciousness within us emerge, to find a balance within ourselves that contains a place for the other creatures of this planet, with whom we are more connected and co-dependent than we may care to admit.

Keyes’ artworks are neither optimistic nor nihilistic. If anything, they seem to hover between fear and fury, between sorrow and acceptance. But they do contain a level of urgency, addressing such exigent issues as the extinction of species and the emergence of a new global topography. In grafting a dreamlike pictorial language to a passionate ecological concern, he has not only carved out a fertile chunk of postmodern art world territory, but found his own bully pulpit, and catharsis.

Credit: inspirationwall

WEST KOWLOON CULTURAL DISTRICT, HONG KONG, 2010

WEST KOWLOON CULTURAL DISTRICT, HONG KONG, 2010

A major new cultural district for Hong Kong

for more info, please refer to this link
http://www.wkcda.hk/pe2/en/conceptual/oma/en/consultation_digest.html

The Mega Performance Venue, with views of Hong Kong Island.
By OMA © All rights reserved

Green Water City - Quingpu, Shanghai, China – 2009

Postulate

Masterplanning for a New City in Quingpu, Shanghai.

VERTICAL TERRITORIALITY

The growth of cities, their influences and the mask which they define on the whole grounds must be reconsidered.

Extending a city should be no longer at the expense of arable land. Economic concerns that guide the new urban issues must be able to coincide with the Same concerns that have established practices for cultivation before the development of cities.

NESSIE project newly supplies the territory with oxygen thanks to the built towers which take place at the heart of the history of the territory.The towers have an open-aired column in their centers which allow oxygenation to go to the lower layer. Oxygenation, development of bacteria in these old asphyxiated strata, it can regenerate a necessary ecosystem to the superficial layers where life andvegetation grow. Groundwater, regulations, redevelopment, their bacteriological regulations in an autonomous way. And it can provide a healthy home to human activities, flora and fauna to immersed areas around the extension of the new town.

photo:via seiwooo

IF you want to know more about it, please go to this website:http://www.seiwooo.com/Project-Nessie

French firm archi5 has been announced winner of the International Master Plan Competition for Stockholm’s Nya Årstafältet neighborhood. Archi5’s winning proposal ‘Arkipelag’ has been a collaboration with landscape architect Michel Desvigne. The master plan covers 260 acres of which 2,260,000 sf will be used for office space and 4,300,000 sf for residential.

Proposal by architecture student to Israeli-Palestinian conflict

From a project by Viktor Ramos, Rice University, 2008.

Advisor: Troy Schaum. Directors: Fares el-Dahdah and Eva Franch. Readers: John Casbarian and Albert Pope.

From the project description by Viktor Ramos:

"This thesis takes a formal approach to understanding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by studying mechanisms of control within the West Bank. The occupation of the West Bank has had tremendous effects on the urban fabric of the region because it operates spatially. Through the conflict, new ways of imagining territory have been needed to multiply a single sovereign territory into many. It is only through the overlapping of two separate political geographies that they are able to inhabit the same landscape.

"The Oslo Accords have been integral to this process of division. By defining various control regimes, the Accords have created a fragmented landscape of isolated Palestinian enclaves and Israeli settlements. The intertwined nature of these fragments makes it impossible to divide the two states easily. By connecting the fragments through a series of under- and overpasses, the border between the two states has shifted vertically.

"One feature of the Oslo Accords is the bypass road which links Israeli settlements to Israel, bypassing Palestinian areas in the process. These are essential to the freedom of movement for the settlers within the Occupied Territories. Extrapolating on the bypass, this thesis explores the ramifications of a continuous infrastructural network linking the fragmented landscape of Palestinian enclaves. In the process, a continuous form of urbanization has been developed to allow for the growth and expansion of the Palestinian state. Ultimately, this thesis questions the potential absurdity of partition strategies within the West Bank and Gaza Strip by attempting to realize them."

via:arch daily