4240 was awarded a 2010 AIA Denver Merit Award for their submission of Supplied by the Surface: REWILDING NORDHAVNEN.
"[4240] manages to address the issues of sustainability on vastly different scales with a very thoughtful kit of parts. A thoughtful case for thinking about our future growth patterns in radically different ways." David Darling, 2010 AIA Denver Jury Chairman
TYPE OF PROJECT...
Submission for an international ideas competition for the sustainable city of the future (in association with the UN Summit on the Climate; Copenhagen, 2009)
LOCATION...
Nordhavnen Port District; Copenhagen, Denmark
SITE AREA...
Approximately 500 acres
PRIMARY MATERIALS USED...
High performing surfaces of both low and high technology (algae, carbon nano-tube arrays, food crops, etc.)
SCOPE...
The project is a proposal for the redevelopment of Nordhavnen-a larger tract of manufactured land currently used for harbor related activities-over a 25 year period. Pressures of population growth in Copenhagen have led to a shortage of affordable housing and severe traffic congestion; in part, the redevelopment of the Nordhavnen district is intended to relieve these pressures. This new urban district will be comprised of over 2.5 million square feet of mixed uses, more than 40,000 inhabitants, 40,000 jobs and a network of varied transit options.
Importantly, the ideas proposed are meant as a strategic prototype of wildly sustainable development which may be adapted to cities around the world. The innovative strategy draws on ancient relationships: 1. populations may grow in direct proportion to the productivity of the surfaces which sustain them, and 2. direct connection to our food, water and energy sources is the foundation of authentic sustainability.
REWILDING...
The populations of primitive societies were governed by the surface area and productivity of the land they inhabited; better-producing or more earth would sustain more people. Similarly, a radical increase in the performance and area of the urban surface may accommodate the rapidly growing populations of our urban centers. Now, however, the productive surface is not only the earth itself but the combination of horizontal and vertical surfaces comprising the city of the future. This proposal for Nordhavnen’s redevelopment intends to reconnect Nordhavnen's future inhabitants with the processes that sustain their humanity: local food growth, fresh water supply, energy generation, waste reuse. Rewilding is not a return to the past, but an allowance for the future.
THROUGH RESURFACING...
The rewilding proposal functions as a guide or specification for design, based not on form or use, but on performance. Step 1: Increase surface area, Step 2: Make the surface to perform. In this proposal, highly charged surfaces of both low and high-technology grow food, collect water, generate energy and clean waste. They provide habitat for wildlife, canvases for diverse events, connection to the cosmopolitan and collective but also to the local and seasonal. Low-performing surfaces may be combined with highly-productive building types to meet the necessary output. Highly-performing surfaces may be applied to low-performing building types for equal output. The specifics are limitless, the performance aims for full self-sufficiency.
FOR LIFE!
Why is reconnecting ourselves to the processes which sustain us - food gathering, water-collecting, clean-energy-generation - a compelling foundation for a new city plan for Nordhavnen? Radical, hopeful, truthful sustainability resides within an authentic human connection to and knowledge of the dynamic natural and constructed world in which we reside. Redeveloping these authentic relationships reconnects us to our collective memories (remember? we're wild!) and our collective desires (to survive, joyfully). Developing local economies, decentralized clean energy and food networks, clean water and air, and the possibility of bottom-up design of our environments combats social stratification, coercion, alienation, spiritual deficits, subjugation to global power structures, volatile global economies of food, goods and services. Joy is simple: REWILD.