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China’s new city to showcase self-sufficient post-COVID design

It includes buildings with communal greenhouses to allow for food production and solar-panelled sloping roofs to produce energy.

Cities Today
Sept 14, 2020

Excerpt’s

Guallart’s winning proposal is based on the idea of a “self-sufficient” city which incorporates local resource production and sustainability, and aims to reduce disruption to daily life “even in moments of confinement”, such as future pandemic lockdowns. It includes buildings with communal greenhouses to allow for food production and solar-panelled sloping roofs to produce energy. Small co-working “digital factories” offer 3D printers and rapid prototyping machines to produce everyday goods.

All the apartments feature a large south-facing terrace which acts as a thermal regulator and they also come with dedicated remote working/learning spaces and 5G connectivity.

Director of the Guallart office, Honorata Grzesikowska, said: “We developed this project during confinement, when the entire team worked from home and we decided to include all those aspects that could make our lives better, so that a new standard could be defined.”

Previous epidemics have also prompted urban planning changes related to sewerage, sanitation, lighting, ventilation, household density and more.

The ‘Xiong’an Architecture Design Contest with Chinese Characteristics under the High Quality Development Principle’ competition received over 300 entries across six categories. The jurors included Chinese academics and local experts.

Xiong’an New Area is around 100 km southwest of Beijing. It has an initial phase development area of 100 km2 but could eventually cover an area of 2,000 km2.

Read complete article here.