Asian Cities go Green

Posted by JJ on Saturday, December 29, 2007

 

The Asian continent is poised to host a new generation of green cities that right the wrongs of industrial-era urban planning / by David Sokol

The question “Could we do better?” motivated New York-based SHoP Architects to take on one such project, the high-tech Sector 61 node of Gurgaon, India.

“We feel like if you can set a good example there, with all the building that’s about to occur, you can have a much bigger impact than designing some LEED Platinum building here in New York,” says SHoP co-founder Gregg Pasquarelli.

Sector 61 is one among a series of commissions in which internationally known designers are creating whole neighborhoods and cities to capture and direct Asia’s sudden urbanization. Other examples include the Shanghai satellite city Dongtan, designed by Arup, and the competition for a 1.6 million-square-foot eco-quarter in Singapore, recently won by Foster + Partners.

“The millions descending on Shanghai or Seoul depopulate the countryside and exceed the city’s capacity, with only one or two cities funneling the shift,” explains Diana Balmori, principal of the New York–based landscape and urban design firm Balmori Associates. “So the effort is to deploy this growth to some place, give this new city a reason to exist, and bring population to it.”

Provided by Architectural Record—The Resource for Architecture and Architects

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