Vision for a Vegetal City

keywords: nature, urban planning, vision for the future
source: Vegetal City, Inhabitat



Ever wonder what our modern-day cities could look like 100 years from now in a perfect world? Architect Luc Schuiten endeavors to find out with his Vegetal City installation, currently on display in Brussels. The entrance, made up of an archway with branches covered in blinking yellow lights, leads the exhibit’s visitors into a magical world of architectural drawings and models of cities where city residents live peacefully with nature.
According to the 65 year-old architect, “You cannot feel good in light of all the environmental pollution and the grim perspectives for the future.” Instead Schuiten, a self-proclaimed utopist, sketches alternatives.

Among the cities of the future on display are the Lotus City, the Woven City, the Treehouse City, and the City of the Waves. Each city takes on a unique character based on its environment. The Woven City, for example, features habitats made up of a “vegetal mesh” formed by the roots of a strangler fig tree wrapped around the host tree. The fig tree grows so tall that buildings can be built into it. Buildings are made from biotextiles that capture solar power for electricity.

Schuiten’s designs are fantastical, sure, but they offer an inspiring vision of what cities in harmony with their surroundings might look like.

Evolution of the city (click the image to see lager image)

Overview

The Woven City


The Lotus City

Urbancayon

The City of the Waves

Building Model

Ornithoplanes with flapping wings

cyclos

The click car

The tractainer

This vision for a vegetal city first reminds me the Art Nouveau style. It is like the concept of art nouveau applied on a huge scale of city planning.

One question that triggers my interest is: if we use natural form in the urban scale, what would the difference between natural and urban be? I think this question is really interesting because it calls us to look at the very purpose of urbanlization and the implication of urban form. Do we really want to go that far in abandon our urban form in order to achieve sustainability? Although our current urban form creates a lot of pollution and unsustainable issues, it still symbolize the great civilation of human beings. And there are profound social, cultural and historical implications that make it so important to us. I guess Luc Shuiten's vegetal city may be very good to use at creating a new city from nothing. It may be very easy to transform the existing nature into this vegetal city with relatively low cost. As for the great cities such as New York, Paris which we've have for such a long time, I guess it is better to keep as it is and thinking about some other ways to "greenalize" the urban space.