Environmental architecture: Building ecology and local renewable resources
The Islets are “ecological buildings” in the sense that they are designed from the ground up to create environmentally positive developments, by restoring and efficiently managing natural resources and increasing beneficial interactions between inhabitants and their natural environment. This entails passively and actively harnessing nature’s energies and using materials which in their manufacture, application and disposal do the least possible damage to the so called “free-resources” of water, ground and air.
The Borough Islet prototype is an example of environmental architecture and a true living buildings complex. This means that each Islet will:
• harvest all its water and energy resources on site and be perfectly adapted to the fluctuating local climate
• use sustainable and healthful building materials
• have a self-contained waste cycle
• restore and enrich the local marine biotope
• inspire and nurture a healthy, constructive and positive life-style
The coastal environment is subject to powerful forces – wind, wave, sun, sea. The design uses them to cool, power, heat, and water the building.
The Borough Islet prototype is an example of environmental architecture and a true living buildings complex. This means that each Islet will:
• harvest all its water and energy resources on site and be perfectly adapted to the fluctuating local climate
• use sustainable and healthful building materials
• have a self-contained waste cycle
• restore and enrich the local marine biotope
• inspire and nurture a healthy, constructive and positive life-style
The coastal environment is subject to powerful forces – wind, wave, sun, sea. The design uses them to cool, power, heat, and water the building.
The Macrostructure:
The borderless park grounds, cool the floating steel superstructures from underneath. In a modern summer metropolis, the asphalt maze creates a microclimate of its own, with temperatures far exceeding even those of the immediate countryside. This translates into pedestrians succumbing to a literal oven for weeks at a time. In contrast to this adverse atmosphere, the loosely stacked structures of the Islet breathe easily, without trapping and overheating the summer air, but actually making the best use of the soothing sea breeze. Sinking and partially flooding the Macrostructure further helps to speed up the cooling of the Islet elements.
While the Macrostructure is completely afloat and the public cores are fully contained inside, solar tubes channel sunlight to the caverns and double as wind-catchers.
New specialized floating sections (additional “hexagons”) may be later added to an existing Islet Macrostructure, e.g. to serve as floating wind or solar farms.
The Walkways:
During summer, the walkways transform into shopping avenues. As this level is virtually borderless, it experiences a constant free flow of fresh air, while enjoying ample shading from the apartment Superstructures. To accommodate the small seasonal businesses, the top halves of double solar floors become ceilings, sheltering them from rain and powering up their devices.
During summer, the walkways transform into shopping avenues. As this level is virtually borderless, it experiences a constant free flow of fresh air, while enjoying ample shading from the apartment Superstructures. To accommodate the small seasonal businesses, the top halves of double solar floors become ceilings, sheltering them from rain and powering up their devices.
The Flyer Superstructures:
The Flyer movements are more than a trick to capture the vistas. Orchestrated by software, their wings correlate to shade (in season) or expose (off season) each other to the sun. Furthermore, the wings acts as barriers to the elements. In the nurturing summer weather they open up to reveal the semi-public core and their own private gardens. This process releases the buildup of heat but it may also work the other way around, by trapping it during the colder season, not only to lower the heating bills, but to foster greenhouse plant growth as well, in the private and suspended gardens.
The apartments have balconies that constantly capture rain water and channel it to their inward private gardens (grey water serves in the same way). In addition to this, every balcony has a pergola for shading, that acts as a solar heater.
The streamlined apartment volumes let the wind flow freely between them, preventing the buildup of further tension inside the Flyer Wings.
The Flyer movements are more than a trick to capture the vistas. Orchestrated by software, their wings correlate to shade (in season) or expose (off season) each other to the sun. Furthermore, the wings acts as barriers to the elements. In the nurturing summer weather they open up to reveal the semi-public core and their own private gardens. This process releases the buildup of heat but it may also work the other way around, by trapping it during the colder season, not only to lower the heating bills, but to foster greenhouse plant growth as well, in the private and suspended gardens.
The apartments have balconies that constantly capture rain water and channel it to their inward private gardens (grey water serves in the same way). In addition to this, every balcony has a pergola for shading, that acts as a solar heater.
The streamlined apartment volumes let the wind flow freely between them, preventing the buildup of further tension inside the Flyer Wings.
SOLAR POWER FIGURES / APARTMENT:
Each prototype apartment comes with a total of 25 m2 photovoltaic panels. Considering that sunny Europe receives 6.5 kWh / m2 / day on average, that would amount to a built-in daily solar capacity of 162.5 kWh / apartment.
According to “The World Factbook”, the average European individual uses 6420 kWh per year, which is 17.6 kWh / day. A prototype apartment can house four, therefore we can calculate the average daily necessary at 70.4 kWh / apartment (of four)
Each prototype apartment comes with a total of 25 m2 photovoltaic panels. Considering that sunny Europe receives 6.5 kWh / m2 / day on average, that would amount to a built-in daily solar capacity of 162.5 kWh / apartment.
According to “The World Factbook”, the average European individual uses 6420 kWh per year, which is 17.6 kWh / day. A prototype apartment can house four, therefore we can calculate the average daily necessary at 70.4 kWh / apartment (of four)
In conclusion, the 162.6 kWh that each apartment can produce from photovoltaic panels more than satisfies the 70.4 kWh necessity. The difference can be pumped back into the grid. It means that the 588 apartments inside the three Flyer Superstructures can feed-back 54213.6 kWh/day into the grid, to power primarily the core of the Flyers, and then the rest of the Islet.
The Macrostructure and Walkways do not depend on this difference though, as they will be provided with their own integrated solar (and wind) power installations, and with additional specialized floating solar/wind farms if necessary (adjacent or tethered hexagons).
All hydroelectric turbines and wave power collectors are to be installed further off shore, at a safe distance from where the shallow marine environments and the divers may be harmed or disturbed. These installations will be connected to the Islets by underwater power cables.
• Solar panels on apartments, the double floored backbone hotel rooms and the restaurant top floor. Lightning rod tipped wings.
• Sun tracking photovoltaic panels on the backbone hotel/guest Room Pods. Natural ventilation by means of mechanic façade systems.
• Solar panels on apartments, the double floored backbone hotel rooms and the restaurant top floor. Lightning rod tipped wings.
• Sun tracking photovoltaic panels on the backbone hotel/guest Room Pods. Natural ventilation by means of mechanic façade systems.
Environmental architecture: waste and regenerative cycle
Each Isles functions as a zero waste district. Starting on the drawing board, careful planning goes into the materials that will constitute an Islet, so that they are replenishable, non-toxic and most importantly recyclable. The same goes for the foodstuffs. This implies a careful control of everything that goes inside the Islet, and everything that comes out into the air and water. All possible measures are to be taken in order to ensure that neither materials nor building systems emit toxic substances into the interior and outside environments.
While at first the majority of building materials will have to be transported and recycled on land, as the floating city expands, the Islets will diversify to include small industry and manufacturing facilities, eventually becoming capable of a complete regenerative cycle. Concurrently, all Islanders should be encouraged and empowered to subscribe to a zero-waste lifestyle, entailing not only educating the citizens in consuming responsibly and using the comprehensive recycling collection system, but meaning that the local economy will have to regulate itself all the way down to what it markets and even how it packages its selected products and food stores.
The basis of regenerative design is the bio-mimicry of ecosystems with a closed or positive input-output loop, in which all outputs are viable and all inputs accounted for. It translates into the anthropic dimension in such a way that the biotic and synthetic material is not just metabolized but metamorphosed into new viable materials, thus providing for all human systems to function as a closed viable ecologic economics loop. Everything eventually becomes waste, but by accounting for the appropriate technology and know-how, everything that is there to begin with, ends up right back into the system (the Islet) without harming it, but on the contrary, sustaining it further. The scope of implementing and finetuning a regenerative life-cycle to such an extent, is the achievement of the Perpetual Metropolis, which is a veritable self-contained anthropic entity. At the present, cities exist by absorbing increasing amounts of non-replenishable mineral and biological resources. While some of these cities have been around for thousands of years, their appearance of perpetuity unravels, as the exhaustion of the world’s vast traditional resources finally become foreseeable.
The Flyer apartments and other Islet elements capture rain water, recycle grey water, and desalinate sea water to use on the suspended container gardens and park greens, etc.
Each Isles functions as a zero waste district. Starting on the drawing board, careful planning goes into the materials that will constitute an Islet, so that they are replenishable, non-toxic and most importantly recyclable. The same goes for the foodstuffs. This implies a careful control of everything that goes inside the Islet, and everything that comes out into the air and water. All possible measures are to be taken in order to ensure that neither materials nor building systems emit toxic substances into the interior and outside environments.
While at first the majority of building materials will have to be transported and recycled on land, as the floating city expands, the Islets will diversify to include small industry and manufacturing facilities, eventually becoming capable of a complete regenerative cycle. Concurrently, all Islanders should be encouraged and empowered to subscribe to a zero-waste lifestyle, entailing not only educating the citizens in consuming responsibly and using the comprehensive recycling collection system, but meaning that the local economy will have to regulate itself all the way down to what it markets and even how it packages its selected products and food stores.
The basis of regenerative design is the bio-mimicry of ecosystems with a closed or positive input-output loop, in which all outputs are viable and all inputs accounted for. It translates into the anthropic dimension in such a way that the biotic and synthetic material is not just metabolized but metamorphosed into new viable materials, thus providing for all human systems to function as a closed viable ecologic economics loop. Everything eventually becomes waste, but by accounting for the appropriate technology and know-how, everything that is there to begin with, ends up right back into the system (the Islet) without harming it, but on the contrary, sustaining it further. The scope of implementing and finetuning a regenerative life-cycle to such an extent, is the achievement of the Perpetual Metropolis, which is a veritable self-contained anthropic entity. At the present, cities exist by absorbing increasing amounts of non-replenishable mineral and biological resources. While some of these cities have been around for thousands of years, their appearance of perpetuity unravels, as the exhaustion of the world’s vast traditional resources finally become foreseeable.
The Flyer apartments and other Islet elements capture rain water, recycle grey water, and desalinate sea water to use on the suspended container gardens and park greens, etc.