RESIDENTIAL ARCHITECTURE
AUTHORED PROJECTS
AUTHORED PROJECTS
FLOATING ARTIFICiAL ISLANDS – Han River, Seoul
Recently opened on the Han river (*2011), they are the world’s largest and newest artificial and solar-powered floating islandsThe three inter-connected Islet centre for concerts, a 700 seat convention hall, exhibitions, water sports, restaurants and arcades, all powered by solar energy.
As opposed to artificial islands, such as the Palm Jumeirah, which are built by dredging sand (often from other international waters) and layering it on the ocean floor thus causing incalculable environmental disruption and a carbon footprint to match, Viva and its satellite islands are manufactured to float on the surface of the river, being buoyant at all times. In the case of a flood, the islands will rise and fall with water levels, and not be flooded over. The Han river reaches 16 meters during summer floods and it is during these floods especially, that the island must move with the water level, in a way that vernacular floating architecture, such as the previous example of Ko Panyi does not. As the island weighs almost 4,000 tones, a GPS system is responsible with keeping the different parts of the island stable; one slight variation in position triggers an automatic correction system. Furthermore, the floating isles are equipped with a high-tech tracking system, which would closely monitor these changes, alerting a controller in case the islands float too far from their home site due to changing water levels. In case an island moves away more than one meter away from its original location, it will be automatically returned to its home site by the tracking system.
Recently opened on the Han river (*2011), they are the world’s largest and newest artificial and solar-powered floating islandsThe three inter-connected Islet centre for concerts, a 700 seat convention hall, exhibitions, water sports, restaurants and arcades, all powered by solar energy.
As opposed to artificial islands, such as the Palm Jumeirah, which are built by dredging sand (often from other international waters) and layering it on the ocean floor thus causing incalculable environmental disruption and a carbon footprint to match, Viva and its satellite islands are manufactured to float on the surface of the river, being buoyant at all times. In the case of a flood, the islands will rise and fall with water levels, and not be flooded over. The Han river reaches 16 meters during summer floods and it is during these floods especially, that the island must move with the water level, in a way that vernacular floating architecture, such as the previous example of Ko Panyi does not. As the island weighs almost 4,000 tones, a GPS system is responsible with keeping the different parts of the island stable; one slight variation in position triggers an automatic correction system. Furthermore, the floating isles are equipped with a high-tech tracking system, which would closely monitor these changes, alerting a controller in case the islands float too far from their home site due to changing water levels. In case an island moves away more than one meter away from its original location, it will be automatically returned to its home site by the tracking system.
At 2,000 tons, Viva is the second largest buoy, after Vista, and measures 85 meters (279 feet) long, 49 meters wide and 3 meters high. 24 airbags, each measuring 2 meters in diameter and 12 meters in length are placed under Viva’s giant rubber buoy. Additionally, Viva is anchored to a 500-ton concrete block embedded in the river bed, by means of retractable metal chains, to prevent it from moving or from being washing away. The same method is used to keep the other two islands floating in place. The metal chains of the floating islands will automatically tighten to keep the islands in their original positions, in case a flood raises the water level to more than 16 meters. With only 80 centimetres of the buoy submerged underwater, Viva presents a capacity of accommodating facilities weighing up to as much as 6,400 tons.
All facilities on Viva are contained within a three-storey building which is covered with 54 square meters of solar panels. These panels together produce 6 kilowatts of energy each day, and are able to power the facilities below with electricity, while also illuminating the building facades at night.
The public and private-funded project, worth $83.9 million of total investment, has been financed from the city government and a consortium of other construction companies. It is being dubbed as “the rebirth of the Han River”, and it intends to revolutionise the recreational life of Seoul.
FROM END OF CONCEPT
After careful consideration, the notion of “Flagship” probably best conjures the status, cohesion and complexity of an individual Mirror City prototype unit, with the added ambitious nod to the high tech future (and not just the nostalgic pastoral past as is the case with “urban village”). It is as well an appropriately maritime term. Therefore in this paper, in the context of the greater floating city, the stationary sea-bed connected units will be referred to as Borough Islets, while the prototype seed-and-reference unit for a new Mirror City, or any unit separated from its city (afloat and in transit), will be addressed as Borough Flagships.
Citywide constitutive and administrative considerations
In the context of New Urbanism, an Urban Village is a planning and design concept mainly characterized by a pursuit to achieve mixed-use, human-scale developments, comprised of tight-knit, self-involved village sized communities, with a compact city focus and of sustainable size. These autonomous amalgamations of leisure, shopping, community and housing uses would recall a sense of proto-industrial pastoral wholesomeness, with all amenities within easy walking distance and non-invasive transportation.
It amounts to literally building everything from the ground up around the notion of enabling and nurturing a sustainable community. Therefore the term of “Urban Village” appears to translate well to the proposed building blocks of the Mirror City: its self-contained autonomous floating islands.
But Urban Villages as they exist today in architectural theory and practice have some significant differences to the desired floating islets that constitute the Mirror City constellation:
In the context of New Urbanism, an Urban Village is a planning and design concept mainly characterized by a pursuit to achieve mixed-use, human-scale developments, comprised of tight-knit, self-involved village sized communities, with a compact city focus and of sustainable size. These autonomous amalgamations of leisure, shopping, community and housing uses would recall a sense of proto-industrial pastoral wholesomeness, with all amenities within easy walking distance and non-invasive transportation.
It amounts to literally building everything from the ground up around the notion of enabling and nurturing a sustainable community. Therefore the term of “Urban Village” appears to translate well to the proposed building blocks of the Mirror City: its self-contained autonomous floating islands.
But Urban Villages as they exist today in architectural theory and practice have some significant differences to the desired floating islets that constitute the Mirror City constellation:
- they are single core, simplistic entities, whereas each Mirror City Islet has a number of equally significant public building cores as focal points to all local island neighborhoods;
- each conventional Urban Village is thought of as a self-contained, small scale collective. The Villages are ultimately all clones of each other. Their focus is on leisured retreat and not competitive interdependence, as they are not designed from the ground up to be parts of a consistent greater whole. Ultimately the Urban Villages become a reinvention of suburbia, as a coagulation of the homogenous urban sprawl into a mimicry of traditional village typologies – evolutionary cul-de-sacs, modernized self-sufficient variations on the suburban gated communities;
- The Mirror City Islets are physically autonomous, socially interdependent entities. Albeit structurally similar, they are designed to compete and complement each other functionally and administratively, as constituting parts of a general Urban Master Plan. There is only one city present - the greater floating city, part of the land-and-sea metropolis -, wherein the islets are diverse amalgamations of neighborhoods, segregated into physically autonomous bodies of sustainable size. Surely the islets may function independently for a while, offshore in a new location, but are meant to work in numbers and synergistically as complementing parts of the greater floating city.
- each conventional Urban Village is thought of as a self-contained, small scale collective. The Villages are ultimately all clones of each other. Their focus is on leisured retreat and not competitive interdependence, as they are not designed from the ground up to be parts of a consistent greater whole. Ultimately the Urban Villages become a reinvention of suburbia, as a coagulation of the homogenous urban sprawl into a mimicry of traditional village typologies – evolutionary cul-de-sacs, modernized self-sufficient variations on the suburban gated communities;
- The Mirror City Islets are physically autonomous, socially interdependent entities. Albeit structurally similar, they are designed to compete and complement each other functionally and administratively, as constituting parts of a general Urban Master Plan. There is only one city present - the greater floating city, part of the land-and-sea metropolis -, wherein the islets are diverse amalgamations of neighborhoods, segregated into physically autonomous bodies of sustainable size. Surely the islets may function independently for a while, offshore in a new location, but are meant to work in numbers and synergistically as complementing parts of the greater floating city.
From an organizational and functional perspective the Mirrored City subunits are Floating Ilets:
- whose waterline public Macrostructures function as administrative boroughs, responsible for running local public services, such as schools, social services, public functions, waste collection and infrastructure, independently or as shared services.
- have commercial semi-public Elevated Walkways and Plazas
- have primarily private Residential & Business towers