Permaculture City
FuturArc Prize 2018 • Merit Award (Student Category)
Area: 1 km2
Location: Kampung Baru, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Team: Michelle Lum, Cheryl Lee, Aik Peng Tan, Ryan Sak, Aden Foong
"What happens when architecture, streets, water, greenery and biodiversity come together in new ways, in new configurations? How would urban life look like in a city of biophilic delight?"
Above is the scenario raised by the FuturArc Prize, Asia’s foremost annual Green building design competition, inviting participants to make a case for how an Asian city might become (like) a forest, and in the process, create a new kind of urban ecology.
Biophilia is a term that suggests humans possess an innate tendency to seek connections with nature and other forms of life. Introduced and popularized by Edward O. Wilson, later years of research proved that nature and elements of nature, such as ... contributes to the enhancement of human wellbeing and productivity. As landscapes have been known for reducing air pollution and thus their common integration with architecture, the discovery and improved understanding of the positive impacts other elements of nature have on our health culminated the interest in a more comprehensive application of them in the field of architectural and urban design practice, now come to known as biophilic design.
This scenario offers vast opportunities in improving many of the urban issues we face today, and our team decided to use it as a way to tackle gentrification in addition to flash flood and air pollution. We looked at Kampung Baru, a historic settlement located at the heart of Kuala Lumpur, which played an important role in developing the capital as an agricultural village in the 1800s, but are currently facing the threat of demolition as rapid urban densification continues to take place.
To preserve and sustain its future development, our proposed case aimed to revitalise Kampung Baru as a permaculture city, by integrating modular urban farming systems as well as landscapes that function as sponges to the concrete flats and apartment buildings, elevated highways, vacant fields, datums and nodes of the mobility grid. The partially covered river will also be restored to provide a fertile ground for aquatic life to thrive again, altogether enriching the biodiversity of Kuala Lumpur. With the advent of this new urban food quarter, the CO2 emissions produced by the transportation of crops from the outskirts to the feed the inner city could be reduced. The now absorptive roof and ground surfaces thanks to the landscapes will also prevent surface run-offs of rainwater, thus mitigating flash floods.
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New Urban System
