If this comes to fruition, this may be the sweetest, or at least largest-scale design gig we've ever heard of: Dror Benshetrit designs an island for 300,000 inhabitants. Not just the structures they'll live in, but the entire island.
The Canal Istanbul project is the current Turkish Prime Minister's plan to bisect Istanbul on the European side, connecting the Black Sea with the Sea of Marmara. The resultant waterway would create a new shipping lane, reportedly creating a more safe way for 56,000 vessels a year to traverse the two bodies of water. Dredging the canal would produce a reported one billion cubic meters of earth.
What to do with all that soil? Turkish developer Serdar Inan contracted a commission, led by Dror Benshetrit, to investigate an environmentally positive application. Benshetrit's plan, unveiled today at Istanbul Design Week, is to use the soil to create a massive, sustainably-designed island off the coast of Istanbul that will house 300,000 souls.
Called HavvAda, Benshetrit's jaw-dropping plan involves building an island housing six massive geodesic domes, of varying sizes, that will each be incorporated into their own hill. The hills will be arranged in a circle, with the valley in between serving as "downtown." Buildings will stretch from each hill not vertically, but horizontally, wrapping around the hills at different heights. And the hills/domes would be hollow—each would house residences as well as one of six different arenas of community life: A museum, a business district, a stadium theater, a health and sports center, a entertainment complex, and an educational facility.
It all sounds compelling, awesome, and crazy. Read the details here and/or peep the explanatory video below.
All photos by Kojima JunjiSeeing as Tokyo's Level Architects are perhaps best known for a residential project in the city's Nakameguro district, aka the "Slide House," it's perhaps no surprise that they're behind the so-called "Skatepark House." The nickname of the 2011 project is only slightly misleading, as it's definitely...
Talk about taking an idea and running with it: D*Haus of London is a design studio that is singularly fixated on a geometric trick of reconstituing a square into a triangle in as few parts as possible—four, to be exact.In 1903, an English mathematician called Henry Ernest Dudeney worked out...
Taipei, like any other city, generates a lot of trash. And architect Arthur Huang has been turning that trash into raw materials since 2006. Huang is the founder and director of Miniwiz Sustainable Energy Development, a company that practices "urban mining;" they collect refuse and process it into useful things,...
Breathing Factory, Takashi Yamaguchi and Associates. Osaka, Japan, 2009.Breathing Factory, Takashi Yamaguchi and Associates. Osaka, Japan, 2009.On September 13th, the Design Exchange proudly presents the opening of two unique exhibits —Vertical Urban Factory and Considering the Quake—both on view through December 9th.Vertical Urban Factory will study the history of factory...
Create a Core77 Account
Already have an account? Sign In
By creating a Core77 account you confirm that you accept the Terms of Use
Please enter your email and we will send an email to reset your password.