Dense and Sensibility: How Architects Can Help Shape More Sustainable Cities
Architizer is thrilled to announce the winners of the 11th Annual A+Awards! Interested in participating next season? Sign up for key information about the 12th Annual A+Awards, set to launch this fall.
How can cities have high urban standards and improve residents’ quality of life? As history has demonstrated, if the choices and strategies to achieve positive results are appropriate, the outcome delivers inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable cities; if wrong, the outcome is devastating, forcing cities to face challenges such as pollution, high energy consumption, insufficient affordable housing, inequalities and health risks, among many others.
Architecture must generate urban quality and environmental sustainability while reflecting the cultural heritage and empowering residents. The growing process of cities leads to transformations, and such transformations need to be associated with sustainable models to improve the social, economic and environmental conditions of cities, ensuring the quality of life of current and future residents.
The Mobile Joy-city in Jingxi Xiangyun, Beijing, China, offers creative solutions for a community plan that integrates work, home, shopping, transportation and green spaces. The design focuses on three design concepts: “open archipelago concept”, “landscape urban place”, and “community space shaping.” Design and images by MAT Office.
Architecture as a Contributor to the Sustainable Growth of Cities
Architecture can incorporate social and environmental factors as a core part of its design strategy and contribute to cities’ goals as centers of economic growth, culture and innovation, which will translate into improved quality of life. Understanding architecture as an isolated discipline aimed at creating buildings uniquely might lead to a lack of cohesion and functionality. On the other hand, if we see it as one in dialog with other urban domains, such as landscape design and transit, we can build urban areas that are accessible, livable and affordable, ensuring that cities are engines of sustainable economic growth.
SOM‘s master plan for Alárò City lies in the growth path of Lagos, one of Africa’s fastest-growing cities with a population of over twenty million. Alárò City reinforces Lagos as the economic and cultural center in West Africa through a new sustainable community. The master plan highlights the site’s unique conditions enabling long-term resiliency. Design and renderings by SOM.
Co-Living, Transit-Oriented Developments and Sustainability
The examples of projects illustrated below show how different cities address their growth challenges through a mixture of spaces, functions and services that are accessible to the population. Each responds to the specifics of their economic, social and environmental situation differently but with a common goal: achieve quality of life and efficiency.
These examples are mixed-use developments that integrate housing, retail and community spaces to promote urban connectivity and social inclusion while making cities safer for pedestrians, motorized vehicles, and bicycles. Most of them feature an architecture that incorporates green strategies aiming at minimizing environmental impact.
Super Babylon is conceived as a co-living community. The concept prioritizes sustainable living and shared communal spaces while giving privacy equal due. Design and renderings by MAT Office.
MAT Office proposes a series of linked transformable structures inspired by the New Babylon, a megastructure that Dutch visual artist and Situationist Constant Nieuwenhuys developed a half-century ago. MAT Office‘s Super Babylon is a modular structure composed of units that can generate four types of spatial and social relations: individual basic units, small family spaces, communal spaces and collective community buildings with access to commercial spaces at ground level. Following the shared community — or, co-living — model, New Babylon attracts a diverse population of young professionals, retirees, singles, and families, all working together to create a lifestyle that reflects their shared core values.
Periferico 2008 is a residential high-rise with public amenities on the ground floor and a rooftop terrace with panoramic views. Project by BRAG Arquitectos. Image by Felix Fernández.
Periferico 2008 is a multi-unit residential tower close to San Angel, a neighborhood south of Mexico City known for its colonial history, monuments and religious architecture. The abundant greenery in the area set the tone for Periferico’s design: a thirty-story tall parallelepiped with two carved-out sections to make room for green terraces. The building’s 184 apartments — with areas ranging from 700 to 2,690 square feet (65 to 250 square meters) — feature spacious layouts and optimal orientations to maximize views and optimize natural lighting and ventilation. The ground floor amenities include a gym, swimming pool, spa, business center, playroom, library, and a movie theater. The rooftop terrace offers opportunities for relaxation and entertaining with views of the city and beyond.
Connecting Cooksville in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada is a development project that offers many connections for pedestrians and vehicles, highlighting opportunities to prioritize the human scale and overall urban connectivity. Design and renderings by SvN Architects + Planners.
SvN‘s design for Connecting Cooksville is a vision for an integrated transit-oriented development in Mississauga, one of Canada’s fastest-growing cities. The project will transform a site dominated by surface parking into an interconnected, transit-oriented, mixed-use development with interior streets and a regenerative landscape. At nearly 1.7 million square feet (157, 900 square meters) , the development will provide nearly 2,200 new apartment units and close to 100,000 square feet (9,290 square meters) of commercial space, including a community gathering space covering almost half of the site.
Walking trails, outdoor kitchens, classrooms, cafe seating, areas for recreation, exercise and outdoor daycare play zones provide additional ground-level programming. SvN, in collaboration with WHY Architecture Workshop, designed an urban forest as part of the development, which prioritizes climate resiliency by strategically designing the cluster of towers and the landscape responding to the City of Mississauga’s Climate Action and Strategic Plans.
Quayside in Toronto, Canada, is conceived as an electrically powered, zero-carbon community where residents will have easy access to their daily needs, including jobs, education, healthcare, food, and recreation. Design and renderings by Norm Li.
Quayside is a mix of market-rate and affordable housing in Toronto for individuals and families of different backgrounds and incomes. A total of six buildings, including Canada’s largest mass-timber residential building, will also provide commercial and institutional spaces, as well as access to a three-and-a-half-acre public space. Additionally, a one-acre urban farm on the rooftop of the mass-timber building will be accessible to residents and the public. The project was conceived with sustainability in mind resulting in an all-electrically powered, zero-carbon community. The use of environmentally friendly materials and technologies will promote biodiversity and create comfortable and accessible green spaces, which will reduce greenhouse gas emissions and contribute to the efficient management of severe weather risks.
Aiming for Sustainable and Livable Cities
The creation of high-density buildings offering easy access to daily needs and the use of sustainable building solutions can be considered good examples of how architecture can bring social and environmental change. City growth is inevitable but manageable with the right tools and the right decisions. The prominent role of the architectural community in envisioning and designing cities demonstrates that it can be beneficial to the betterment of citizens’ quality of life, social equity, health and the environment. Healthier places — no matter what their functions are — will result in healthier people, communities and cities.
Architizer is thrilled to announce the winners of the 11th Annual A+Awards! Interested in participating next season? Sign up for key information about the 12th Annual A+Awards, set to launch this fall.
Here are three quick tips to make the most out of this sheet:
The Capilano Library connects its suburban community to nature. The library form is developed from its cross section, which is folded to form three peaks across the site, each with a different scale. Each of the three peaks responds to scale, function, natural light and view. The western peak reflects the scale of the neighborhood with a quiet edge of support spaces along the street. The eastern peak is intimately scaled, with varied seating along a serene window overlooking the nearby ravine. The design is enhanced by the mix of rectangular and polygonal ALPOLIC metal panels that were installed around the library’s exterior.
The Wolf Creek Library design was made as a community destination and as a catalyst for growth. The exterior features an outdoor reading garden and terraced seating. The library houses 5,700 square feet of adult collections, 5,000 square feet of children’s collections, a computer/learning station room, teen area, music room, sub-dividable community meeting room for 125 people and two conference rooms with smart boards and projectors. Originally, copper was considered as cladding material for the building’s iconic wedge-shaped façade. But, ultimately, it was determined that ALPOLIC’s aluminium composite material (ACM) was a superior solution.
The Saint Nicholas Eastern Orthodox Church transformed a generic shop building into a place of worship and fellowship. The architects kept the interior simple but utilized box rib metal panels for the exterior. Metal Sales manufactured the T-10A metal walls panels, which are coated in Metallic Silver and Dark Bronze Fluropon colors from Sherwin-Williams Coil Coatings. A thin cross, lit up in red, is also visible on the western side of the church.
Located in the heart of Los Angeles, this new eleven unit housing project emphasizes the central importance of shared open space for the residents and the community. Formosa takes what would be the internalized open space of the courtyard and moves it to the exterior of the building to create a park. This plan, O’Herlihy’s firm says, “simultaneously creates density and green space and models a replicable prototype for incremental community-driven city development.” Completed in 2008, the 16,000-square-foot building features a red corrugated metal exterior. Sherwin-Williams was chosen for its flagship Fluropon coating to be the product of choice for Formosa.
The National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) holds a prominent place on the National Mall. As the team outlines, the primary architectural idea for the museum was derived from the classical tripartite column with its base, shaft and capital. In Yoruban art and architecture, the column or wooden post was usually crafted with a capital resembling a crown. This crown or corona form is the central idea which has driven the design of the museum.
This new ground up campus was designed to create a unique and authentic identity for the growing Central Arizona College. The three building campus is conceptually rooted in its historic agricultural roots and Native American legacy. Structures are conceived as a series of honest, spare and no maintenance ‘academic sheds.’ Deep overhangs let interior academic spaces flow outdoors seamlessly. Corten steel and rammed earth create the primary exterior language eliminating the need for long term maintenance.
Zahner became known for advanced metal surfaces and systems with both functional and ornamental forms. With ImageWall, Zahner has created a system that offers design versatility to make immersive experiences. With its accessible design tools, affordability, and wide range of applications, the perforated metal panel system empowers designers and architects to bring their visions to life.
One of the most remarkable aspects of the ImageWall system is its accessibility to designers. Gone are the days of tedious back-and-forth communication. With this system, designers can now conceptualize and design directly within an 
The ImageWall perforated metal panels not only look beautiful, but also allow for more streamlined detailing. Through the use of pre-engineered elements and easy-install systems, the cost and lead times are significantly reduced compared to traditional custom solutions. This makes affordability a key advantage offered by Zahner’s system.
From sleek and modern metals like stainless steel and aluminum to warm and inviting materials like pre-weathered weathering steel and copper, ImageWall provides architects and designers with a wide selection of options to suit their desired aesthetic.
At its heart, Zahner’s system has wide-ranging applications across architectural typologies. From commercial buildings to hospitality spaces, retail environments to multi-unit residential common areas, ImageWall seamlessly integrates with other building systems, structures, and assemblies.
ImageWall offers a myriad of creative possibilities, including lighting options, material choices, and graphic integration. Backlighting adds a whole new dimension to architectural design, bringing depth, texture, and visual interest to spaces.
With a vast array of materials to choose from, architects can find the perfect match for their desired aesthetic, whether it be sleek and modern or warm and organic. The graphic options also enable the integration of custom patterns, logos, or artwork, allowing architects to create truly unique and memorable spaces that leave a lasting impression.
To appreciate the capabilities of perforated metal panels, there are many noteworthy case studies. For example, the ImageWall system was employed only a short walk from Canada’s Parliament buildings in Ottawa, Ontario, where the team of B+H Architects and Morguard collaborated with Zahner to enhance the experience of entering their office complex at 
Zahner also collaborated on the Legacy Pavilion for 
These case studies demonstrate how Zahner’s perforated metal panel system can be utilized by architects to enhance their designs. Its adaptability, material options, and creative possibilities have allowed architects to push boundaries and transform their visions into new landmarks.
ImageWall represents the evolution of architectural solutions, bridging the gap between visionary concepts and practical implementation. Its accessibility to designers, affordability, wide range of applications, and design potential make it a versatile and valuable tool for architects and designers alike.
