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We had a great opening with a full house at the FutureCityLab at the AEDES gallery in Berlin. Unfortunately the BMW Guggenheim Lab could not open in time due to some problems with the location but official representatives of the initiative and also the architects of the BMW Guggenheim Lab: Atelier Bow-Wow (Tokyo) joined the vernissage.  

Next to a lot of local activists and famous planners we were really happy that so many active FutureCityLab participants joined us. Colin Ripley made it all the way from Toronto and also hosted a round table the next day.

Join our weekly workshops and roundtables until the 4th of July.

FLYING ROBOT CONSTRUCTION

Yesterday I had the pleasure to see the LIVE STREAM of the TED conference in Long Beach and I must admit there were some really amazing talks all heading and proving ideas that we develop with FutureCityLab. So it´s great to see we are not alone out there ;)

The next days I will write some more posts about the impressions of the talks. Also TED was really fast in publishing some talks only. The first videos are available on youtube already today. So I would like to start with one of the talks that made it online already: Vijay Kumar: Robots that fly … and cooperate 

Vijay and his team at MIT are developing little quadro-copters that act autonomously. They can remember and detect obstacles. The little robots can fly swarm formations and play music ;)

Amazingly they can also autonomously construct structures which reminds me of the Gramazio & Kohler installation “Flight Assembled Architecture”.

Watching both the videos I leave it up to your imagination how our buildings and difficult structures will be assembled in future. Probably construction will become faster and cheaper. Maybe even taller?

photo (c) François Lauginie | Gramazio & Kohler

It´s striking how this simultaneously appearing of similar ideas proves the “REMIX EVERYTHING” theory by Kirby Ferguson.

In his third part of his video manifesto he explains that ideas happen at the same time in different places and that they are inavitable and part of a common intelligence. Maybe we could even call it a swarm intelligence that we have as a society. Of course nowadays this links become just much more obvious and we can trace it much better.

Another amazing project of Vijay Kumar´s project is the outdoor version of the flying robots. Equipped with a laser scanner and a Microsoft Kinect the quadrocopter can scan and memorize unknown buildings and environments! Imagine GOOGLE buying some of this robots in future and scanning all public buildings worldwide ;)

via anotherarchitect

EAT MORE CARROTS!

Are you interested in urban farming and worried about the future food supply? Then you should definitely listen to this 6min interview with Prof. Dr. Mark Gorgolewski. Mark is not only concerned about how in future we will be able to meet demands in food of a 9Billion population in 2050 but he is also interested in giving somepossible answers in his “Carrot City” initiative.

We are happy that Mark is a supporting member of the FutureCityLab family and is willing to share his knowledge with all of you.  

If you liked his short introduction please let us also know what is your vision for a sustainable future vision. Think the un-thinkable. Think 2050.

Margherita Chiappe joined the lab in 2011 as a student of the University of Sassari (Alghero - Sardegna). 

How much PV do you need for a generic family in Northern Europe?

Wolgang Kessling of TRANSSOLAR has the answer!

Wolfgang Kessling at TEDxBerlin 2011

In 2010 Thomas Auer was speaking at the TEDxHamburg about why design matters (have a look at the talk here) in 2011 Wolfgang Kessling from our Munich branch was invited to Berlin to talk about High Energy.

This week the talks were finally published online and you can have a look at the inspiring talk. It´s worth seeing not only for the once who are interested how much PV panels a generic family needs to satisfy their electricity demand. Guess: Is it 10.000, 1.000 or 10 sam. I am sure you will be surprised by the answer.  

(via transsolar)

Melbourne 2032. The city of short distances. Building a resilient sustainable city, by VEIL (Victorian Eco Innovation Lab)

humanscalecities:

(via studio630)

We wish for you to join the open-source platform Future City Lab and collectively THINK THE UNTHINKABLE. Participate, share knowledge, establish synergies and create a sustainable roadmap to give rise to the future city 2.0 by 2050.

Climate Change, rapidly growing megacities and the need for new energy sources are challenges we can leverage to develop cities that are vibrant, energy-efficient and sustainable. In the spirit of TED, ftr.ct.lb is a platform for open discussion; using the power of collective ideas to shape a future vision of the city 2.0.

Future City Lab is an open-source initiative created by a worldwide collaboration of leading engineers, universities and scientists using crowd sourcing in order to launch a sustainable future by 2050.

Cities all over the world are facing the biggest challenge in history to immediately and drastically reduce CO2 emissions to combat climate change. Cities need to respond to increasing temperatures, frequency of storms and limited resources. The trend of people moving from rural to urban areas makes cities the focal point in the search for solutions.

City 2.0 adapts to the climate, is built sustainably realizing a CO2 neutral building stock, and is liveable for 2 billion new inhabitants. Increased density is addressed through the optimized use of façades as vertical parks or for energy generation.

This requires a massive change within a short time. To meet these challenges leading engineers, universities and scientists worldwide collaborate to initiate the Future City Lab. By sharing their knowledge and leading discussions about possible solutions, a comprehensive roadmap takes shape. This roadmap will function as a springboard for planners to find solutions and establish the planning directives needed today.

Future City Lab is aiming to revolutionise the design of our future living and city environment. Visions, research results and specialized knowledge are made public for students and experts. By using a web-based platform everyone in the world can participate to investigate, design and illustrate visions in selected cities solving their specific problems. The visions are created for a real site in a city; first the current conditions are shown and then transformed to a sustainable concept of the site. Users may comment and contribute to the visions as a starting point for professional discourse within a mosaic of ideas accessible to everyone.

Urban planning is the design of the unfinished; it is a process that is driven by change. Focusing on collective participation all authors and web users may participate in the development of City 2.0. Take part in shaping the future – join ftr.ct.lb

Universities already in the ftr.ct.lb network: Alghero Italy, ESA Paris, ETH Zürich, UPenn, TU Delft, Syracuse NY, Ryerson Toronto, IUAV Venezia, ANCB Berlin.

“Many of us who write about cities like to share rediscovered videos from times gone by. The videos are especially notable when ideas with currency today are discussed in other contexts, providing opportunities to compare, contrast and sometimes be humbled by history.

Here is a prescient video from 1948, about “Charlie.” This cartoon protagonist champions the basics of the new town movement in post-war Great Britain, a Garden City-inspired effort to alleviate housing shortages. The initial phases of the movement brought towns such as Stevenage, Crawley, Hemel-Hempstead, Harlow, Hatfield and Basildon (see Osborn and Whittick’s classic The New Towns (1963) for the full story).

An interesting tidbit: as the video explains, the “neighborhood centre” was a key premise of the British new towns. It was based on the guiding principles of the Reith Report as implemented through the New Towns Act of 1946. Similar to then-contemporary American “neighborhood unit” principles, a new towns commonly featured structured neighborhoods of 5,000 to 10,000 inhabitants with at least one elementary school, local shops, a park and a public house.”

via the atlantic :cities