“Self-Sufficient City” by Barcelona-based Guallart Architects is a concept for a housing development in Xiong’an New Area, in the Hebei province of China, which would be able to produce its own energy and food during another coronavirus lockdown. Xiong’an New Area is a new city design in China that’s being planned by the government to support five million people and do so in a way that’s sustainable and totally self-sufficient. The proposal for the Chinese city design is not only focused on the use of clean energy and transportation but in the wake of COVID-19, it plans for the possibility of having to live long-term with ongoing pandemics.
Vincente Guallart, founder of Guallart Architects, is a pioneer of interaction between nature, technology and architecture proposes new paradigms based in urban, social and cultural conditions emerging from information society. His work crosses boundaries through collaborations in geology, sociology, engineering, fabrication, economics, and software design merging architecture, nature and new technology. His projects follow a “natural” logic, referring to components originating in nature, as well as to environmental systems. A logic that connects nature with the transformations of urban spaces, social organizations, and the digital world.
The GA scheme won the residential and communities category in a competition to design new urban typologies for Xiong’an New Area run by the local government. In the case of future outbreaks, the self-sufficient city is designed to accommodate people who need to work from home, grow their own food and receive deliveries by drone. Guallart Architects included greenhouses for growing food, large sloping roofs covered in solar panels, and in addition to offering places for people to garden and work from home, the proposal introduces manufacturing areas so that people could even 3D print their own repair parts as needed.
As Vicente Guallart of Guallart Architects describes it, “We are fighting in the crisis for life and for the climate at the same time.”
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