Architecture evolves from the collision of political, financial, functional, logistic, cultural, structural, environmental, social and many yet unnamed and unforeseeable interests. Bruce Mau once visited BIGs office and saw a series of projects including a study on Danish harbor activities. He was fascinated by the study and asked us to mail him the slides as he was leaving the next day. When he received it, he replied: No, no. I want the one you explained when we were there. We assured him it was the same one. He said Its interesting. In most cases when you see architects work, itss dead drawings and superficial images. But when you get a tour of the office or visit a building with the architect, you feel the energy and get all these little punch lines and invisible stories that make the whole work come to life! Too bad its so hard to capture in an exhibition, or even worse in a book!
The m site is positioned next to the existing urban fabric in the future development zones of the Yongsan masterplan. BIG’s design includes two elegant towers with a height of and m. To meet the height requirements of the site, the exceeding building mass is transformed into an upper and lower horizontal bar, which bridge the two towers at m and m height. The two towers are additionally connected through the arrival bar at the ground level and a courtyard below ground.
The byproducts are water and carbon monoxide. Combined with the iron oxide, we can make steel and with further chemical reactors, we can make hard and soft plastics! Every single resource will be recycled. The soft plastics will give us inflatable membranes, so we can make pressurized environments where we can grow plants and have rootzone gardens for water purification so we can even start enjoying the water. We can create agriculture, hydroponics, and aquaponics to grow food to sustain human life!
The . mile project area is located within the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) -year floodplain and spans from Montgomery Street to East th Street. The ESCR project is designed to protect and improve the resiliency of the large and diverse residential community of more than , New Yorkers, including approximately , NYCHA residents. ESCR will also offer protection to critical infrastructure including a major pump station and an electrical substation that powers much of Lower Manhattan as well as numerous local schools and libraries.
Working and living in Mars Science City will allow us to gain experience with climate control, safety, quality of construction, and resilience of human-made ecosystems that will be invaluable when we finally go to Mars and to our work on Earth. Part academic, part commercial, part exhibition, it will act as a Martian embassy on Earth the first foothold of our neighbor planet on Terran soil.