[RE-pensar] la superficie...

Re-thinking the traditional aproach to producing a mixed-use buildings, the project has just won the Vancouver’s FormShift Competition in the Vancouver Primary Category, a category that required the "design for a mixed use primary (arterial) site along a major Vancouver street that includes a rapid transit station."

The project is designed as a variety of productive surfaces. Walls harness energy, roofs grow food and floors connect the public and private spaces.

By providing a variety of uses within each structure, the community is presented with a walkable, sustainable building. By ensuring the design of all new buildings respect the surrounding context and understand the local environmental conditions, surfaces can be sculpted to provide a vibrant urban environment for people to work, live and play.

According to the architects, future buildings must produce rather than consume. The ecological buildings of the future will provide people with various new ways to live, work, play and grow. We must RE-THINK the traditional form and current guidelines of mixed-use buildings, commanding more from the public and open spaces these structures provide.

All buildings located on primary sites should offer the city with more than just density. The buildings of the future should also provide additional public and commercial uses. In order to develop buildings which are ecologically friendly and sustainable, we must RE-THINK the traditional building components. THINK of the building as a variety of productive SURFACES.

Mixed-use buildings must provide the city and its people with more than just shelter and a place to work. By requiring more spaces for people to work and play, buildings will develop as sustainable places. New ‘built form’ ideas will emerge by dictating density and more public and commercial spaces. A more ecologically-friendly built form will evolve by demanding buildings understand and respond to local environmental conditions. THINK of a south facing wall as a passive solar collector or living wall. THINK of a roof as a place for wind turbines, the collection of rainwater or a public community garden. THINK about a ramp that connects these SURFACES as a place for people to do yoga or read a book. We must THINK about buildings as systems which produce and contribute rather than consume.

The resulting architecture is a building with a variety of productive SURFACES. WALLS harness energy, ROOFS grow food and FLOORS connect the public and private spaces. By providing a variety of uses within each structure, the community is presented with a walkable, sustainable building. By ensuring the design of all new buildings respect the surrounding context and understand the local environmental conditions, SURFACES can be sculpted to provide a vibrant urban environment for people to work, live and play.