Masterplanning the Adaptive City

This project was a joint venture collaboration between dotA and OCEAN CN. 
Design Team:
dotA: Gao Yan, Duo Ning, Chang Qiang, Wang Xin, Yui Shuk Yin
OCEAN CN: Tom Verebes, Nathan Melenbrink (Coding)
Engineer: Chang Qiang (dotA)
Commissioned to design the layout of a block structure, road layout, and a broad
and varied set of programs for a twenty-five-square-kilometer brownfield site 
fifty kilometers south of Beijing, our team developed a methodology for defining 
a masterplan as multiple, not singular, indeterminate rather than fixed. The
masterplan still defines a specific set of articulated massing and ground coverage
diagrams, as the outcome of a method of defining varied densities and
architectural typologies. The parameters included heights, type and program as
seeds, footprint, and landscape distribution. The riverfront, a canal, and some
existing roads modulate the megablock infrastructural grid and differentiate 
its orientations and dimensions. Program mixes and a height diagram help to
differentiate the massing and ground coverage of the proposal. As a method, the
computational logic and interface developed in this project can be applied as a
tool to manage the masterplan over years, while still aiming for a coherent identity
to the city. 
CASE STUDY
dotA AND OCEAN CN >YAN JIAO
HUA RUN 4D CITY, HEBEI
PROVINCE, CHINA
Three variations of a
detailed 1-square-
kilometer block,
demonstrating varied
programming and
massing.

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199
YAN JIAO HUA RUN 4D CITY
Exploded diagrams of
systems, including
block structures and
massing organisation. 

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200
dotA AND OCEAN CN
Final overall
masterplanning options,
based on different
programmatic mixes and
their associated
typologies. 

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201
YAN JIAO HUA RUN 4D CITY
Series of density
studies of a 500-by-
500-meter block,
demonstrating
differential height,
footprint, and typology
mixes, based on
variations of landscape
patterns.

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202
dotA AND OCEAN CN
Graphic data for differential landscape patterns
applied to density studies. 

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203
YAN JIAO HUA RUN 4D CITY
Three options for block patterns and subdivisions.

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204
dotA AND OCEAN CN
Block structure, subdivisions; urban envelope based on programmatic mixing diagram using a
pointillist graphic notation.

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This project was carried out as a joint venture with Kaisersrot supporting Group8
Architects, Geneva in an invited competition.
Partner: Group8 Architects, Geneva, Switzerland
Design Team: Kaisersrot (Markus Braach, Benjamin Dillenburger, Oliver Fritz,
Alexander Lehnerer)
The topic of the competition was to define an urban enclave in the rural suburbs of
Geneva. The program consists mainly of housing (ca. 400 flats with 40,000 square
meters total area) and also commercial buildings and other activities (ca. 10,000
square meters). The concept was neither to start the design process with a formal
system, for example a grid, nor to adapt existing typologies. Instead, Kaisersrot
CASE STUDY
GROUP8 ARCHITECTS AND
KAISERSROT >MICA URBAN
PICTURESQUE, GENEVA,
SWITZERLAND
2008
A software interface
demonstrating
visualizations of three
variations of courtyard
dimensions and the same
mixture of apartments.

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developed an informal, bottom-up approach, in which the form itself is not defined
but rather only the global and local design goals. The solution is found through 
an evolutionary strategy within an open search space. As a result, new urban
morphologies emerge that are grown rather than designed. No straight axis or
repetitive, geometrical order dominates the layout, instead the buildings appear in
a complex configuration: a new digital picturesque. With the software developed
by Kaisersrot, it was possible to organize the 400 flats with optimized
infrastructure, light exposure, and view, while maintaining the organic quality 
of the urban arrangement.  
206
GROUP8 ARCHITECTS AND KAISERSROT
Top view and horizontal
sections of the
selected proposal, with
each color representing
a different apartment
type.

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207
MICA URBAN PICTURESQUE
Aerial view and plan 
of research work by
Benjamin Dillenberger
on agent-based
evolutionary design
systems.

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208
GROUP8 ARCHITECTS AND KAISERSROT
Research work by
Benjamin Dillenberger
demonstrating a series
of varations in greater
detail. 

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These projects were conceived and carried out within the Associative Design
Program directed by Peter Trummer at the Berlage Institute, in 2010. 
The Megablock and Its Populated Field: Peter Trummer with Janki Shah, Xiaodi
Yang, and Marc Hoppermann (scripting support)
The Aggregation of Streets: Peter Trummer with Wei-Jung Hsu, Joune Ho Kim
These two related projects develop models and methods for the megablock and
the street. Blocks have been used as architectural morphologies throughout the
history of urbanization. In opposition to the famous plan of Barcelona, where 
the block was formed on the basis of the subdivision of land ownership, or to 
how blocks were used in postwar Vienna as megaforms for social housing, the
megablock designed for this project, in Aspern, Vienna, is a block that contains
various typologies. These typologies range from single-family houses to big urban
block figures, on 500 individual plots driven by land values. 
The Aggregation of Streets is based on Vienna’s baroque avenues, used
historically in the city to connect the city center with the hinterland. These roads
continuously changed in character along their path between built and non-built
areas. The project proposes a street–avenue hybrid which negotiates various
architectural diagrams. The modernist diagram, whereby the buildings are
detached from the street, is used in low-density areas, coupled with a premodern
diagram where the houses are adjacent to the road for high-density areas. Also
driven by economics, the street transforms into a sequential line of differentiated
densities, as an urban mesh or an urban rhizome, without particular hierarchies,
but rather singular moments of intensity.
CASE STUDY
PETER TRUMMER, ASSOCIATIVE
DESIGN PROGRAM, BERLAGE
INSTITUTE >THE MEGABLOCK
AND ITS POPULATED FIELD,
AND THE AGGREGATION OF
STREETS
2010

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