Does it make sense that the new green cities heralded in Asia and the Middle-east look the same? That they are designed like any car city and constructed far from the rest of urban society ? Sustainability seems to mean suburbia with solar panels. Pressure in the boom economies simply prevents innovation on a city-wide scale.
MARS-1 and DCF have invited 5 Dutch and 5 Chinese aggressively creative companies to conceive a long-term vision for Caofeidian; the new green dream of northern China. Not building at once, but designing in relay, teams will one by one propose an expansion of the city and pass the project along. Evolution as the start of the Organic City.
The project aims to explore a process of evolutionary greening for the city of Caofeidian from 2010 to 2040. To achieve this the teams have been asked to expand Caofeidian with 100 000 people in a 3 year period. During a period of ten weeks the 3D file of the cumulative proposal will travel from office to office. The process is documented in order to trace the emergence of a green metropolis over time and understand the qualities of a city as an organic entity. The video footage and the proposals will be visualized in a set of ten videos and presented in ten boxes (image above) and presented at a Dutch Culture House of the Shanghai World Expo 2010.
