Sheikh Zayed Plaza: The Urban Environment as a Living Urbanism

Energy and sustainability, Essay, Estudio Leonardo Zanatta, High Density, Urban Paradigms

Abu Dhabi, Air quality, Architecture&nature, Canopy, Climate resilience, Cluster, CO2 emissions, Comfortable environment, Cooling climate device, Design strategies, Designing Climate, Healthy city, Heat Island Effect, Living system, Metabolism, New materials, Physiological atmospheres, Pollution, Project, Public Space, Solar radiation, Temperature, Thermal comfort, Urban environment, Urban Health, Urban strategy, Vegetation, Waste management

The proposal was one of the 20 projects chosen in the “Cool Abu Dhabi” competition, with a jury composed of representatives from Princeton, MIT and OMA-Middle East, among architects from 67 countries, to integrate future strategies implemented in the urban spaces of the city. In addition, the project also received an honorable mention from the jury of the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia in the 8th Advanced Architecture Contest.

If we look at the urban environment as a living organism, with its circulatory systems, tissue stratification and matter metabolization, we start to understand why the generic urban patterns from the Modern period weren’t completely effective, demonstrating why a better relationship between the natural and built environments needs to be at the center of the discussion for healthier cities. Although using biology to solve major problems in contemporary architecture is not novel, bionics offers numerous strategies based on the amalgamation of natural and artificial mechanisms, and in this case, bionics is used to enhance the circulation of people in the urban environment, with less impact and waste generation.