Winy  Maas

　　（Architect, Urban Designer, Landscape Architect, Co-founding Director, MVRDV）

　　Keywords: Design Process, Integrated Design, Sustainability Urban Design, Urban Planning

　　Introduction

　　At the beginning of the third millennium, the world is denser than ever before. It is inhabited by more and more people, who want to consume more, who want to live with more space and comfort, and who can move around more. Such a world seeks space, almost desperately, for manufacturing, living, water, energy production, oxygen, ecological compensation, safety, and buffers, owing to the increased likelihood of natural disaster due to climate change.

　　Against this hypothesis, there are two possible scenarios. The status quo reaction to the need for space in an increasingly crowded world has been to create introverted, isolated, monolithic towers - 3D extrusions of 2D thinking – which create no more of a community connection than flying above the city does. We can continue with the introverted 2D city – or we can react to, investigate, explore, and analyze it. This leads us to something much more appealing and sustainable – the concepts of the Vertical Village and the Porous City, which make a 3D city. This is a community of porous towers, in which connectivity is inherent to the design – such towers “want” to do nothing but open up to the world, and foster the same sense of community that low-lying, high-density villages have done for millennia.

　　The Vertical Village

　　In order to create fully functioning communities in the sky, we need to think about not just the physical connections between people and the places they inhabit, but how spaces are programmed, and how they are interlinked. If the old thinking about communities was formerly confined to a 2D city plan, the new thinking should be about validating new programs that can deal with the context of local culture.

　　How to Make a Vertical Village?

　　The evolutionary growth of the Vertical Village is different from that of a top-down development or master plan. Rules are needed to guide this growth. How can we guarantee that a house will have enough light, even if another house is built next to, or on top of it? How do we make a village of 10 floors safe, and ensure that once the village has grown to 50 floors, everyone will be able to escape in the event of an emergency?

　　To enhance knowledge of the Vertical Village’s growth, to understand the relationships among its different elements, and to test the necessary rules, an exercise was constructed (Figure 19). Cubes represented individual houses, with each color representing one parameter. Growth over X years was simulated for six days, for six identical plots, following six parameters, resulting in a battle of conflicting desires. How does the village’s economy compete with community? And what is the ideal synergy between accessibility and energy? These systematic tests of evolutionary growth generated a set of rules that form a basis for further development of the Vertical Village. This abstract experiment, simulating evolutionary growth, revealed several issues, namely:

　　?When each development phase focuses only on its own interests, atrophy results. Regardless of the sequence of influences, all villages will eventually begin to look more or less the same.

　　? Daylight prevailed in all developments, determining to a large extent what the final shape would be. Building high into the sky is needed for a Vertical Village’s long-term survival.

　　? After a certain period of time, and after reaching a certain density, there seemed to be a “natural” growth maximum. Large-scale interventions, such as top- down superstructures, were needed to provide escape routes and allow continuous growth.

　　?If we want to achieve a recognizable identity, one parameter must prevail. One has to consciously choose this parameter and apply it to the Vertical Village. We also have to ask ourselves if mini-master plans are necessary.

　　Conclusion

　　The vertical urbanism of the near future will be an intersection of the imperatives of the Vertical Village, which prioritizes the intensification and densification of individual needs and desires, and those of the Porous City, which generalizes those desires and subjects them to broader requirements, such as daylight, views and open space. In a sense, one starts from the individual, and the other from the collective, and they meet at a certain point in-between.

　　This is an instructive proxy for how we might handle the rapid growth of megacities and the incredible demands they will make on our imaginations as well as our infrastructure. We need cities that are efficient, but not soulless. People want to customize their living and working spaces, but also need to tap into larger, collective support structures – both physical and social. We want to both foster higher density and to allow individual neighborhoods, cultures, nature and people to maintain their identities. Can all of these desires co-exist? We think the answer is “yes,” but it will take a continuous investment in investigation and innovation to get there.

　　Figure 1. Di erent villages across Taipei (Source: Left to right, up to down: Picture 3,7,8 Chun-Yan Chen, Chiung-Hsien Ho; Picture 9 Neil in Se eld UK; rest unknown.)

　　Figure 2. Netherlands Pavilion, Expo 2000, Hannover, Germany (Source: Rob’t Hart)

　　（文章来源：Cities to Megacities: Shaping Dense Vertical Urbanism excerpts）