Tall is a 21-story skyscraper with a hybrid structure, completed in Amsterdam in 2022. It was designed by British engineering collective Arup and Dutch architecture firm Team V. Haut has 55 apartments, bicycle parking, an underground garage and an urban garden. It was the first residential building in the Netherlands to be certified by the BREEAM sustainability rating system. The combination of wood and hybrid technology minimized the building’s impact on the environment. The number of hybrid timber-framed skyscrapers has increased around the world and is a model for building with a lower carbon footprint. Port Plus, a skyscraper made entirely of wood, was built in Yokohama, Japan in March 2022.
Tokyo Bay eSG Project
Tokyo, Japan
PHOTO: TOKYO BAY ESG PROJECT
The development of Tokyo Bay is imperative to the city’s future. In 2021, the Governor’s Office of Policy Planning announced Tokyo Bay eSG Projectzoning program for the Tokyo Waterfront City and Central Breakwater areas. The project assumes a sustainable city that combines nature and comfort. Every year, the project organizers appeal to society for projects based on topics such as “improving environmental protection and resource circulation” and “modern renewable energy”. So far, they have selected projects from companies that cultivate microalgae and produce hydrogen from seawater. Tokyo Bay promises to be an incubator for the future of regenerative cities.
Regenerative City
In July 2024, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, a global organization promoting the circular economy, published its Building prosperity report. It describes the transition to a circular economy in European architecture and cities and presents six strategies that will be key to creating circular cities: brownfield redevelopment (land that was once used for industrial purposes, but due to soil contamination they cannot be reused or sold) ; transforming empty commercial buildings; using material-efficient design; utilize of low impact materials; expanding green-blue spaces; and increasing tree crowns. The report also presents examples of the implementation of these strategies, for example by the investment company Ginkgo, which specializes in the restoration and re-revitalization of degraded areas in Europe, or the Haut hybrid wood skyscraper described above.
Another area of interest, in addition to these six strategies, is the utilize of ecosystems found in cities. Engineering collective Arup, which was involved in the construction of Haut and also contributed to the Building Prosperity report, has published another report on urban regeneration in 2023 and focused on regenerative design. The Arup report used the Billion Oyster project as an example of urban rewilding. The goal of this project is to return 1 billion oysters to Recent York Harbor by 2035 as part of an effort to reduce the effects of erosion from weighty rains and protect the coast from high tides and storms. Another example from Recent York is the Brooklyn Grange, shown above, which aims to reduce the impact of stormwater on Recent York’s sewer system through a network of rooftop green spaces.
Circular urban traffic is not narrow to North America and Europe; also attracts interest in Asia. Kongjian Yu, founder of Chinese architecture and landscape architecture firm Turenscape, proposed the concept of sponge cities, an approach to urban planning that involves increasing green spaces to collect rainwater to prepare for water shortages caused by climate change. In an interview with WIRED, Yu said: “The sponge city is an urgent, immediate solution that can adapt cities to climate change, heat, floods and droughts.”