2008 Galleries

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Galleries // 2008 Spark:Concept // Stack City

Stack City

Winner - Gold

Competition: Spark:Concept
Designer: Behrang Behin
Design Type: Spaces
Company / Organization / School: Behrang Behin Design

Stack City is an energy-efficient new city in the United Arab Emirates. It exploits the emerging development models of the Gulf region as a laboratory for creating new, sustainable forms of urbanism. By operating from within the logic of the new cities being created in the UAE, it takes the current urban models to their logical conclusion, and in doing so speculates on latent possibilities for new ways of life and architectural space that exist within this new paradigm. Stack City is also an investigation of the role of technology in shaping urban form and human experience. The relationship between urban-scale infrastructural technology and the spaces of inhabitation is mediated through the framework of a stack-effect solar-updraft system. This system, a modification on Jörg Schlaich's solar chimney power generators, employs the very conditions that make the desert inhospitable (excessive heat and solar radiation) to make the city viable. The resulting multi-layered urban fabric not only produces an energy-efficient city, but also provides a flexible armature for inhabitation and urban life.