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Xiamen Urban incubator

Part 2 Project 2010
Benjamin Walton
 London Metropolitan University | UK
The project is based in the city of Xiamen on the main land China side of the Taiwan Strait. The city is currently developing a low-carbon master plan exploiting the possibility of trading carbon credits and working towards becoming China’s first low-carbon city.

My project deals with the rapid growth in population and built environment of Xiamen. To do this, it operates on a range of scales from a city-wide strategy to smaller scale architectural interventions. The project proposes a system for building on a large scale using locally grown renewable materials in the form of engineered bamboo. This system is combined with pieces of infrastructure designed to mitigate the effects of the heat island phenomenon; a problem which results from the dense urban fabric and the high carbon use of cities like Xiamen. To do this it makes use of UN funding through the CDM mechanism. The project is designed to be a pilot that can be applied to cities through out china with the aim of cutting carbon emissions.

Benjamin Walton

urban planning, architecture and the global carbon market

Climate Change is a serious threat to humanity. Manmade carbon emissions are increasing the natural carbon content in the atmosphere and are causing global warming and a general increase in the instability of the weather. This will not only lead to problems with the environment, but also to an increase in the gap between poverty and wealth and in conflicts related to energy and water. The majority of people now live in cities, relying mainly on carbon emitting energy sources. The means of mitigating and adapting to climate change are directly linked to the populations living in cities and to their way of coexisting in a dense social, cultural, economic and political environment. Architects and urban planners have to meet this challenge in any way possible. Academic institutions will have to take the lead in the experimentation and innovation needed to bring the profession up to date with the complexity of the challenge.

The unit research and the project of Benjamin Walton link the growth in carbon emissions in China to the global carbon trading market. This market, a controversial mechanism, emerges through the compliance buying of carbon credits by companies linked to targets set by governments. Under the Kyoto agreement a UN regulated process (CDM, or Clean Development Mechanism) was created to channel money through the carbon market to low carbon projects in countries such as China. The unit project in Xiamen applies CDM on a city-wide scale, turning it into the financial driver of a new urban planning method. This method enables the design of complex projects with a wide range of socio-economic effects, and results in the lowering of expected carbon emissions. Ben’s project proposes two prototypes: 1. a method of urban agriculture generating bamboo as main ingredient for the low carbon construction of highrises and 2. an example of such a highrise as new typology for combined industry and housing, as well as being a device to mitigate the heat island phenomenon, both an effect and further cause of Climate Change.

Raoul Bunschoten
Diploma Unit 8
London Metropolitan University

Tutor(s)
Raoul Bunschoten
2010
China is now the world's largest emitter of carbon. With China's massive growth the emissions will continue to rise if the problem is not tackled on a scale to make real change possible.
The building industry is a major contributor to this, adding two billion square meters of construction a year.
Xiamen's massive growth has lead to the heat island phenomena becoming a major problem in the city. This phenomenon is a symptom and a course of high carbon use.
I propose a pilot project for Xiamen that begins to tackle the problems of massive growth with poor construction and high carbon use. And taps into a widely available source of biomass in subtropical zones: bamboo
The pilot project connects a government task force with local stakeholders and global finding initiatives.
Bamboo is produced in an ever evolving network of farms and processed in towers, which are placed where urban growth and the heat island combine.
The pilot project takes advantage of China's land ownership laws, leasing derelict land on a short term from the local government. This brings wasteland left over from infrastructural projects back into use. This land is then easily passed on to develope
The farms formed by this reclamation of land are transient, moving through the city providing biomass that becomes the raw material for the engineered timber used in construction.
The primary roles of the tower are to provide sites for factories to process the bamboo into engineered wood and accommodation for the migrant work force. This new typology combination is possible with the merging of steel and engineered timber into a to
The building is an expression of the different uses it contains and the tropical climate it finds itself in, the articulation of it changing throughout the day.
The towers meet part of the need of Xiamen’s growing migrant population. By creating offsite construction on an industrial scale migrant workers are moved away from the dangers of China’s building sites to safer controlled conditions of the factory.
The result of this is a physical drop in temperature at the ground level that improves the climate of Xiamen. The reduction in heat reduces the consumption of carbon and improves the conditions surrounding the base.
The cumulative effect of the spread of the towers works with the geography of the heat island to reduce the overall effect of the phenomenon. This reduction in temperature can be converted into credits for carbon trading. The credits create an income that
There are three dynamics: bamboo growth, the level of migrant work force and the impact of the heat island. The towers control and react to fluctuations in these levels. Each increment of the time line relates to one cycle of this cybernetic feed back loo
The introduction of the pilot project allows Xiamen to build a low carbon urban strategy. The strategy is dynamic and flexible, allowing it to grow and adapt to the city. The project deals with the climatic and political problems of Xiamen's rapid growth
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