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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)

2010
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