Master: The Why Factory studio
BIODIVER(CITY)
The studio’s deliverable was a presented as an architectural toolbox, a publicly available user interface which would allow any aspiring designer to create their own Biodiver(city).
The Why Factory studio, MVRDV’s think-tank within TU Delft, has been speculating for years on the possibility of creating a new city type which would embrace the relationship between wilderness and urbanization. One where humans, animals and plants not only coexist but are interdependent of one-another. This research has been slowly evolving in the past decade, collecting data and theorizing novel approaches to urban design, aiming to synthesize all its acquired knowledge into urban proposals where cities are completely integrated with their respective local biodiversity.
The design process was very multifaceted, going through extensive data collection, analysis and rationalization, ontological discussions over the principles of architectural design and its limitations, as well as provocations on interpersonal and interspecies relationships.
When combined, all these elements lead us to the development of a new design language based on a complex set of rules that started bridging the gap between two previously conflicting concepts: The natural and the Urban environments.
This new tool, designed with an interactive game-like interface, would guide the user through the processes necessary to program their urban environment while ensuring their city model passed all the necessary benchmarks required for its biodiversity to thrive.
The city building process begins with the selection of a specific biome, which will filter the specific geo-referenced data-set with the plant and animal species pertaining to this specific climate and region, along with its specific environmental data.
The interface illustrates all the data to the user in a digestible manner while a grasshopper script runs the computation on the background. Information tags are also provided so the user can become familiar with specific terms and concepts, making this an educational tool and allowing the designer to better manipulate the outcome.
Using the data pertaining to the selected biome, the software will then prompt the user to program the land uses within their city. This crucial step balances both the urban and the natural energetic requirements of the city, ensuring all its living parts can prosper and biodiversity can thrive. Each land use bares an inherit biodiversity score, and the configuration of these land uses determine the biodiversity score of the city.
Once the proportions between each land use is defined and the threshold for biodiversity is met, the software aggregates these programs into a cohesive Biodiver(city), using a preset catalogue of adjacency and space syntax rules.
The user is then provided with a list of suitable iterations, each coming with their respective set of analysis and biodiversity score for them to pick from.
Once an iteration is picked, the designer can place a character in their new city to explore the environment and experience the space that was created. The process can be repeated, refined and iterated across all the different biomes in the planet, which can reveal new possible scenarios between human settlement and wilderness, providing a suitable base for architectural exploration and speculation.
project information
Masters in Architecture At TU Delft
Project Name: Biodiver(CITY)
Project Location: Siteless (speculative)
Professor: Winy Maas, Stavros Gargaretas & Elija Kozak
Project Type: Academic/ Group Work
Partners: The Why factory team (TU Delft + RMIT)