Big congratulations to Laboratory for Visionary Architecture [LAVA] for winning the international design competition for the heart of Masdar, the world’s first sustainable city with special kudos to our previous mecho guest blogger Chris Bosse and his team.

Masdar is a planned city located 17 kilometres from Abu Dhabi. A government initiative, the city is being constructed over seven phases and is due to be completed by 2016. The city centre includes a plaza, five-star hotel, long stay hotel, a convention centre and entertainment complex and retail facilities. LAVA won the design in an international competition against several hundred entries and strong competition from some of the world’s most high profile architects.

Giant umbrellas, with a design based on the principles of sunflowers uses solar-power and follow the projection of the sun to provide continuous shade during the day. The moveable shade store heat, then close and release the heat at night in the plaza of a new eco-city in the United Arab Emirates and open up again at day. The ‘sunflower umbrellas’ are one aspect of the winning design by the international practice Laboratory for Visionary Architecture [LAVA] for the city centre for Masdar in the UAE – the world’s first zero carbon, zero waste city powered entirely by renewable energy sources.

Founded in 2007 by Chris Bosse, Tobias Wallisser and Alexander Rieck. LAVA has offices in Sydney, Stuttgart and Abu Dhabi. Chris Bosse says: ‘Masdar City is the world’s most prestigious project focusing on sustainable energy design. It is the city of the future and a global benchmark for sustainable urban development. We believe in the Masdar slogan “One day all cities will be like this”’.

Bosse: ‘The sunflower principle is eco-friendly and can be adapted to anywhere in the world – it opens opportunities for outside living, even in the desert’.

Rieck: ‘The entire city is car-free with a magnetic public transport system includes individual pods that drive you to your destination using solar power’. Some other key innovations of the winning plan include:
- Building façade angles that can be altered to offset or optimise solar glare
- Materials on wall surfaces responding to changing temperatures with minimal embedded energy
- Water features stored underground during the day and at night trickle or flow triggered by passers-by
- Interactive light poles, inspired by the oasis fire, transformng the plaza into a 3D interactive media installation
- Interactive, heat sensitive technology activating lighting in response to pedestrian traffic and mobile phone usage
- Roof gardens integrating food production, energy generation, water efficiency and the reuse of organic food waste

Wallisser: ‘The idea behind our concept is the use, inspiration, and adaptation of nature and our plans combine innovative design and sustainability’. East and west are fused in the plaza design inspired by both the oasis, as the epicenter of Arabic nomadic life, and the iconic piazza of historical European cities. The organic forms created by the forces of natural erosion in geographical landmarks such as great canyons and wades are the design inspiration behind the key buildings in the city centre.’

After winning stage 1 in January this year, LAVA teamed up with the Sydney/Dubai based Kann Finch group, engineering firm Arup (with whom Chris Bosse previously worked on the Watercube in Beijing), Transsolar (worlds leading energy consultancy), and a team of international experts.

Well done and keep up the fantastic work, guys!

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Yen Huynh, Creator of mecho | the style black book

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