Top-Down – Bottom-Up: Audi Urban Future Initiative and Festival of Ideas for the New City

Bauwelt writes on our Audi Urban Future Initiative project Air Rights of Way. Translated from the original German text:

The most compelling proposal for Manhattan was East Side/Turtle Bay by Emily Abruzzo and Gerald Bodziak from Brooklyn. They take up an obvious concept—already implemented in very modest ways on a small scale—that is now meant to become a central theme of urban transformation: the repurposing of rooftops, with a wide spectrum of possibilities and on a far larger scale. They propose greenhouses, pergolas, large solar arrays, and integrated water reservoirs—an entirely practical approach, built on ideas that no longer feel foreign to the city.

What about individual mobility in the future? It plays an indirect role; for example, the solar power generated on the roofs is fed into the electric cars parked in front of the buildings. The fruit and vegetables harvested above, on the roof farm, are likewise meant to go straight down into the shop. Underlying all this is the idea of a local, resource-efficient supply system.

And one small observation fits nicely with these new, small-scale rooftop concepts: I stayed at a hotel whose roof was home to chickens—well-groomed birds with ample space to roam—that supplied eggs for the guests; tomatoes were harvested there, and even flowers for the lobby were grown.