> HONORABLE MENTIONS
> Automated Habitats: Metabolism in Motion
> City: Ajman
> Issue: Abandoned Construction Sites
Team Members:
RIM SIBAI
FARAH AHMED
AYA RAHMY
PROFESSOR JASON CARLOW
The Case of Emirates City in Ajman: A highly specialized, residential, and Inflexible neighborhood. in 2008 the global financial crisis ¬hit, and construction was haled leaving massive amounts of expired concrete foundations. Only 10 out of 100 residential towers were constructed leaving 90 % of the site unusable and rigid with expired inflexible structures.
Research has concluded that Ajman is in need of:
Flexible, multipurpose, recyclable Space.
A more economically resilient architecture.
A typology that Is reactive to its transient and constantly changing population
Automated Habitats proposes an architecture that addresses these issues. Rather than become victim to the booms and busts of the world’s economy, as we have seen in the case of Emirates City, the project thrives upon a changing market. It caters to the transient demographic of the UAE, where immigrants make up 80% of the population. The project is a cross breed of ideas from metabolism and today’s car robotic automation technology. By integrating the circulation of people, units, and cars within a complex network of automation, an entirely new dynamism is added to the theories put forward by Metabolists on living cells which are always growing and changing. It also allows for the easy expansion of units within a structural grid. Situated along E311, Automated Habitats attaches itself to a complex network of roads interlinked with the highway. This allows for easy car access and the creation of a hyper-thin typology that can fluidly grow using highways without producing issues that arise out of urban sprawl such as higher water and air pollution, increased traffic fatalities and jams and loss of agricultural capacity. Meanwhile, it dissolves boundaries created by highways so that an overall picture of pourosity and fluidity can be achieved within the city. ¬¬
