Airbia proposes a new eco-friendly and efficient transportation system linking the suburbs and city centre. Corresponding to the lack of coherent public transportation in the majority of the sprawling cities, a set of airships is designed to form an additional network over the urban tissue.
The proposed network bases its flexibility on the limited required infrastructure (just overground platforms) and facilities, easy hovering, landing and passenger access. The target is to develop a set of routes covering nodal points of the suburbia, travelling all the way to the borders of the city centre creating a ring around it. This network would potentially replace the use of cars and trains as transportation between the suburbs and the city centers.
Being inspired by the zeppelin technologies, the proposed airship engages the idea using helium to hover, which is proven to be a sustainable and economical approach.
The proposed airship has a capacity to carry 400 people and travel with an avarage of 150 km/h speed on a hight between 30 – 500 meters. Instead of having a major airship station, Airbia proposes a more dispersed network of station-platforms, that constist of staircases, lifts and ticket spaces. This way the system becomes much more flexible, since these drop off – pick up platforms can be placed almost anywhere in the city.
congratulations:)
hope that your project will win the competition!
it.s absolutely great:)
ps it looks lika zaha hadid has designed it_PERFECT!
Congrats! It looks amazing!
Good Luck with the competition
It is so beautiful that hopefully make my day!!!!
Good luck!!!!!!!!
looks pretty neat!!
and i see you guys are gathering votes!!! brilliant!!!
all the best, kick ass!
Relying on Helium may not be the best idea for a sustainable mode of transportation.
http://news-info.wustl.edu/tips/page/normal/10754.html
looks like and apocalyptic rip-off of the skycar city of uwm and mvrdv
http://www.uwm.edu/SARUP/gallery/skycar/index.html
The locust and the whale
hey i have a question for alexandros and irene…what software did you use to make this entry?…3ds MAX?
sorry, but this solution doesn’t solve one of the biggest problems of suburbias: exploitation of agricultural and natural green areas in city or town surrounding. and lack of services in carpet of single family houses neither. nice pics though.
Remember the Hindenburg! Nice renderings, though…
WOW !!! I am impressed !!!
Flat-out awesome! Helium supplies may be endangered, but I’m sure there would be other ways of achieving the same objective. It would almost be a shame for something so beautiful to move at an average 93mph, because I for one would enjoy just watching them float overhead! Best of luck with the contest!
The largest airship constructed—the Hindenburgh— was 800 ft long, used hydrogen which has greater lifting power, and carried only 130 max. It also took an hour or more to reach its maximum cruising speed of 135 kph. The Hindenburgh would stretch one third the distance to the next station if spaced half a mile apart, and that is actually a rather large spacing for a truly pedestrian environment. Cool graphics, though.
I looks cool but it doesn’t really solve any of the actual problems created by suburbia and sprawl. This just shifts transportation from the ground to the air. This may even encourage more sprawl, like adding new lanes to a highway. And I think we can agree that solution has not worked.
Once the novelty of the slinky design has worn off, will citizens gripe about the sun constantly being blotted out by all those passing dirigibles?
Great idea. Every major city should have this. It would change everything.
Everything about this proposal is brilliant — it’s hard not to vote for it. While it’s not my favorite in the competition, it’s definitely something I’d like to see implemented (or at least prototyped). The airship design is fantastic. I worry that the bladders are not large enough for the payloads, but that could be overcome with helicopter style props. Simple, reliable, easily maintainable, fast, and convenient is what these will need to succeed in reality. It may also need to feel incredibly safe considering the pervasive fears of both flying and public transportation present in society.
Dear software person, we used Rhino for the design, and 3D max for the renderings
How does travel to the city create income for the residents of the suburbs so they can keep and repair their homes and neighborhoods? They would still have to pay for it, like petrol, wouldn’t they? And they’d probably still keep their cars for other transportation needs so it could increase their gross travel expenses.
Train delays are bad enough, what about airships!
Very pretty pictures but I don’t see how it regenerates suburbs.
Beautiful design and presentation. This feels more like long range transportation (cruise ship in the sky?) than reletively short trips to “the city.” If it is truly lighter than air, then it would tend to be at the mercy of the wind and weather.
I don’t think people would “gripe” about them in the sky. If they did blot out the sun, the global warming nuts would love them (instal mirrors on the top!).
Unfortunately there are designers/architects that still forget the main reason for building and planning lovable places. This entry/project does not address the grave issues of suburbia and it’s quite a joke to propose this will fix anything, it is rather transferring the problems off the ground.
Gives me faith in the future! Did you dream this?
They dont transfer any problems off the ground! they address the stubid division of land by loaded roads and highways, and dirty train rails and they provide continuous, car-free, train-free space for the other projects to be built! its great! well done!
IF it was actually feasible to make airships energy efficient, affordable, safe, etc. if might actually HELP THE SPREAD OF SUBURBIA even further from our city centers, much as the Federal Highway administration did. Looks like something more suited to Mars.
This is not a solution for reconstructing suburbia, it is simply mass transit, which interestingly is not very ideal. Helium is a limited resource, and will be quite valuable for clean fusion in the future.
The maintenance will be expensive, the pilots will be expensive, who will pay a ticket price to slowly crawl from one building top to the next? It is easier to walk, take a bus, or take a cab. If it isn’t easy, then you are in the city, where your next destination is likely less than a mile. Not suburbia.
I can see this working in conjunction with park and rides, as an alternative to bus or rail transit stations. If it proves to be more affordable, then it should replace the other two. But in using this, does it not provide more access to the countryside sprawl we are trying to prevent? How does one more transit solve the problem of bringing a community together, when it opens the opportunity to dive further out into the wild? It could be the point, I suppose, but I just don’t agree with another closed shell device. I will be able to see many places along the way and have no opportunity to interact with them. The interstate had a similar effect on Route 66.
Nice renderings, interesting idea. Unrealistic.
Given all of the data surrounding peak everything, solutions that will deal with the problems of suburbia will be fairly low tech, thus sustainable in nature. This idea of creating an entirely new transportation corridor is a pipe dream not unlike “The Jetsons”. This concept is so far removed from our current reality that it truly underscores our inability to grasp what faces us. As Richard Heinberg has stated ‘The future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed yet.”, keep dreaming.
I may be biased in favor of this idea, as it is a beautiful expansion of a proposal I made in a class paper about 12 years ago. The paper advocated using airships as emergency vehicles in earthquake zones to diminish the sorts of problems faced after the Northridge CA quake in 1994. This is so much better!
I can’t understand why this currently has the most votes–this is a completely useless submission that doesn’t address any of the actual problems of suburbia let alone, in my opinion, the premise of the contest. Airships, really?! Very pretty pictures, but unoriginal and misses the point.
Long time ago (2004) I did a whole poject named Stratos (nav system+cars), The flying cars where so similiar to yours, specially an sportive one which I did for two people.
This transportation mean could be used instead of subways and/or buses. It would be greatly more efficient in massively populated areas, not for average sized cities. And it might seem expensive, but it’s only because the technology is still premature. We are talking here about an innovating and futuristic idea which will have great success when technology is advanced.
Not sure if this is a joke or not, but UFO-inspired transportation in no way addresses our most enormous problems — resource depletion, oil depletion, environmental degradation and climate change.
Very Sci-fi, very pretty, very bad idea. But first, several of the post were correct, some just dead wrong. The Hindenburg ignited and burned due to the paint/coating on the skin, the hydrogen just got the bad rap. The space shuttle external tank is full of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen (so were all the Apollo missions), but it is the right fuel for that vehicle (given the performance requirements) and we didn’t ground the fleet for good after it’s accident (caused by the solid rocket booster o-ring leak, by the way). Both cases are moot; dirigibles are best suited for long distance travel, not sustaining urban sprawl patterns and poor master planning of cities. If the idea was to keep existing sprawl, but limit the impact of expansion of roads and incresed number of cars . . . then elevated high speed electric rail is the way to go (with solar supplimented power of course). They can operate in thunderstorms and with higher wind conditions than a dirigible. I’d keep the airships for new interstate travel to parks and recreation areas, etc. where you do not want roads and aprawl to take root.
This is not a very pratical solution.
I agree with some of the criticisms made by others regarding both the technological feasibility and the transit wisdom, but I wanted to make one additional point: Planners and architects in the last decade or two have gone gaga over the idea of easily re-routable “dispersed networks” for transit. While this seems attractive in the short run for tight-fisted public building authorities and are a boon for real estate developers trying to sell their latest subdivision and move-on, they have drawbacks from a planning point of view. When you invest in routed Infrastructure – rail or highways – the very fact of their permanence allows decentralized planning decisions by other market players – from businesses and families looking for space to developers deciding to build. Flexible dispersed networks (bus routes, for instance), because they are flexible, do not provide the assurance others need to invest. This actually discourages density and facilitates sprawl.
Beautiful renderings I suggest you contact Industrial Light & Magic or WETA you may have a bright future there, but not in urban planning and design.
A graphic hybrid of Dune and Broadacre City.
The rendering of the landing base and the monotone figures is revealing – nothing else in sight to the horizon.
Why are the vehicles streamlined? Must be the thicker atmosphere.
I vote No.
How well do these things accelerate and decelerate? How easily would they dock? I can’t imagine that they’ll reach the 150km/h top speed that you mention if they have to stop as often as a bus.
How loud are they?
I just don’t understand this. It is obvious that no engineer has worked on this project….just designers. It is not financially efficient, energy efficient, and it may be impossible to develop this idea. Helium gas is very expensive, valuable, and is extracted similarly or as a bi-product of natural gas (so not really renewable). I know that no calculations have been performed to figure out how much helium it would take to lift a large group of people. Ever seen the good year blimp? How large is that and how many people does that carry? Although the members of the group obviously are very talented artists and designers, I do not believe that this should win due to feasibility.
that’s really impressive..and brilliant idea!i hope great dreams like this will come true some day..congratulations and good luck in the competition!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jun/05/greentech.transport
this project is a part of a bigger discussion about hybrid airships. it’s a really innovative approach. many companies are investigating these potentials at the moment and they are not far from actually being realized. the design is amazing and the benefits from such type of transportation between the dispersed suburbs and the city are not only economical but experiential. i would love to fly with these airships to work!
BRILLIANT!
Rather than solving a problem it would defenitely encourage it.
FLW would be pleased with his old automobile urbanism to be rebirth.
Agreed. This totally fails to solve the problem of suburbia; “a 22nd century equivalent to building more roads” is a perfect summery.
Beautiful renderings, but they wouldn’t even be very functional airships, much less a practical solution to suburbia.
pretty nice!
it is not realistic to just talk and render your way to a proposed solution: did you do ANY simple arithmetic on how many of these are needed to replace the automobiles, how much total area for all the mooring sites, how large each ship needs to be to courier 400 commuters, what volume of helium the world needs to sustain this system, etc.
unless you provide (even just back-of-the-envelope) calculations on the plausibility of your project, it is a non-starter and a waste of our time. any design has to deal with the real world.
google ’space elevator’ for a much more ambitious project (on space transport) and learn how such type of project can be seriously discussed as a realizable endeavor.
just imagine that archigram and constant never existed. where would architecture be right now? sure, their designs were not realistic in their time, but they took our way of thinking to a new level. architecture and design is not just about solving problems. they are also about expanding our vision. and this project is going that way. who cares if it is not efficient? if the guys knew exactly how it works, how it moves and how much energy it consumes they wouldn’t be presenting it in an ‘ideas competition’, they would be selling it for millions!
Beautiful, seductive drawings, but a very destructive idea because it will, as others have pointed out, actually facilitate sprawl! In doing so, this project becomes a poster child of what is wrong with much of the green movement today: beautifully illustrated gee-whiz gizmos that couldn’t possibly be built for at least a generation or two, and once they are built, they may very well exacerbate the problem they are purported to solve! Other than the obvious “solution is worse than the problem” thing, it has these other issues:
A. We CANNOT wait a generation or two for sustainability solutions that may or may not be invented someday. If we’re going to live sustainably, it’s going to happen because of changes we each make in our everyday lives, not just gadgets that someone sells us. (see http://bit.ly/11ZfZY ) And the economic problems we’re now facing are additional impediments to Gizmo Green solutions: http://bit.ly/1auPYY
B. A huge technical impediment that others have alluded to: acceleration. Massive lighter-than-air airships like this require many miles to achieve top speed simply because they’re pushing so much air, unlike a jet airliner, which has only a tiny cross-section of that of a dirigible. In order to accelerate quickly, you’d have to consume huge amounts of energy. Stopping every mile or so like the diagram shows, it’s unlikely that these things would get up much more speed than a bicycle.
Pretty design but….aren’t we trying to solve the problem of sprawled development, the misuse of limited resources and land? This would only exacerbate the situation.
I SUGGEST,ASK A MAN WHO KNEW MAGNETOHYDRODYNAMICS,THIS MAY HELP EVOLVE THAT KIND OF VEHICLE OF THE FUTURE,ITS MILLION POSITIVE THINGKING.SAVING EARTH FROM ENVIROMENTAL CONFORMED,O WOW!!!LETS ALL GET INVOLVE.
Beyond the childlike pleasure of seeing sci-fi graphics, I am saddened to see such a cop-out vision of how to remodel suburbia. Shouldn’t feasibility be a factor? “Forward-thinking” does not necessarily equal flying cars.
This is the best project by far. Beautiful design, fresh idea, supported by recent developments in the airship technologies. Dont forget, this is a design competition. And for that, they should win! congrats!!
Goody good! But thats how it all started! And finally got messed up!
Still I would love to spot such beautiful flying objects in the sky! Futuristic!
This is NOT a solution. It means more objects in our environment and more stuff. We have solutions, light rail and electric vehicles, altho’ I would prefer public transit to personal mobility because it is FAIR.
I doubt that these will be affordable for the mass of lower waged workers who serve society 24/7.
WOW! Of course it could solve a problem, have you forgotten how efficient and speedy airships can be? and how many people would love to pay as much as a train ticket to fly to the city? with internet access and a coffee shop this beauty would be the best way to travel!
LOVE IT!!
WOW! Of course it could solve a problem, have you forgotten how efficient and speedy airships can be? and how many people would love to pay as much as a train ticket to fly to the city? with internet access and a coffee shop this beauty would be the best way to travel!
LOVE IT!!
Well done folks! Very nice designs, vive le Zepelin!
even if the design is feasible, it is no solved in any degree and cannot be regarded an example of ’sustainable future’ . the form is catchy but it only originartes from mere aesthetics and one precedent. i cannot see any intellectual effort and any intelligence that would make it an interesting project. the only ‘interesting’ part lies on the softwares you used, the renders you did the way you moved the control points or fillet and smoothed the surfaces to seem smooth and continuous. you managed to make two beautiful objects (airship and podiums) but i think it’s always good to think twice before submitting sth that claims to be either sustainable, efficent or even performative.
even if the design is feasible, it is no solved in any degree and cannot be regarded an example of ’sustainable future’ . the form is catchy but it only originartes from mere aesthetics and one precedent. i cannot see any intellectual effort and any intelligence that would make it an interesting project. the only ‘interesting’ part lies on the softwares you used, the renders you did the way you moved the control points or fillet and smoothed the surfaces to seem smooth and continuous. you managed to make two beautiful objects (airship and podiums) but i think it’s always good to think twice before submitting sth that claims to be either sustainable, efficent or even performative.
I think that the design is aesthetically very well done however… the concept as a whole is completely unrealistic. As mentioned by countelss people before the resorces used for this project are totally unsustainable. I would encouraget the designer to think slightly more before designing their next project so that they do not open themselves up to some much critisism. Also would love to know how you got your calculations done??
This design was either stolen from Star Wars or from The Flight of the Navigator.
And it doesn’t solve any of the underlying issues regarding urban sprawl. Instead it would encourage more of it. It is amazing that the architecture and planning profession has become so lame that people think this kind of project is “brilliant,” when in fact it is just a really really nice rendering.
The solution to repairing the suburbs is not creating a new type of mass transit (which would be very slow, disrupt commercial flight patterns, be useless in certain weather, etc.). The problem is that even if there were flight stations placed around the suburbs, people would still have to drive to get to them.
This project is interesting as a mode of transportation, but does nothing to heal sprawl.
Well done guys!U have my vote!It would be better if all those that criticise your design, would propose sth instead…but anyway!Good luck!
Nope…
I thought this was about addressing the challenge of suburbia? Dont get me wrong, the renderings are awesome, but I don’t get the connection?
Transportation is a real problem, but would it not be easier to just allow people to work at home more often…if 80% of the pod-people on these ships just stayed home one day a week, we would be better off. Not as sexy a solution through.
These solutions reinforce the idea of a city and a suburb. A city to leave in the evening and return to in the morning…maybe we should continue to discuss that assumption and if it is sustainable or not?
(A) This is a most unreliable mode of transportation due to constraints such as weather and wind.
(B) Impractical! Why must we continue to dream up outlandish schemes that do nothing for addressing the issues – in this case transportation, and do everything to distract any possible solutions to the already existing insfrastructure. I’m certain it would cost close to a billion or more dollars to design and implement such a system to accomodate this Sci-fi concept when we could have spent less than half that on solving the existing problems with transit as it stands!
Could they have solar panels on the top ?
While novel, this design does nothing to solve the fundamental problem of sprawl and the personal mobility issues it creates. Nothing more than a glossy band-aid on a gaping wound. I am very disappointed that this has more votes than any of the other, more practical projects.
I can’t understand how anyone thinks this is a good idea, other than as a pretty rendering.
This proposal would involve transporting hundreds of thousands of people, within a 1-2 hour timeframe, twice per day, using air travel. Air travel is inherently more energy intensive than ground travel at the same speed over the same distance, so from an energy usage standpoint this is a disaster.
Redistributing traffic from the ground to the air doesn’t do anything to change the basic suburb/city dynamic or population distribution, at best it may marginally improve highway and road congestion, but it would far more economical to use these resources to increase capacity for rail and bus service.
People tend to criticize things that they cannot identify with. Which means, congratulation guys, you have a great project and not another boring, uninspired design that uses sustainability as an alibi for bad architecture. No more green roofs, let’s all fly on helium! Great work.
I agree with those who have said that this does nothing to reduce urban sprawl. However, as an intercity transportation system it makes perfect sense. One of the major roadblocks to improving the intercity rail system is sharing rights-of-way with freight trains. Another is simply purchasing rights-of-way. By moving from center-city to center-city by air, this system completely obviates the necessity of dealing with the all real estate problems associated with rail systems.
Traveling at about 150 kph, these ships would make travel between many major cities under 4 hours, with much less pollution than any kind of ground vehicle.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if even one region seriously examined this idea?
I’m actually wondering if this sort of thing would worsen the existing urban-suburban dynamic. As others have said, I think there are technical and practical reasons why this is not exactly feasible – but if you could transport people over long distances at high speed without traffic or complex infrastructure like rail, wouldn’t that just be an incentive to live further from the city center?
At least in the Northeast US this wouldn’t work because of weather. A better coastal or river solution for mass transit are large Ekranoplan “wing in ground effect” craft. They are boats with wings that fly close to the surface, the currently available Airfish-8 or Flightship FS-8 is an excellent example. The best known example is the old Soviet “Kaspian Sea Monster” but there have been a variety of civilian examples. Something able to carry several hundred people would be very useful for transportation around littoral cities.
first of all, thanks everyone for the fruitful comments! we would like to remind you that Reburbia is a design competition. you had the option of entering under the ‘product’, ‘transportation’, ‘architecture’, ‘urban design’ ect section. Finding ourselves involved in a much broader discussion regarding the suburbian problems, the answer is ofcourse no, this is not a solution to all suburbian problems.
What this idea is trying to suggest, is the potential of releasing the traffic in highways between the suburbs and the cities, of reducing the use of fuels for trains, and even more, the possibility for experiential travelling.
Going through a research regarding alternative methods of travelling, the idea of using rigid hybrid airships came out for the simple reason that not only it has NOT been abandoned by engineers and manufucturers but it is rather being developed this very moment to offer efficient and sustainable alternatives to travelling. Designs have been developed recently offering similar ‘numbers’ as the ones we are suggesting. And dont forget, the issues regarding the suburbs do not concentrate within the suburbian areas only.
The issue in this case is travelling. This is what we want to address and this is what we suggest. You dont take the train, you dont drive to and from the city, but you rather hover tranquilly to reach your destination. For the simple reason that the results from the global ongoing research in airship technologies as a mean of transportation are not utopian. Public transportation should and could benefit from these outcomes. They have used them for wars, we may as well use them for a better reason.
thanks again!!
These are the most aerodynamic and beautiful vehicles I’ve ever seen! Not really for me since I have vertigo, but it’s still a great idea. Another idea you might want to consider is using these vehicles for meteorological studies; zepplins don’t need engines and can actually stop and hold their position long enough for climatologists and meteorologists to collect their data. It could lead to a better understanding of weather, climate change, and related phenomena.
Great idea, very futuristic:) Atractive public transport will make gradually change the idea of using cars. Aesthetically fabulous, the technical issues can be solved with some more research.
The best project of this competition. Please continue creating this amazing architecture.
How much would the airbia’s cost, each? How much to create a whole new infrastructure? How long to implement this and get it approved by the government for safe travel? How long to get enough trust from people to step into one? Where does all this Helium come from?
I imagine they have all these answers, please advise!
Looks good but do we want a continuation of the sprawl? Robbing us of productive land…having to transport produce further to market and consumer? We need to arrest the sprawl and not encourage it. The model looks sexy though!
The dissenting remarks are unfortunate but understandable. But my goodness! I have never seen airships as beautiful as these. I used to live in Roswell, GA and going from the city center of Atlanta to home after a long arduous day in the office was such a pain. Experiencing those ten miles was at times a living hell. As I contrast that with floating over the cityscape, reading my paper or fuddling with an iPhone, there isn’t much not to like.
In cities like Atlanta where the suburban populi is so large and investing in new continuous line infrastructure (trains, monorails, etc) is so exorbitant, this is a definite option that should be considered. Yes development of these airships would be high too but the being able to make this solution ubiquitous would give significant ROI.
It is sad when people see gorgeous solutions as these and they immediately dismiss them, pardon the pun, as flights of fancy. But I’d like to leave you all with this quote from John F. Kennedy, the president that ignited the most innovative thinking that took America to the moon.
Some men see things as they are and ask why…
I dream of things that never were and ask….why not?
irene/alexandro, your investigation is at best incomplete. if your idea is to adapt dirigibles to replace cars and trains as a public transportation mode, you must first realize that a dirigible is neither car-like nor train-like–so that a solution must necessarily be a kind of a hybrid of dirigible/car/train, working with a hybrid of freeway/mooring tower/train station. what would such a novel infrastructure be like and how would it address suburban inefficiency? i don’t know but if a solution exists it would be something that we have never seen before. it would not be your suburban airship–which is just dirigibles flying between bus stops. an investigation must be carried to its logical conclusion, with rigorous reality checks all along the way, many of these checks have been mentioned in many of the comments. we are just frustrated that your bold idea had the potential to reveal something that is truly new and brilliant, existing as a possibility in the real world and not as another fantasy project to win competition.
These things are enormous. They would be the equivalent of putting your local buses in the sky.
The miniscule propeller is nowhere near the air flow. It won’t work right there.
I’m not sure why so many people do not understand how incredibly efficient it is to travel via zeppelin. Do some
research, the very concept of lighter than air craft = a vessel that uses very little fuel to travel and carry payloads.
As beautiful as they are, I do however believe they are not practical transports for urban and suburban environments
as the sheer size of both a vessel, and its docking facilities, not to mention its flight path would be … difficult to accomodate in urban areas already developed. Perhaps large spaces like old factories and say walmarts could be
converted.
I definitely see them as being very capable alternatives to travel by fixed wing aircraft for both people and cargo.
bravo
Absolutely Kuhl!
dude you are so wrong! it does exist as a possibility. of course its not gonna replace the cars within the suburbs, cause it cant work localized. that’s not what they are proposing! im from another team and i totaly support this project. in 3 weeks time you cant achieve a complete investigation even if you are Hercule Poirot. this is a really really honest and interesting proposal from the transportational point of view, and most importantly an amazing design work. Go AIRBIA!
im referring to dear brane.
gosh i cant stop checking out this project! it makes me feel good.
As one of those “designers working on modern Zeppelins,” I really want to love this project…and the visuals are really, truly stunning. But I’m afraid that this is really just pretty pictures with thought given neither to the mechanical and aerospace constraints, nor the operational issues associated with airships, nor the logistical complications of running a mass transit system. This is concept design, not industrial design. This is a lovely image for fiction, but an ill-suited application in the real world.
It may not be commonly known, but helium is becoming an increasingly scarce – and non-renewable – resource, frankly, better off used for medical, industrial, and scientific applications than in thousands of commuter airships in countries where land infrastructure already exists.
How is this aircraft stable? Where are the control surfaces? What powers it? Why is the propulsion located where it is? Has the shape been determined through aerodynamic testing? Is it rigid shelled or a fabric laminate envelope? Have you looked at operating costs (fuel, lift gas – which must be replenished on a calendar basis)? What is the internal structure like, and what sort of materials are you using? Is it a hybrid airship – that is, aerodynamically assisted, rather than pure buoyancy? If not, how is it handled on the ground? Does it have vectored thrust? What about buoyancy shifts during flight due to heating, altitude, and fuel consumption? If it is a hybrid, how do you expect it to land on those tiny pedestals? Inclement weather?
That’s a sample of the issues on the technical side. I won’t get into those relating to the efficient operation of a huge mass-transit system relied on by hundreds of thousands of people every single day, since I think I’ve made my point.
Maybe you’re smarter than I and have resolved all these issues and just completely neglected to mention any of them in your brief. I really hate to bash the idea like this, since I’ve had the same sort of criticisms directed at my efforts, but I feel that imagery without substance can hinder more than help when it comes to making radical, practical change in our society.
Hope you can take this to heart and use it to produce more constructive work in the future.
Perfect and innovative.
Beautiful. Practical. Futuristic. Fast. Elegant. Using public transport has never been so cool!
light rail is more efficient, faster, cheaper, more convenient, weather resistant. mooring and boarding these things safely would take ages.
pure eye-candy. you can enjoy it on that level, sure, but there are plenty of sources for pure eye-candy outside of a design competition for reinventing suburbia.
Dim, Helium is nonrenewable, just like oil. How is this a green solution?
Have you ever heard of the Hindenburg? This is a way of tolerating a problem, not fixing it.
who said that it is green? or that everything has to be green?
Andrew, of course this is a concept design and not an industrial design. Despite this fact, we have thought of the majority of the issues you are so kindly pointing out. Our proposed CONCEPTUAL design should be a semi-rigid structure like the Zeppelins NT with a light steel framework, and it should balance by aerodynamical lift (the formal intention is obvious), along with the helium beuoyance, like the case of SkyCats. However, all the technical issues in a competition like this are rather irrelevant. What should be the question here, is whether a proposal for an Additional system of transportation that opens the question of using hybrid airships is actually adressing the problematics of existing transportational systems. We dont think the suburbs should Look more like the city, or that the sprawl should somehow be prevented or even stopped. People should have the option of living outside the urban centers, but still be able to travel to and from the cities using means that are not as harmful to the environment as the cars are. There are so many additional tranportational systems that offer alternative travelling. Take London for example and think of the boats that take tourists and residents every day for trips along the Thames. Kyle, helium is nonrenewable but its not consumable as well. You use it once and that’s it. It does not pollute, and it’s not wasted. Lauren, Hindenburg was back in 1937. I suppose you don’t think of the latest airplane disaster everytime you fly. Anyway, thanks everyone!!
sorry i meant to write *buoyance. fast writing ..
Very nice.
I have been dreaming of this very type of project for many years, so it is lovely to see it realised in this, albeit conceptual fashion.
Myself, i would dearly love to see this type of travel become the ultimate mode of not just inter-suburaban/capital city, but also inter-continental travel, as i am not a fan of the flying tin cans, no matter how fast they can get you there, but would be rather more interested in a leisurely cruise type of trip where the journey becomes as important as the destination.
This could very easily work well,once the craft were engineered to perform as required, and one only need look at some of the modern airship footage on youtube and other sites to see what a graceful mode of travel this could be.
to the ‘Hindenburg’ reference: well, there is a significant difference between Helium and Hydrogen, being that the latter was used in the ill fated craft and is incredibly combustible, a quality which Helium does not share.
congratulations on your contribution, and may it bear fruit down the line.
this past weekend a helicopter and a small plane crashed into the Hudson river in NYC. you would need thousands of these helium planes in the air at any one time to accommodate the millions of people that commute into Manhattan from the suburbs every day. for this reason alone this project would not be feasible (not to mention the billions of dollars it would take to construct, and the fact that it is incredibly wasteful from a materials/energy use perspective – think of all the energy and natural resources that would be required to create this infrastructure, AND the CO2 emissions.)
hmmm the airships look good except we arent looking at the problem of sprawl. if this design actually came out, all it would do is pretty much have mini airports with super slow, fat, space taking blobs going over our heads and people wasting money riding slow airships. I think that if it floats with helium, wouldnt the wind blow it off and cause accidents? I think the Subway is more efficient than this. Everyone writing positive comments, please look at these issues.
Let’s solve sprawl by taking sprawl into another dimension! Maybe next we can invent a time machine so we can sprawl into the past. This is an answer to a different problem than the problem of suburban sprawl.
BTW love the riffs copped from Bladerunner……
subway? do we have subways outside the cities?
i think you didn’t understand this project Yune. Its not talking about transportation within the city. And by encouranging people to take your opinion into concideration all you are doing is sabotaging. You should all do a little research before taking so strong positions.
http://elronsviewfromtheedge.blogspot.com/2006/04/new-age-of-airships.html
http://www.aerosml.com/Aeroscraft%20Info.asp
http://www.impactlab.com/2008/01/06/the-age-of-the-airship-returns/
http://elitechoice.org/2008/06/05/worlds-first-luxury-airship-the-manned-cloud/
Go AIRBIA!!
OMG these are the most beautiful flying creatures I’ve ever seen!!!
In my humble opinion the airship solution is the best alternative to intercity mass transportation. I live in Barcelona which is very near Toulouse France but the two cities are poorly connected because of the rugged mountainous terrain. Spending millions of dollars to connect the cities using land based infrastructures is not very practical nor ecological and the best option is an Airship. Andorra a small country between France and Spain which is on top of the Pyrenees can greatly benefit in this mode of transport. Moreover helium can be replaced by superheated steam by using aerogel insulated zeppelins. This can greatly solve urban sprawl by allowing humans to populate terrains that are not dependent on infrastructures. Northern Canada or even high top mountains can be populated into mini communities all inter connected by Airships.
YOU GUYS ROCK!!!! YES! since when imagining the future became a naughty thing? this competition IS about imagenary senarios too! and YES medium speed travelling between cities by zeppelins could work! such a simple and old idea, and the design.. oh my god. nothing else in this competition can compare with this desing. bravo!
This is the best proposal overall. Not too idealistic and could definitely work in areas of the country that still lack efficient mass transportation systems because of either geography/terrain or funding. If you drive through a large state like Texas you get a good idea of how expensive building subways & light rail can be.
DART has been planning/building a light rail system for 20 years to cover fluid population areas in Dallas. Wish they would incorporate the old street car/trolley system that I loved when I went to school in Philadelphia 20 years ago. Could be great throughout much of Texas except that the airships would be grounded a lot because of weather, which in much of Texas is unpredictable and can flare up fast.
so cool. so beautiful. Yune, subways dont link the suburbs with cities. Very unfortunate comment. Apart from that, it’s so dissapointing to see that some people just don’t ever want to give the chance for the imagination to take over realism. I love this project. I am so glad these people had the guts to propose something like that. We need these ideas. We need to keep thinking of ways to change and at the same time learning from the findings of the past. Amazing work guys.
Issue #1 Helium shortages are already happening, as there is a limited available supply on earth
Issue #2 these airships would be “weather specific”. areas prone to chaotic weather would render these grounded much of the time.
Issue #3 the landing platforms would need to be able to rotate, so the airship would face the wind when landing. this is why the earlier rigid airships always docked to towers, or in open fields.
I like the rendering, and the design aesthetic. It’s a beautiful vision. Unfortunately, It would only come, after weather control became available.
I’ve always found airships and hybrid airships like Aeroscraft and SkyCat to be fascinating, however I’m still not clear on how safe they are with storms and sudden gusts during the crucial times of boarding and departing the craft.
I’d really like to see documentation on how to address that issue.
DO IT, DO IT, DO IT, DO IT! I’m on board! Let’s do it!!
While I love the idea of using zeppelins, and while I think these things look really cool, I’m not too convinced of the plan as a whole. Aside from potential cost savings (if this would actually be cheaper), how is this any different than using a rapid transit train system? We still have the same problems of really diffuse suburbs. If the stations are close enough to people’s houses to make them convenient, there will have to be so many of them that the zeppelins will be just as slow as a city bus. If the stations are far enough apart that the zeppelins can get a speed advantage, they’ll be too far away from most people to be used. Unless, of course, you add bus service to get people from their homes to the stations. But in the end, I’m not sure why a zeppelin is better than train-based rapid transit, particularly when you consider that the zeppelins would be grounded by weather much more often than a train would be taken out of commission.
Neat plan, I’m just not convinced it should be used for the proposed task.
I think people are voting for this because the graphics are so much better than the other projects, not because this is a good idea.
It’s very futuristic, but thoughtful enough. A little bit too complicated version of traveling. What will happen in bad weather conditions? This form of traveling is too concentrated! People need more personal transportation. It’s not worthy to built up a system, which will make the people more depending upon something centralized so much.
..not thoughtful enough.. I wanted to write…
It just seems to me that airships are a poor choice for Western countries, since our road infrastructure is already so sophisticated, and most importantly – paid for. In the developing world, airships sound like a brilliant solution because roads are non-existent, but not here. We’re better off dedicating one high-way lane in either direction to a bus-rapid transit system and achieving the same result at a fraction of the cost.
I’m not criticizing the technology, I’m criticizing what I feel is an inappropriate application of it. Yes, it’s just an concept, an idea – but unless that’s all you’re interested in keeping it (and many people are content with just that), you need to think of the hard issues.
Let’s just look at cost, shall we, and ground ourselves with some hard numbers. We’ll use SkyCat’s (somewhat optimistic) projections, since that’s what you’ve been referring to. For the SkyCat 20 (120 passengers) they’re saying the total per flight-hour cost is $3850-4195, while the 600-900 passenger SkyCat 220 is $6350-7090. We’ll be kind and use the lower number, and give it a range, since your vehicle is somewhere in between the two. So assuming optimum loading, we’re looking at a per passenger-hour cost of $7.05-32.08. That does not include any infrastructure.
Based on a 2001 US GAO study of bus-rapid transit, the operating cost per vehicle-revenue hour was between $56-143 depending on the city, with the average coming in at $97. Regular 40-foot transit buses carry about 50 people, while extended buses carry up to 70. Plugging that in, you end up with an operating cost per passenger-hour of $1.38-1.94.
So based on absolute utilization of a 900-passenger super airship, without any infrastructure costs or inefficiencies in the system, the cost when compared to the realities of already-implemented BRT systems is nearly 4 times greater. At best. A more realistic estimate is 10-20 times greater. Excluding infrastructure costs on the airship.
Airships are brilliant vehicles that have immense world-changing potential, that I absolutely guarantee will be taken advantage of – I work towards it daily. The problem is when any technology is seen as a panacea by designers and applied to the wrong kinds of challenges. This happens a lot with solar power, when designers enchanted by the novelty of it use it inappropriately.
These are constructive criticisms. Take what you’ve got, revamp it, and shove it back in face so that you can confidently say “I told you so, you [expletive-deleted] naysayer!” There’s nothing I’d like more.
andrew, thanks for the illumination. i suspect as much when i harped on this project (older comment #28, & older older comment #45). they just never did any quantitative analysis whatsoever before locking themselves in a ’solution’. it would have been interesting had they invented a new paradigm with the airship in spite of the handicap that you’ve enumerated.
this gets my vote for most beautiful pictures in the competition. it also gets my vote for most poorly conceived entry…
+ “limited required infrastructure (just overground platforms)” – “just”?? you’ve got to be kidding. who in the world wants to go to a platform that accommodates 400-passenger airships. have you ever boarded a jumbo flight at JFK or LAX? why would the downtown terminal for this be any less terrible an experience. (that’s a statement, not a question.)
+ “the proposed airship has a capacity to carry 400 people” – every seat that you add to these monsters jumps your “loiter time” in the air and “wait time” at ground-based platforms exponentially. yes, i know that not every person is making an embark-disembark transaction at every stop, but, geez, every stop is going to have to wait for some lady or man sitting in the “way back” to walk the isle to the door and get their butts off the airship. And now (i can hear you) you’re saying, “we’ll have lots of doors!” oooopps, the size of your platforms and related infrastruture just went through the roof.
+ “airbia proposes a more dispersed network of station-platforms, that constist of staircases, lifts and ticket spaces” – wait a second… in the first paragraph you said that there would be “limited required infrastructure”… and you would place platforms large enough to accommodate 400-passenger airships in a distributed fashion around the city and burbs? you’d have to pave the whole darn metro area? by the time this wasbuilt, it would be a fiscal and physical monstrosity.
bottom line… great pictures. poorly conceived idea. luckily for you, though, you’re presenting your idea to a shallow audience that didn’t bother to scrath the surface on the economics of the idea. admit, it, you’re laughing, too.
the way you’ve sold this audience on a poor idea with great drawings… i’d hire you as a graphic artist any minute of the day.
…not to mention, in order to fill 50,000 of these airships (which is what you’d need if you wanted to take 1/5 of America’s single-passenger-in-car commuters off the roads), you’d need somewhere in the neighbourhood of 10 billion cubic meters of helium. For reference, if you assume a typical helium leak rate of 1% per annum, you would need to replace it with more than the US’ entire annual consumption of helium gas (which stands around 80 million cubic meters).
That’s not necessarily a real issue, since I think it’s possible to safely use hydrogen as a lift gas with careful design. It just means you shouldn’t say you’re going to use helium, that’s all…
Nice renderings are not solution. It shows our intoxication with anything visual.
thanks again for the constructive discussion. And for visiting our project once more! Ok, lets forget about the environmental benefits that could and would occur from the reduction of car/bus/train use and lets talk about money.
The global demands for oil will soon exceed the supplies of oil, and for this reason the prices will inevitably go up, (wich will probably happen much sooner than 2040). The US GAO study of bus-rapid transit was released in 2001.
What is the estimation for the buses operation cost per passenger hour for 2030? Are today’s means of public transportation going to be in the future as affordable as they are now? Aren’t we soon going to be forced to seek for alternatives?
If the per passenger-hour cost for an airship now is $7.05-32.08, how much will it be in the future, taking into concideration that the technological developments seek for reduction of the cost?
Regardless, lets now go back, to the fact that this is a design competition looking for a variety of design ideas for re-inventing the suburbian areas, that means Visualized ideas, not necesseraly fully resolved or utterly quantified.
What we are proposing, is a half theoritical, half design senario of an additional city to city transportation system, that sees the potentials in airship technologies as a promising possibility.
For this, in my humble opinion, everyone should respond to these visualized ideas, not only ours, primarily by thinking of the ‘possibility’ and ‘probability’ factors. And at the end of the day, designers and architects should bring out ideas-questions that generate constructive discussions.
for this, we thank you all!
so 9833 should it have bad graphics to convince you that it’s a good idea?
design sensibility like this is rear. it’s a STUNNING proposal and it COULD work. isn’t technology advancing? the weather issues could be solved. i so agree with the last comment. it’s a visualized idea, and a seriously brave one. BEUTIFUL DESIGN GUYS! WELL DONE!
Awsome!
Keep it up!
it’s scary how talented you guys are in design!!!! amazing!!!! i think i’m in love..
μπράβο ξαδελφούλα. Θα με πάρεις βόλτα;..
Too big. Won’t work. Will never happen until scaled down to meet reasonable demands.
Beautifully futuristic, but overreaching and impractical.
[...] The Airbia is a system of airships which would fly from the suburbs to the city centre and would form an additional network of transportation in an urban realm. It allows easy hovering, landing and passenger access. It has the capacity to carry 400 people and would fly at a speed of 150 kilometres per hour. It would fly at a height of about 30 to 150 meters and is safe from all angles. It uses helium to fly and has been inspired by Zeppelin technologies. [...]
This proposal is all about enabling the status quo, and to develop it.
I don’t think it addresses the main issue about urban sprawl.
It’s a very nice packaging, but a very orthodox idea.
Nevertheless congratulations on the final proposal.
This theme is very interesting. Airship’s system for transporting men with aeronautic numerous station-portals will be revolutionary transport’ technology step.
Brief info about Airba project was publishet in LJ blog AEROCRAT CONCEPT (in Russian only – THERE)
It’s beautifully conceived but impractical. If the purpose of this design competition is an initial “brain-storming” where practicalities are not a concern, then this one is a winner. But the barriers to actualization are daunting.
[...] Airbia: The PRT of the future? I mean, of the future future?The good people at Dwell Magazine and Inhabitat.com have narrowed submissions in their Reburbia: A Suburban Design Competition to the top twenty proposals for re-envisioning the sprawl that blights the American landscape and keeps us locked in our foreign-oil dependent, ever-expanding commute patterns. [...]
Hadid-ian hijinks!!!
You’re proposing to recreate a Hindenburg in Springfield’s all across the world.
Love it. Kevin are you serious? Subways and commuter trains can carry up to 1,000 people. Its simply a matter of doors. I see no reason why a 400 person zeppelin couldn’t land on a river pier or tie up in an urban park on a weekday morning. Would love to see it in NY!
urban space air transport? a former frank lloyd wright concept more than 60 years old! idea-realising to far from reaching. Anything to more realistic to help into a self destructing high tech planet?
urban space air transport? a former frank lloyd wright concept more than 60 years old! idea-realising to far from reaching. Anything to more realistic to help into a self destructing high tech planet?
I concur with Kevin… This beautifully put together, but lacks any thought aside from, “wouldn’t it be cool to fly to work!?”.
This in now way addresses the competition program, and I just can’t get over the fact that we already have this in place… There called “buses”.
Try and ride one sometime.
amazing pictures, I’m doubful about the concept!
good luck!
[...] AIRBIA: A Suburban Airship by Alexandros Tsolakis / Irene Shamma [...]
Correct me if i’m wrong, but didn’t this entry miss the point? your map looks pretty sick,I’ll definitely use that style for a diagram that actually shows something informative.
Great idea! Pity knowing how governments work it may never be seriously considered by urban planners.
But at least one organization seems to be seriously considering using the Airbia for its club members.(http://www.rsmnews.blogspot.com/)
Perhaps after seeing it being used by the rich and famous…urban planners my reconsider…
Steve Coipa
While a good proposition the project starts to get off track when one realizes that very little is shown of the interaction (programmatically, socially, or technically) at the platform. The brief assumes that these platforms could be anywhere but based on speed and passenger capacities this system would work best as an express system that links major hubs from which other transportation or crazy linear housing would be possible…
Kudos for the strong position taken by the proposal.
As an idea it does make the other entries look tired.
Yet as an idea it is extremely under-developed.
“design sensibility like this is rear. it’s a STUNNING proposal and it COULD work. isn’t technology advancing? the weather issues could be solved.”
which is the same reason why we’ll all be getting into our flying cars to go to work tomorrow.
…and presumably suburban residents will reach the airship embarkation points through the use of their personal jetpacks? Either that or more motoring, I suppose. This is isn’t architecture, it is simply implausibly arranged, if beautifully rendered, science-fiction. The team responsible for this terrifyingly inane concept needs to change fields (video game design, for example, or film-making) if they hope to wield their considerable talents to do anyone any good.
It’s amazing graphically but isn’t this competition supposed to introduce ideas that are executable or at least realistic. This entry seems a bit utopian.
And since we have the technology why did we stop using zeppelins. We used them before, and stopped. It’s not safe and it’s slow. This doesn’t apply to the current world.
While the graphics are sexy, this type of transit kills local retail and markets. If you want to isolate the suburbs from non-residential uses to an even more extreme degree than they are today, you’ve achieved your goal. This, however, I see as completely contrary to the goal of the competition.
The only good that might come out of this design are some centralized amenities and resources at the stations where the wait times would likely be very high for such unwieldy vessels. This could result in some interesting public spaces.
Also, you’ve just increased the likelihood of catastrophic failures in public transit; when a bus breaks down, you can pull over to the side of the road, when an airship breaks down, people fall out of the sky.
This is the best idea presentation wise. While I love the idea, it is just not practical.
The biggest drawback is foul weather. Airships do not fly in thunderstorms or high winds.
Nice renders though.
The city in the pictures looks like its enveloped by smog. Makes it hard to believe a bunch of airships will be completely eco-friendly.
Welldone lads i am convinced you re going to win the competition. Your idea sounds like a green solution that is also vital to our environment continuous.
Great idea; wrong application. Good for long distance & leisurely travel. NOT good for daily commuting between suburbia and city. Successful transportation for commuting needs to be:
1) Fast – including travel time, embarking & disembarking time
2) Frequent
3) Reliable (i.e. not prone to bad weather)
4) Cheap
5) Convenient/Accessible
As a means of Transport, both for cargo or passengers, the Airship has many advantages over any sort of ground vehicle, the lack of need for roads being one of the most obvious.
Sprawl tends to follow transportation, not vice versa (note: TENDS TO; there are exceptions, they do not disprove the general trend.) With the kind of transportation afforded by airships, it would be desirable to build arcologies, starting small and getting bigger. Right now, building low makes sense because transportation is on the ground. Put your transportation in the air, it becomes easier to build high, to leave the land for other uses.
One of the myriad hidden burdens of the current infrastructure of roads and cars and trucks and gas stations and (shudder) is the need for continuous maintenance. Within 10 years, unmaintained roads are almost invisible ruins. Already, there exists major technology to strip off old concrete and recycle it to create newer roads. So the well-developed road network of the industrial west is more like a Tibetan butter sculpture than perhaps we choose to imagine.
Connect major shopping malls with their acres of parking lots and existing platforms (roofs) with transport airships. Minimal infrastructure will be needed. As the trend becomes popular, I can see communities where the dwellings are in a high-rise building surrounded by parks and golf-courses, connected to shopping and entertainment via Airship. As the trend continues, It is possible that the obsolete roads get pulled up and their material recycled into more dwellings.
When dwellings can go anywhere, farmland tends to revert to what it should be, forests and prairies become assets again, and dwellings start to appear where the living is better, or where the scenery is more interesting.
But, the idea is not all that new. The top of the Empire State building was designed with an incorporated Airship dock.
Hydrogen is flammable, yes-in-deedy. So why do we allow ourselves to speed about carrying tanks of Gasoline? Besides, of all the Airship passenger miles in the 1930s, Airships are still safer than Aircraft, and only once was fire a problem. Most airships were lost to high winds causing the tails to fail.
I like it a lot.
Very good efforts… i think the detailing will surly resolve the things in workable way…all the best!
[...] the sky, and stands to save our suburbs by breaking the shackles of car culture? The answer is Airbia, an incredible fleet of high-flying airships that aims to create an efficient and eco-friendly [...]
It is a good idea. However given the fact that airships of the huge size of the Hindebourg type carried as much as 40-60 passengers, even given a blimp design which can carry more and a lighter structure will not avoid having a huge airship to carry more than 150 passengers (the equivalent of a metro for example). The big question is whether cities will like having a huge airship hovering over their heads and it is not so much hiding the sunlight but questions of security (aiships are secure themselves but prone to deliberate attacks)
Still it is a good idea as it is substantially cheaper than a metro and it is something you adapt to your needs from city to city. However I would think of it mostly a solution to link different cities to more remote areas, not suburbia and city centers.
i think this concept is too grand, not interested in airport scale public transportation. go watch minority report. that is an awesome public transportation concept. smaller quicker more personal and private modes of transport. you have great looking designs but i have already seen the flight of the navigator in 1986. i feel like i want to take a ride to mars in this. not to pick up some milk.
… a bad copy of jean-marie massaud’s “MANNED CLOUD”
http://www.massaud.com/site/en/#/works/design
Why are we not using airships to commute now?
They have low payload weight, unwieldy handling, susceptibility to wind and glacial starts and stops. Think about it: everything on board has to be offset by a lifting volume of helium. Airships of old were luxurious, and prices accordingly. The massive ones, as one poster mentioned, carried 130 passengers, or three large busloads. To increase that load we would have to pare down everything, from seating space to services to carry on bags.
To stop, ground transports grab onto the moving parts, and friction does the rest. A floater needs to reverse thrust; you will be putting out nearly the same power to stop as to start, minus air drag. This means an airship is a terrible start/stop vehicle.
Once you stop it, where do you put it? The “alien bus stop tower” design looks cool, but you would need to level a city block or two to build it, and clear out all the tall buildings on the approach and the eggres corridor.
This design creates major problems, is based on tech that doesn’t pencil out, and solves no dilemma for the urban commuter that is not better addressed by the humble bus.
Remember the cause of the Hindenburg fire – the main trickers were the materials and treatments the alu construction and the skin had. With materials of today and the future we can make it much more safe!
I like your idea – it’s a new of thinking to use of the airship technology. Together with a mate from architecture school 2 years ago we designed an airship fueled by solar cells to transport wind turbines.
http://rum1.aarch.dk/index.php?id=106915
The Russians among have something going..
http://www.marchmontnews.com/story.php?story_id=12554&story=LocomoSky-puts-$660m-into-hot-air
http://www.locomosky.ru/en/
Are developing more on the project?