ReBurbia - A Suburban Design Competition

Recycled and repurposed from five 40′ high-cube shipping containers the 540 Eco-Dwelling is a modular design using a composite highly insulated skin, solar panel array, and wind turbines to condition its inhabitants and produce energy.

The huge amount of vacant land in the abandoned american suburbs can be used to increase the ruralization of the city. We propose themed neighborhoods, specialized on a few plots of land: the sheep district, the chicken district, the pig district… This would allow neighbours to get in touch to keep or exchange their animals.

Half of all Americans live in suburbs, which are notoriously wasteful. By moving all suburbanites into a new residential boulevard for living built around a public transportation network and razing the houses from their former streets, many benefits arise. This proposal redefines the suburban landscape through these changes to make it a more efficient and healthier place.

In our proposal, a super carousel takes place of the original vehicle road. It delivers different substances for daily life from big box store. The carousel dynamically reforms the community space by carrying different buildings and objects to occupy the vacant space among MacMasions. Consequently, it brings in more complex activities for suburbia community and redefines the relationship among neighborhood.

I imagine a suburbia where other animals are given living spaces amongst the spaces humans live in, where people without access to garden spaces are still able to grow their own food, where vertical spaces are not just hostile spaces devoid of life instead they host mini-ecosystems with diverse flora and fauna. These are the concepts behind Brick Habitats. It is a modular system of bricks which allows us to create a wide range of features on the side of our buildings including habitats for plants and animals, water bowls/baths, perches, shelters, feeders.

The ecolinks project consolidates the landfill and cemetery with the amenity of the golf course. By utilizing the resources of each, ecolinks is an infrastructural center for a self-sufficient community. Cemeteries are once again a vibrant space for recreation with the added benefit of providing grazing land to herds of Shetland cows owned by residents.

Nevada has the highest foreclosure rate in the United States. 70,000 homes are affected- meaning 1 in 16 in homes is vacant. Not coincidentally, there are nearly 6,000 Clark County School District students who are now considered homeless. 1/3 of the homeless in Nevada are children under the age of 18, suggesting a much larger floating homeless population.

Superstudio’s Seventh City (”Continuous Conveyor Belt City”) moves with its 8 million inhabitants. In front of the city is a factory that builds the new districts, and behind it, another factory that destructs the older ones. It is an image of the american suburb: its main characteristic is not to sprawl, but to move. Continuously, new suburbs are built, and old suburbs are abandoned (see Detroit).
This movement is older than the suburb itself: the US have a long tradition of ghost cities, aimed at a semi-nomadic population and left in place after use.

This suburban retrofit turns a common element that is quickly becoming a liability for Florida communities, golf courses, into an amenity that contributes to sustainability and quality of life. Golf courses are expensive and resource intensive to maintain and decreasing in popularity. In their place, agricultural cultivation can provide fresh produce, local employment, community engagement and beautiful landscapes.

Taking inspiration in artist communities like Christiania in Denmark, or the squat houses of Berlin like the Tacheles, mobile_SUBURBIA aims at supporting the creation of such creative communities. Suburban cities provide the most important basis for this project, which is on one hand affordable living space and big distance to the creative centers of the cities on the other.

ParkUrbia proposes public “livable parks” within suburban voids and new forest infills along the peripheral greenbelt to reorient the dynamics generated by the suburban sprawl within metropolitan limits. The objective is to reconcile the interaction between existing residual and vacant spaces and the surrounding subdivisions, and between outer fringe areas and their adjoining suburbs. It resolves the lack of public space and reorients the fragmentation of space by introducing a mesh of green connections throughout the entire metropolis.

The Federal Highway System is perhaps the most used and simultaneously ignored piece of our urban fabric. It is one of the great modernist ideals symbolizing everything that is right and wrong with our country. Through the insertion of highways into our urban fabric, we solidified our dependence on the automobile and undermined the physical and cultural landscape of post-war America. The highway system has been a part of everyday American life for 50 years. It is ingrained deep into our psyche, blinding us from realizing its past, present, and continuous influence on our urban environment. ¬We generally don’t notice the highways at all.

Across the country, individual stores located in strip malls are closing down. Jobs are lost, a local source of revenue is lost, and an empty husk of a building is left in its place. These empty stores provide a huge opportunity to spur local economies. At the same time, they offer a chance to move away from pure consumerism that they previously embodied, towards a path to sustainability.

The lawn is the epitome of suburban waste. It has roots in a desire to bring man closer to nature at the comfort of his home, however, over time it has become yet another site of conspicuous consumption, requiring never ending amounts of maintenance and an outpouring of natural resources, spending and time. We propose reclaiming the suburban yard for growing food!

Since sustainability in suburbia is mainly a form issue, this project aims to turn the existing sprawl scheme into a constructive strategy of high density points, in order to control and improve transport, energy and waste management.

The Infill-House is a single-family residential product designed to fit within the existing infrastructure of suburban neighborhoods where increased density is desired and the cultural and historic character of the community is also worthy of preservation. The home is best described as upholding the ideals of Stewardship, which references not only a strategy of sustainable design but also embodies the conscious process of protection and preservation of place, culture, and tradition.

The single family detached suburban house has come to define the American Dream for millions of people. Yet, the recent foreclosure crisis has left this dream in tatters for many. While these houses embody much of what of what is wrong with the suburbs (excessive size, homogenous styles, inefficient use of land, environmental destruction, low density), they have come to provide an affordable and high quality of living for millions of Americans. Instead of discounting these houses completely, they offer the unique potential to rethink such vulnerable communities by increasing their flexibility, adaptability, and resilience.

With the rise in vacated mega stores across the nation, resourceful owners and communities will re-imagine better uses for these behemoth structures. This big box re-use will provide opportunities to generate greater community sustainability on many levels.
Economic Sustainability:

One of the largest “downtowns” in America does not bear much resemblance to anyone’s image of downtown. Tysons Corner, Virginia, located a mere dozen miles west of Washington DC, is the poster child for sprawled America.

Urban Green Energy (UGE) has set out to innovate the world of street lighting with its wind/solar street lamp.

A component-based approach
Instead of forcing one design to all projects, UGE’s solution is customized to fit each one. Some lamps will be installed in sunny locations while others will be where the wind is more prominent.