Floating Mega Arcology for Boston’s Harbor
Get ready Boston, someday you might just have this incredible floating city within a city located in your harbor. The BoA, short for Boston Arcology, is a sustainable mega structure designed by Kevin Schopfer, who also designed the amazing New Orleans Arcology Habitat (NOAH). The BoA will house 15,000 people in hotels, offices, retail spaces, museums, condominiums, and even a new city hall. Built to LEED standards with golden proportions, this amazing building would serve as an expansion of the city without impacting what is already currently built.
To be located on a buoyant platform of concrete cells right in the Boston Harbor next to downtown, BoA would sit perpendicular to the waterfront, thus minimizing the view sheds of existing buildings onshore. The massing of the structure was designed using the principles of the golden triangle. Angles and towers criss-cross inside of a fixed border, giving structure to the projections inside. Elevators and moving walkways aid the transportation of the residents, employees and visitors in order to create an all pedestrian environment.
Sky gardens will be located every 30 floors and act as public squares for gathering spaces. BoA will also include a bevy of sustainable elements in order to achieve a LEED building certification. Energy will be generated via wind turbines, solar panels and harbor based water turbines. Natural daylight will flood the building with the help of a passive glazing system. BoA will also include a fresh water recovery system, greywater recycling, and sky garden heating and cooling vents. And while the design seems pretty incredible and maybe even impossible (especially considering the economy and lack of funding), it truly is a spectacular mix of architecture and ecology.
This entry was posted on Monday, January 18th, 2010 at 11:30 am and is filed under Architecture, Engineering, Green Designs, Landscape Architecture, Urban Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
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