DE-URBANISED EPIDEMICS // COOPETITION WINNER
Published Work
2020

Project Title:
Skyside: A New Living

Project Description:
Ravaging through the world, the COVID-19 pandemic has upended our way of life in ways we could not imagine weeks prior. Suddenly dense urban areas have become hotspots for the spread of disease, and people across the world have flocked to remote cabins and homes in the countryside. In many ways the coronavirus has pushed rampant urbanization to the brink, but the arrival at this moment is far more complex than the pandemic.

The human race has spent decades focusing on urbanization, efficiency, and convinience. Nature has been evicted from acres and acres of land, to be replaced by dense urban centers that consume the varied layers of the environment, from mining and extraction to deforestation and mass farming. The result is a vicious disconnect between humanity and the true source of its livelihood: nature, not cities. Almost ironically, the coronavirus’ spread is inversely proportional to de-urbanization.

Skyside sets forth a plan to reestablish the relationship between the city and the countryside on one hand and humanity and nature on the other. Reflecting on the pandemic and struggling global ecologies, it aims to re-insert nature into cities, strategically de-urbanizing, dis-infecting, and de-densifying neighborhoods, metropolises, and regions. The plan is not a single drastic measure, nor is it a series of interventions at a specific scale. Rather, Skyside is an entirely reinterpreted way of life for the human race, preserving cities by partly undoing them, and supporting nature by partly unleashing it.

New York City and Beirut are examined as two candidates for testing the methodological approach to inserting nature within dense urban environments. The cities are drastically different despite some similarities, and they undoubtedly both benefit from de-densification and the reemergence of nature within their most dense neighborhoods.

Skyside is illustrated in phases: from its conception, where enabling structures are planted in the city, to the rampant growth of nature along these structures. How these cities would ultimately be transformed by such an intervention is anyone’s best guess. Nature will decide its course--bringing in opportunity, bringing back fresh air, and bringing forth an intrinsic companionship between humanity and nature.

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