Page 20 - Vertical City
P. 20
20 The vertical city
cables or to stock in increasingly less costly and higher
performing batteries.
In almost every issue of the MIT Technology Review
new advances are being announced.
All opaque elements of the exterior panels of the
building could therefore logically be fitted with pho-
tovoltaic elements 17 as I have planned for the future
building of the Faculty of Applied Sciences at the Free
University of Brussels (ULB) as well as, I hope, for other
buildings I have designed for the Campus de “La Plaine”
in Ixelles-Brussels [figure 6] 18.
This essay begins thus with the influence of the tra-
jectory of the sun on the form of the city, to go on to
an analysis of the networks connecting the buildings, the
architecture of the towers and the aspects of construc-
tion that characterize them to arrive at a theoretical
project of a small vertical city.
The questions of “where and why?” conclude this
essay.
17 Extended to glassed surfaces, the entire envelope of the building
could soon become so. Wysips (Aix-en-Provence) produced films
that provide 50 W/m2 with a 70 to 90% transparency as of this year.
18 Evolution of teaching methods, apprenticeship and experimenta-
tion are increasingly assisted by MOOCs (Massive Open On-line
Courses) incite review of the morphology of this type of building in
the same manner as the NWOW (New World of Working) modi-
fies the morphology of the working place. Although designed fol-
lowing a strict and hierarchical space planning, the wings of these
buildings could evolve into more shallow and open volumes, in
order to provide open and multi-purpose spaces as well as to maxi-
mize natural lighting.
