A couple of months ago, we wrote about Abu Dhabi’s Future Energy Company and their plans to build a huge solar power plant as part of the Masdar Initiative, a multi-part agenda for promoting and developing renewable energy and sustainability in the UAE. A few days ago they announced the next big thing to roll out of their master plan: a walled city in the Emirates desert which will purportedly be “the first zero carbon, zero-waste city in the world.” Perhaps the only other sustainable urban projects of comparable scale and ambition are Dongtan and Huangbaiyu in China (by ARUP and William McDonough + Partners, respectively) which in some ways share a similar context to this project, in that they are each situated at the edge of a burgeoning 21st century metropolis, and at the crest of dramatic cultural transformation. The Abu Dhabi development — called “Masdar” — will be designed by the celebrated architecture firm, Foster + Partners, and will house the Future Energy Company’s headquarters, as well as a new university. As Foster + Partners describes the project: The principle of the Masdar development is a dense walled city to be constructed in an energy efficient two-stage phasing… (more)
(Posted by Sarah Rich in Green Building at 10:12 AM)