Bionics Tower in Shanghai
Will a cold so unbearable on the floor 300 that will not fail to enjoy the sights? At about 1000 meters high, how can change the scales? How big buy cars, people, street trees, parks? ¿Aguantaría mild temper any community meetings in a house with 100,000 neighbors? Questions that must be done in a future city dwellers vertical daughters over the skyscrapers, the lovers, and between sinful thought, which now inhabit the imagination of many architects around the world and the Spaniards are not foreign but actors. This is the case of Eloy Celaya, Rosa Cervera and Javier Pioz, authors of the proposed Tower Bionics, a mastodon thought to Shanghai, with 1228 meters high, which was disrupted following the tragedy of the Twin Towers, but that seems definitely not dead.
Two exhibitions organized in the wake of years of Spain in China, scheduled for January and May 2008 in Beijing and Shanghai, revive the idea of a utopia which was parked in 2001. There, in the unstoppable growth of cities, forced to grow up and not horizontally, as in Europe, again showing that post-modern tower of Babel. Proud, bright, a village of science fiction, with its kilometer passed.
How far can go? The truth is that the struggle goes underground to meters and a double jump when the mark is 600 seems difficult. Still, Torre Bionics is the only project of its kind. In Japan there is another, fueled by the Takenaka Corporation, called The City of Heaven, more than 1000 meters for offices, homes and varied users would have 10 floors each with gardens and public spaces. Could accommodate 150,000 people daily.
Remains utopian, crazy dreams, subject to the daring and luck, many times. Although, at present, in the eyes of Javier Pioz, are any illusions that have developed around it a philosophy which he and his wife and partner, Rosa Cervera, have become disseminators: bionic architecture. "The responses of bionic architecture are simple: Nature did it before and I did better," says Pioz.
His obsession with the skyscraper began in New York, where he specialized in this type of construction. There he saw that science was applicable to the bionic architecture: "It's funny, because science bionics emerged in the former USSR and United States driven by the need for armaments. Try to learn from the natural behavior of the flight of a bird, as did Leonardo da Vinci, the first bionic, "says Pioz.
With this simple vision, after the development of science, has already planned several things. "At this time, after the Chinese authorities stop the project after the trauma of September 11, children have emerged from the Tower Bionics. Spoke of a project already under way to Calcutta in India, which is the highest in the city: two towers of 150 meters, "the roof of India today," which houses the Hotel Intercontinental. Children are vertical, but there are also horizontal "City Spain in Feng-Xiang, a Latino population in the air that we have implemented the concept of square, the most characteristic of Spanish architecture for public spaces and buildings officers. " The area will also be German or English cities. Grace is precisely the topic. "We just had one condition, we used red tiles, few or many, but that would have."
But their major challenge remains the Tower Bionics. We need to imagine a lot, compare with real things to get an idea of its size. The building would be sustained on a basis of 260 - 160 meters, have 300 floors, would be four times the Eiffel Tower. How much does it cost? "The calculations are 10,500 million euros, we are talking about two million square meters."
Shanghai looks like the place for that. And a cost and could only be assumed to hotels in the middle. The floating population of the city china is twice that of its normal inhabitants, 15 million people. "So half of the squares of the Tower, 50000, will go to hotel." In total, between the hotel and housing, talk about watershed and Huesca or put together a town on the outskirts of Madrid, Alcobendas as Parliament or in a building.
The need for vertical growth is obvious in the mountains of cement are in Shanghai. Mayor in 2000 and told Pioz. "Maybe now is not necessary, but in a few years, we need to build more," he said. I knew well the manager of a city in which radio, to get an idea of going to the Puerta del Sol Villalba, 45 km from the center of Madrid, there are 5,000 buildings over 100 meters.
The city as regards
José María EZQUIAGA, national award for Urban Development, which holds two Spaniards focus a debate in the international architecture to a project, but does not have much faith in the vertical growth. "Never a substitute for building a city," says EZQUIAGA. "Cities are made up of wounds, scars. The more complex artifact of our civilization is called the city and buildings can not be replaced. We must keep our public spaces, or streets or squares. Citizenship arises from the public spaces, "he says.
Architects to recognized as Rafael Moneo not believe in these proposals. "The horizontal developments are much more comfortable in all aspects of life. The horizontal growth consumes more land, true, but it is better to live adjacent to it. Today, the economic power and to legitimize almost any business has more advantages such growth. They are more comfortable for them to grow these macrostructures and moderately long. It moves all over by pulsed financial rationality and opportunism that makes too much. "