Urban Incubators
Energy-conscious prototypes in Xiamen, China

////CONCEPTS////

UR-BAN –adjective
–origin: Latin urbanus, from urbs “city”.
of, pertaining to, or designating a city or town.

IN-CU-BA-TOR –noun
an apparatus in which media inoculated with microorganisms are cultivated at a constant temperature.

PRO-TO-TYPE –noun
–origin: Greek (prototypon), “archetype, original”
an original type, form, or instance of something serving as a typical example, basis, or standard for other things of the same category.

GAL-LER-Y –noun
a collection; an assortment.

UR-BAN IN-CU-BA-TOR –concept
a city scale place where something new is cultivated.

UR-BAN PRO-TO-TYPE –concept
new thing that is cultivated in the incubator.

UR-BAN GAL-LER-Y –concept
a meta space where urban dynamics are managed.

Urban Incubators are environments in which pilot projects are cultivated and become prototypes for universal use. A prototype organises different processes and links them in a new way, for example to enable a city to become more energy efficient as a whole. An Urban Gallery is a meta space, methodology, organizational framework and support structure that helps to choreograph all the processes pertaining to certain urban projects and/or spatial concepts.

////FRAMEWORK////

Our profession is becoming deeply involved in the race to mitigate climate change. Cities are increasingly large producers of CO2 emissions, over half of all CO2 emissions originate in cities, and additional emissions are generated by the energy used to power them.

The main challenge of urbanism and its architectural components is to address the role of energy and all related environmental and sustainable issues. This has to be a primary force that shapes all planning and design. Energy is the city’s new design force; it’s new infrastructure, zoning and organization. It is architecture’s new foundations, walls and roofs.

////HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY////

We need to imagine, form and test this new professional shift in the universities. We invite you to be part of an ongoing experiment in China, where cities like Xiamen are trying to reduce carbon emissions on a city wide scale through new policies, model masterplans and pilot projects. Chora and London Metropolitan University were there at the very beginning of the experiment, when its students helped to formulate Xiamen’s first vision. Since then the initiative has turned into a full blown urban scale project with many collaborating city departments and institutions. The project in Xiamen is part of a larger project: the Taiwan Strait Climate Change Incubator. Within this geopolitical initiative there are several urban scale incubator projects in progress: the Xiamen Energy Masterplan and the Taichung (Taiwan) Strategic Energy Masterplan. These masterplans form the basis for an ongoing drive to change the profession of the architect and planner into a more active, daring and provocative. The shift requires the use of the new building materials for cities: energy, sustainability, green technology economies and new environmental geographies.

////FUTURE AND PROGRAMME////

This year we will address the need for individual pilot projects in the city of Xiamen. You will design a specific urban prototype that will link any form of energy efficiency or energy generation to programmes such as housing, industry, transport or other. This prototype will be a building, infrastructure or a mechanical system. Your prototype will directly contribute to the city’s desire to become a model city in China in regard to CO2 emissions reduction. Because the use of urban prototypes inherently includes visions of entirely new and different cities we will start the year with a study on historical urban utopias and their architectural expressions. This will give you a much needed experience in the mapping and diagramming of social, economical and spatial processes and in instrumentalization of these processes as spatial design tools. Further, it will help you to learn reading of the space and significance of the spatial material organizations. You will be urged to develop skills in physical modelling and you will be introduced to the Urban Gallery planning management methodology to test your prototype and simulate its adaptation and proliferation. The Urban Gallery will also act as a didactic open source tool to create a common pool of research.