HUB_ (Hybrid Urban Bioscape)

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HUB_ (Hybrid Urban Bioscape)

Type

Commercial › Office Retail Exhibition Center
Hospitality + Sport › Stadium
Cultural › Gallery Hall/Theater Cultural Center
Landscape + Planning › Public Park
Transport + Infrastructure › Parking Bus

SIZE

1,000,000 +

BUDGET

$50M - 100M

Seattle Center HUB_ (Hybrid Urban Bioscape)
While society is becoming more complex, two social dynamics could
have an enormous incidence in the way that public space will perform in the
future. People have a growing concern about environmental matters while an increasing
access to information in real time ( and to the mobile media technologies that make
it possible) are defying the classical conception of public space, redefining
our expectations and confronting it to evolving demands for a wide range of new
social experiences.
The Seattle Center HUB_ (Hybrid Urban Bioscape) is an innovative
urban space that explores the value of urban hybridization as a design
opportunity to address sustainable and technological issues in the definition
of the contemporary public space.
A hybrid urban bioscape could be defined as a particular area
hosting a delicate balance of urban and natural life and as the framework which
integrates the symbiotic relation between those natural and built components
necessary for its long-term survival.
The HUB is called to be the most important public spaces near
downtown Seattle,
embodying its dynamic character and showcasing its strong sustainable identity.
Harmonizing urban open space with landscape and ecology, and taking the introduction
of an important amount of underground parking as an opportunity, The HUB represents
by its strategic position in Seattle Center a great occasion to reconfigure the
Euclidian spatial framework of the campus, creating an exceptional and lively
metropolitan open space in a manner which is fundamentally different from the
classical conception of public space as a void.
HYBRIDIZING URBAN
FIELDS
The starting point for our proposal was to introduce an innovative
approach to reach the same goals envisioned by the Seattle Center Century 21
Master Plan. Instead of conceive the demolitions, reconstructions, new
buildings, the underground parking, and the major open space as separate
elements, allowing some degree of integration for sustainable features we focused
on defining this public space project starting from a sustainable approach.
Hybridizing architecture, landscape, ecologies, urban space, and
urban media technologies, we allow the surfacing of a new kind of open space,
which can be defined as a modern and integrated modern urban catalyst. A solar ribbon canopy will evolve unifying
the existing buildings, creating the new ones, shaping the main new open space,
and finally defining urban paths and new ways of interaction to intensify the
social gathering. This new American urban hybrid, will acts as a large scale
campus hinge, introducing new dynamics in the classical and balanced grid
structure of the campus.
A LINKED CAMPUS
The Hub main strategy consist in taking the new layer added to the
site, the underground parking complex, to transform this huge source of
visitors in a real new gate for the campus. While doing that, special attention
was paid to enliven the two main East-West interfaces (the Key Arena / new
stadium area). The key issue was to define a new appropriate urban scale for
this access, considering the role and functions that the new public space will
have.
Integrating the two different campus levels, the upper one
(International Fountain) and the 5th
Ave. N. entry level, the proposal reveals an
exiting new landscape. A cascade of green fields is displayed: large terraces
are completely horizontal allowing wide range of outdoors activities, and
others are gently slopped serving as a natural amphitheater to enjoy concerts
and have great views across the campus.
This configuration provides access from the green fields to a new
public frontage, revealing new publics programs, allowing direct access from
the parking level to the Center House roof terrace, and creating a real urban
gate for the campus.
ENLIVENING THE FUTURE
TODAY
What shall be the shape and the fingerprint of the ZERO CARBON
economy in the most important big cities open spaces? As well as in 1962, Seattle Center must inspire today the upcoming
generations in an innovating way, showcasing a comprehensive vision of what a
lively and sustainable future could be.
All scales concerning the urban experience must be involved by this
vision: from urban furniture which harvest rain water, or urban lighting
powered by wind energy to the retrofitting of the principal campus buildings,
including on site solar energy production. Actions and strategies in every
scale could be replicable transforming the existing campus by the joint action
of its different actors.
The HUB proposal wants to anticipate Seattle Center
green future in the core of its major public space. The legacy that this
proposal wants to project forward is to sustain a blueprint for Seattle's role as a global
hotspot in sustainable issues for the next half-century.
SHOWCASING SEATTLE ENVIRONMENTAL
POTENTIAL
While the world is looking for alternatives to fossil fuels and CO2
reduction, Seattle
has the potential to be a world leader in this raising Zero Carbon economy.
Considering only its solar potential, Seattle receives
more sunlight than Germany,
the world leader in solar power.
People involvement and environmental awareness is the most
important resource to create a resilient city and to foster people to take
action the education has a major role to play. The HUB seeks to integrate
emerging sustainable technologies into the public space. A solar canopy will integrate solar PV on its
top. A greenhouse biome host exotic plants and trees from other latitudes
enhancing knowledge and becoming a major hotspot of biodiversity for the Lake
to Bay Loop (between Lake Union and Elliott
Bay). This new program
also integrates an urban Algae bioreactor, attracting a very wider public to
discover it.
A HUB BETWEEN PHYSICAL
AND VIRTUAL
Our experiences in today’s cities are no longer limited to physical
spaces. From smartphones and wireless technologies, to GPS systems and social
media, those evolving digital technologies are increasingly shape our everyday
lives and our urban environment, turning
our cities into ‘hybrid cities’. The HUB proposal seeks to overpass classical
Euclidian paradigm to define a new kind of social interaction in this
‘sentient’ public space.
The solar canopy will create a unique interactive media device
which reacts to its surrounding environment. While providing shelter and shadow
for the visitors, it will input public space with Seattle Center’s
ambient and social data, amplifying people’s experience in the public space
(augmented reality). Those nodes of contact between virtual and physical space
created under the canopy roof will display images, sound, videos, and
information, enhancing new ways of urban dialogue and fostering a shared sense
of belonging and a strong sense of place and ‘ownership’.