The Mandragore: The world’s tallest carbon sink tower. New York USA
The Rescubika design team is honoured to present its new project «Mandragore», a residential tower located in the heart of Roosevelt Island, between the Queensboro bridge and the southern tip of the island.
The mandrake is a plant whose often anthropomorphic form (its ramifications giving it a vague human appearance, with a trunk, legs), is at the origin of many legends.
This plant, rich in alkaloids with hallucinogenic properties, is surrounded by many legends, the ancients attributing it extraordinary magical virtues.
Like the mandrake, the project is an evocation of the human figure, of a bodily movement that is synonymous with life.
The symbolism of the body confronts us with our own destiny, the one that reminds us that we must preserve our environment in order to live in symbiosis with nature.
This tower was designed to be a huge and then carbon that could trap a huge amount of carbon emissions.
Broadly speaking, a carbon sink or CO sink is a reservoir that absorbs carbon circulating in the biosphere. This carbon is then trapped in living matter and subsequently more or less sustainably sequestered in organic matter.
Thus, carbon sinks help to remove CO2 from the atmosphere and play a key role in the fight against the greenhouse effect.
Achieving carbon neutrality by 2050, an ambitious target to fight climate change is the solution so that the temperature only increases by two degrees Celsius.
The tower implements various measures that can decarbonize:
Using passive energies:
The “Canadian” well or climate sink is a surface geothermal solution designed to warm new air in winter and cool it in summer. It is based on air-ground thermal exchanges; it is called passive.
It’s a network of buried pipes that works like an air-to-ground heat exchanger.
Used for building air exchange, this exchanger is based on the difference between the temperature of the air captured outside the building (ambient air) and that of the ground which tends to become constant when a sufficient depth is reached. The air that circulates in these pipes will capture refrigerators during hot periods and calories during cold periods and thus help to cool or warm up the new air of a building.
Lower production methods (telework, sobriety)
Telework is a professional activity carried out in whole or in part at a distance from the place where the result of the work is expected. He is opposed to work on site, that is, work done on his employer’s premises.
Each apartment will have an office room.
Energy sobriety is a political concept aimed at reducing energy consumption through lifestyle changes and societal transformations. It is expressed in particular by the limitation of goods and services produced and consumed to an adequate level.
This project is able to absorb a large amount of carbon and is therefore less polluting for the ecosystem.
Thanks to the nature of the wood materials, the overall shape and the large number of plants and shrubs, carbon is trapped.
This project is a response to the "city of tomorrow", a city that interacts positively with man and his territory.
A city that will take into account the carbon footprint that must become neutral in 2050.
This is why, beyond an aesthetic project, there is now this notion of "carbon sink".
Some numbers:
Height of the building: 737 m.
Footprint: 587 m X 131 m
160 floors
36 wind turbines
8300 shrubs
1600 trees
24,500 m² of plant walls.
7,000 m² of photovoltaic facades.