An atlas of urban islands

Flevoland, The Netherlands

A Plan for Tokyo Bay Flevopolder

Stockholm, Sweden Tokyo, Japan

Flevoland, The Netherlands

Treasure Island

San Francisco, CA, USA

Treasure Island

San Francisco, CA, USA

Floating Island

New York City, NY, USA

Floating Island

New York City, NY, USA

Terminal Island

Los Angeles, CA, USA

Terminal Island

Los Angeles, CA, USA

Nordhavn

Lagos Island Venice

Green Archipelago Gamla Stan

A Plan for Tokyo Bay Flevopolder

Copenhagen, Denmark Lagos, Nigeria Venice, Italy

Berlin, Germany

Stockholm, Sweden Tokyo, Japan

Flevoland, The Netherlands

Nordhavn

Lagos Island Venice

Green Archipelago Gamla Stan

A Plan for Tokyo Bay Flevopolder

Copenhagen, Denmark Lagos, Nigeria Venice, Italy

Berlin, Germany Stockholm, Sweden Tokyo, Japan

Flevoland, The Netherlands

Treasure Island

San Francisco, CA, USA

Treasure Island

San Francisco, CA, USA

Floating Island

New York City, NY, USA

Floating Island

New York City, NY, USA

Terminal Island

Los Angeles, CA, USA

Terminal Island

Los Angeles, CA, USA

Nordhavn

Lagos Island Venice

Green Archipelago Gamla Stan

A Plan for Tokyo Bay Flevopolder

Copenhagen, Denmark Lagos, Nigeria Venice, Italy

Berlin, Germany

Stockholm, Sweden Tokyo, Japan

Flevoland, The Netherlands

Nordhavn

Lagos Island Venice

Green Archipelago Gamla Stan

A Plan for Tokyo Bay Flevopolder

Copenhagen, Denmark Lagos, Nigeria Venice, Italy

Berlin, Germany Stockholm, Sweden Tokyo, Japan

Flevoland, The Netherlands

Treasure Island

San Francisco, CA, USA

Treasure Island

San Francisco, CA, USA

Floating Island

New York City, NY, USA

Floating Island

New York City, NY, USA

Terminal Island

Los Angeles, CA, USA

Terminal Island

Los Angeles, CA, USA

Nordhavn

Lagos Island Venice

Green Archipelago

Copenhagen, Denmark Lagos, Nigeria Venice, Italy

Berlin, Germany

Nordhavn

Lagos Island Venice

Green Archipelago

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, GSAPP

Flevopolder

Tokyo, Japan

Gamla Stan

Copenhagen, Denmark Lagos, Nigeria Venice, Italy

Berlin, Germany

SCALES of ENVIRONMENT

A Plan for Tokyo Bay

Stockholm, Sweden

SPRING 2016

An Atlas of Urban Islands Gamla Stan

Copenhagen Map est.1850

City within a City

01

Christianshavn is a neighbourhood in Copenhagen, Denmark. It was founded in the early 17th century by Christian IV as part of his extension of the fortifications of Copenhagen. Originally, it was laid out as an independent privileged merchant’s town with inspiration from Dutch cities but it was soon incorporated into Copenhagen proper.For much of the 20th century a working-class neighbourhood, Christianshavn developed a bohemian reputation in the 1970s and it is now a fashionable, diverse and lively part of the city with its own distinctive personality, with residents tending to see themselves first as Christianshavners and then as Copenhageners. Businessmen, students, artists, hippies and traditional families with children live side-by-side.

Danish Architecture Center

Music/ Performance Center

Christianshaven Copenhagen, Denmark 3.4 KM2 10,140 People Urban Actual Island

Public, Multiple Architects Est. 1600 Built

Historic Copenhagen Street

Copenhagen Opera House

Copenhagen Performance Art

Copenhagen Art Institution

Boosting Education Institute

EUGENE CHANG

New Commercial District

Eastern Docklands Aerial Photo (Borneo)

City Expanded

02

The Eastern Docklands (Dutch: Oostelijk Havengebied) is a neighborhood of Amsterdam, Netherlands, located between the IJ and the Amsterdam–Rhine Canal in the borough of Amsterdam-Oost. The harbor area was constructed in the late nineteenth century to allow for increasing trade with the Dutch East Indies; a new location was necessitated by the construction of the Amsterdam Centraal railway station, which replaced the old quays.

The area, about 2/3 water and 1/3 land, consists of an extension of the Oostelijke Handelskade, east of the center of town, and four artificial “islands” (peninsulas), all of which were former industrial and harbor locations. In the early 2000s, after a large-scale reorganization, the city’s biggest post-World War II building project, the Eastern Docklands was home to some 17,000 people living in some the highest population densities in the Netherlands.

Rietlanden

8

1 2 5

Entrepot West

Eastern Docklands Amsterdam, Netherlands - KM2 17,000 People Urban Actual+Artificial Islands

Public, Multiple Architects Est. 1800 Built

KNSM Eiland

7 3 4 6

Sporenburg Borneo

CruqiusEiland

EUGENE CHANG

Oostelijke Handels Kade

Java Eiland

Avalon, The Largest City on Santa Catalina Island

City Getaway

03

Catalina was originally settled by Native Americans who called the island Pimugna or Pimu. The first Europeans to arrive on Catalina claimed it for the Spanish Empire. Over the years, territorial claims to the island transferred to Mexico and then to the United States. During this time, the island was sporadically used for smuggling, otter hunting, and gold-digging, before successfully being developed into a tourist destination in the 1920s. Now, close to one million people travel to Catalina Island every year. Since the 1970s, most of the island has been administered by the Catalina Island Conservancy. Its total population in the 2010 census was 4,096 people, 90 percent of whom live in the island’s only incorporated city, Avalon.

Los Angeles Marina del Rey

Long Beach

LA Harbors

Huntington Beach Huntington Harbor Newport Beach Newport Beach

Two Harbors

Dana Point

Little Harbor

Santa Catalina Island

Santa Catalina California, USA 194.2 KM2 4,096 People Isolated Actual Island

Public, Multiple Architects Est. 1542 Built

EUGENE CHANG

Avalon

Key West Connected by Elevated Highways.

Key to Paradise

04

Key West is 129 miles southwest of Miami, Florida, about 160 miles by car and 106 miles north-northeast of Havana, Cuba. Cuba, at its closest point, is 94 statute miles south. Key West is a seaport destination for many passenger cruise ships. The Key West International Airport provides airline service. Hotels and guest houses are available for lodging. Naval Air Station Key West is an important year round training site for naval aviation due to the comfortable weather conditions. Major cruise lines stops at Key West and an estimate of 400 cruise ships visit Key West every year.

The Tourism population is about 1 million per year.

Airport Beach Cruise Ship Port Cruise Ship Route

Key West Flordia, USA 2 13.6 KM 15,550 People Urban Actual Island

Public, Multiple Architects Est. 1800 Built

EUGENE CHANG

High Way

Photos of Hashima Island Today

Detroit on Sea

05

The 6.3-hectare (16-acre) island was known for its undersea coal mines, established in 1887, which operated during the industrialization of Japan. The island reached a peak population of 5,259 in 1959. In 1974, with coal supplies nearing depletion, the mine was closed and all of the residents departed soon after, leaving the island effectively abandoned for the following three decades. Interest in the island re-emerged in the 2000s on account of its undisturbed historic ruins, and it gradually became a tourist attraction of a sort.Travel to Hashima was reopened to tourists on April 22, 2009. Increasing interest in the island resulted in an initiative for its protection as a site of industrial heritage.

Pool

Coal Mine

106

Children’s Park

Housing

School

Hospital

104 105 103 102 102

108 107

30

99 99

26

97

25

31 23

7

100 102

95

111

96

8 89 22

6 93

50 39 48

12 21

94

14

51

91

59

90

1959 2016

99

60

57

61

1 85

87

67

65

83 89

School

68

71

69

70

Playground

-300 m Before 1959 Population: 5,259 Annual Coal Production: 410,000 Total 84 Years Produces: 16.5 Million of Coal

Hashima Island Nagasaki, Japan 0.06 KM2 0 People (5,259 in 1959) Isolated Actual Island

Private, Multiple Architects Est. 1887 Built

EUGENE CHANG

-600 m

Rendering by MAD Architects

Island Inside of an Island

06

Museum of Arts in Pingtan Suzhou, China 0.003 KM2 0 People Isolated Artificial Island

Public, MAD Architects 2016 Unbuild

EUGENE CHANG

Chinese practice MAD architects have just shared with us images of their third museum, the ‘pingtan art museum’, which has just broken ground. with over 40,000 square feet it will be china’s largest private collection and when opened will exhibit over 1,000 pieces of national treasures. in addition to functioning as an important cultural institution, its location on the small fisherman’s island of pingtan is expected to facilitate the communication of art between taiwan and china. the museum itself is considered an island on an island, located in the center of pingtan yet only connected to land by an undulating pier, it is first conceived as a public space for the community, a bastion of the small island’s history within chinese ideology, and secondly a museum.

Noahbabel Sketch by Paolo Soleri

Arcology

07

Noahbabel The City in the Image of Man (book) 3.45 KM2 90,000 People Theoretical

Artificial Island Public, Paolo Soleri 1969 Unbuild

EUGENE CHANG

Noahbabel, one of Paolo Soleri’s Arcology projects, followed the design principles laid out in his book, The City in the Image of Man. These principles called for a hyperdense city designed to maximize human interaction and access to shared cost-effective infrastructural services like water and sewage. The Arcologies proposed in the book attempt to minimize the use of energy, raw materials and land; reduce waste and pollution, and allow ineraction with the surrounding environment. Noahbabel, an aquatic Archology, features apartments and residences near vertical cores of structure, and is rigidly zoned into work, housing, leisure and transportation functions.

Blur Building Swiss Expo 2002

Disappearing Space

08

01.

02.

03.

04.

Blur Building Yverdon-les-Bains, Switzerland 0.002 KM2 0 People Installation Artificial Island

Public, DS+R 2002 Built

EUGENE CHANG

New York-based multidisciplinary studio Diller Scofidio + Renfro conceptualized a most unlikely solution: making nothing. According to an early sketch, their contribution would be “formless, massless, colorless, weightless, odorless, scaleless, featureless, meaningless.” Early renderings envisioned a cloudlike mass suspended above the lake surface, though the architects preferred the term Blur as a moniker for the project, “as an alternative to the new orthodoxy of high definition,” according to Elizabeth Diller. Ramps and walkways weave through the tensegrity system, some of them providing a counterweight for the structure. The form is based on the work of Buckminster Fuller.

Ocean City Model

Future City

09

Kiyonori Kikutake’s Ocean City was a Metabolist proposal for a floating city of the concentric rings. The inner ring is reserved for residential uses, the outer is designed as a industrial zone, and the innermost islands are to be used for communal purposes. The area between the rings is reserved for the cultivation and production of special sea-products, while the meeting point of the rings provides a space for a communal administration and planning center. The city is goverened by a “control tower”, that provides artificial sunlight to the whole city; new towers are set up as the city expands with each tower acting as a nucleus. “Mova-blocks” compose the housing in the Ocean City, with each housing unit as an exchangeable circular house that can revolve around the core. At 100m high, each tower houses 10,000 people.

Commercial owers Core

Ocean City Unabara, Japan 198.84 KM2 500,000 People Theoretical Artificial Island

Public, Kiyonori Kikutake 1960 Unbuilt

Towers Core

Communal Space Building

Public Space

Residential Towers

EUGENE CHANG

Parks

1970 Attica Prison Riot

Sagregation Land

10

The Attica Correctional Facility is a maximum security/supermax New York State prison located in the town of Attica, New York, operated by the New York State Department of Correctional Services. After it was constructed in the 1930s, it held many of the most dangerous criminals of the time. A tear gas system is installed in the mess hall and industry areas and has been used to quell conflicts in these areas. The prison now holds many inmates who are serving various types of sentences (short-term to life), and who are usually sent to the facility because of disciplinary problems in other facilities. John Sullivan is the only man that has ever escaped the prison.

Wyoming

Attica

10 Miles

2 Miles

Varysburg 7 Miles

Bennington

Attica Correctional Facility Attica, New York 1.2 KM2 1,800 People Isolated No an Island

Public, Architect Unknow 1930 Built

EUGENE CHANG

6 Miles