Bangkok: A parallel

A sustainable approach to urban design cannot be purely technical, normative, green, systemic, economic or social; it has to be all these things combined in a new way. Architecture and urban developments involve contradictory issues: density vs. access to natural light, compactness vs. generosity of spaces and landscapes, energy efficiency vs. construction costs, etc. Sustainable urban design cannot mean the same thing everywhere but must relate to the specific conditions of each different place. Sustainability encompasses the ecologic, the economic and the social, parameters that vary entirely according to the geographic, climatic, economic and cultural conditions of each region or city. In his Manuals, published in 1975, Yona Friedman illustrates the condition of the inhabited territories representing ‘territories where people live’ as ‘islands’, each island creating is own specific condition: geographic, physical, social, economic and cultural.2 Territories must be considered with regard to the combinations of multiple specific characters. These urban parameters have to be analysed according to a multi-scalar approach to apprehend systems at multiple scales simultaneously. To understand and respond to the 1×1 km project sites, a series of fifteen urban layers is set to analyse the condition of each site according to different parameters.

Geography and Climate

Geography explains a territory through its human and natural complexities, and can therefore be classified in two main groups: human geography and physical geography. Human geography is the study of people and their communities, cultures, economies and interactions with their environment, their relations with and across space (demography, density, etc.), while physical geography is the study of the physical characteristics of the Earth and the atmosphere. All cities are strongly determined by their geographic and climatic conditions (which influence their urban morphologies, processes and patterns) and their natural environment (atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, i.e., flora and fauna, and climate). Climate describes natural environmental conditions and seasonality: sunlight, wind, air temperature and rainfall. Microclimates are directly influenced by built environments (wind and solar orientation, compactness and heights, materiality, etc.) that affect human health and well-being. Climate and microclimate are therefore important parameters that determine liveability and energy requirements. Hong Kong, Bangkok and Shanghai are port cities. Whether located directly on the sea like Hong Kong, or in estuaries like Bangkok and Shanghai Baoshan, these cities are highly vulnerable to climate change belonging as they do to the coastal mega-cities most exposed to extreme flooding caused by typhoons and coastal storms, in combination with high tides.