Introduction

All right..

This blog is dedicated to my summer studio. I hope to be able to share the progress of this amazing studio exercise we are about to start with anyone who is interested in sustainability and what it would mean for a future city.. how it will influence the form of a city and what will it actually mean to live in a Eco -City.

To give a brief intro of our studio composition and actors... We are a group of 5 students from 3 different countries of the world; namely America, China and India in masters of Urban Design program. This is our last studio where we have picked up an international city(outside USA); a growing metropolitan and will be exploring sustainable urbanism in its context. Its interesting to note here that right now half of world's population lives in cities and by 2050 more than 2/3rd of world will be living in urban areas.(check out the link: www.192021.org). How the cities grows is very crucial at this point in time to be able be accommodate this enormous growth wisely and safely for environment.Our last studio which focused on controlling sprawl and accommodating high density/concentration in a cohesive way was an important exercise in this regard. The current studio will delve deeper into the question of what a truly sustainable city with a need to absorb huge population will mean. Since this is a question what a urban planner/designer is ought to face in near future,i believe this studio will provide us a great stepping stone in the journey of this quest.

Our chosen metropolis is Toronto, Ontario in Canada. For the purpose of studio , we have picked up a proposed waterfront project by Michael Van Valkenburgh's firm. The project has already won many accolades for its environment sensitive approach and an sustainable solution to accommodate growth. Taking on the proposed plan , we will test and explore performance based zoning for the project. Our task will be to define a sustainable form at level of block, a couple of blocks and may be the entire neighborhood.We'll explore massing strategies, block layouts to allow for nature (sun, wind,vegetation) be part of the project. Our studio professor, who has set up this innovative studio exercise has invited two of sustainability phd students to assist us in testing the different scenarios.

I hope this gives an idea of what we'll be doing over the summer.I will keep updating the progress over the project right here.