XI Thyssen Krupp Elevator Architecture Award. Tall Emblem Structure in Za’abeel Park

IDEAThe project idea moves from the thought that frames the planned intervention as one of the nucleuses of a complex and superordinate system, centred on the concept of the Energy Temple.

Urban growth has in general happened in consequence of the position of some main elements, before in virtue of precise logics and in a second moment in contradiction of similar criterions.

We sustain that it is possible to imagine that the growth and the rearrangement of portions of town could be entrusted to new nucleus- temples, to which is submitted the assignment to produce, to accumulate and to distribute energy created by renewable sources.

The Energy Temple houses the space for technology, tool of progress in rapid evolution. To destine a space to technology means to simplify the adjustment process to the new discoveries.

The inclination of the sun rays, the wind, the rain, the earth will regulate the growth of the spaces. In synthesis, it deals with a dimensional system that departs from the primary sources of accumulation and transmission of the energy and arrives to the nucleus-temple which feeds the urban boroughs.

Every temple ignites the proposition of a new order, of a new regime between nature and artifice.

The development connected to the energy produced in the Temple increases herself until a limit level that decrees the arrest of it; from this moment, takes place the beginning of a different survival phase in stable equilibrium of the involved urban fragment and the institution of a new energy house.

This is the least unity of a net that links an endless number of Temples, organized in primary and secondary: the necessity of the net makes essential that the same are connected between them.

The origin of our thinking on Energy Temple has to be found in its bond with the temple as primary element of ancient urban structure.

The elementary forms are the testimony of visions of the world: dolmen, menhir, the sacred circle of Stonehenge, the ziqqurats are archetypes elements, primary elements of ancient civilization united by a very strong spiritual value.

Because of such reasoning, the new Temples are constituted as organizers elements in which anyone can recognize himself and at the same time they are ables to connect the man to the over, the humanity with the superior.

Energy Temple is public building for excellence, crossable and practicable from whoever; also being tightly tied up to the habitat, it is not a place in which is possible to live.                                 

If the great natural systems (volcanoes, lakes, mountainous chains, rivers) could be considered as Primary Temples; the secondary ones are elements built by the man, which have different formal, material, dimensional characteristics, according to the context in which they will be found.

The project idea moves from the thought that frames the planned intervention as one of the nucleuses of a complex and superordinate system, centred on the concept of the Energy Temple.

Urban growth has in general happened in consequence of the position of some main elements, before in virtue of precise logics and in a second moment in contradiction of similar criterions.

We sustain that it is possible to imagine that the growth and the rearrangement of portions of town could be entrusted to new nucleus- temples, to which is submitted the assignment to produce, to accumulate and to distribute energy created by renewable sources.

The Energy Temple houses the space for technology, tool of progress in rapid evolution. To destine a space to technology means to simplify the adjustment process to the new discoveries.

The inclination of the sun rays, the wind, the rain, the earth will regulate the growth of the spaces. In synthesis, it deals with a dimensional system that departs from the primary sources of accumulation and transmission of the energy and arrives to the nucleus-temple which feeds the urban boroughs.

Every temple ignites the proposition of a new order, of a new regime between nature and artifice.

The development connected to the energy produced in the Temple increases herself until a limit level that decrees the arrest of it; from this moment, takes place the beginning of a different survival phase in stable equilibrium of the involved urban fragment and the institution of a new energy house.

This is the least unity of a net that links an endless number of Temples, organized in primary and secondary: the necessity of the net makes essential that the same are connected between them.

The origin of our thinking on Energy Temple has to be found in its bond with the temple as primary element of ancient urban structure.

The elementary forms are the testimony of visions of the world: dolmen, menhir, the sacred circle of Stonehenge, the ziqqurats are archetypes elements, primary elements of ancient civilization united by a very strong spiritual value.

Because of such reasoning, the new Temples are constituted as organizers elements in which anyone can recognize himself and at the same time they are ables to connect the man to the over, the humanity with the superior.

Energy Temple is public building for excellence, crossable and practicable from whoever; also being tightly tied up to the habitat, it is not a place in which is possible to live.                                 

If the great natural systems (volcanoes, lakes, mountainous chains, rivers) could be considered as Primary Temples; the secondary ones are elements built by the man, which have different formal, material, dimensional characteristics, according to the context in which they will be found.

FIRST ENERGY TEMPLE IN DUBAI

We think that Dubai is the right place to experiment in real terms the concepts until here explicated. Dubai can welcome the first net of Energy Temples. When the first one, the one we plan in Za'abeel Park, won't be enough to feed the piece of city to it connected, it will be possible to build a second one, and the following others. The capability of production and accumulation of the first temple is tightly linked to the life of the urban fragment which is feeded by it.

Dubai has particularly favourable characteristics to welcome an intervention stamped to similar logics. As the warm and poorly rainy climate is useful to the exploitation of the solar radiation, equally the northwest-directed breeze note as Shamal, opportunely addressed, can be employed in the production of wind-energy.

In consideration of a sensibility already owned in Dubai in reference to the opportunity to exploit the sea resources, testified by the data that records an elevated percentage of the water requirement satisfied by a program of desalination of the sea waters, we imagine to integrate in the intervention a plant to this finalized. Moreover the resulted materials of the great quantity of yards in action in the city will be re-used in our intervention and give shape to a new soil.

The spiritual ransom of which the Temple is centre can be considered a propitious occasion of growth by the social and cultural point of view.

TEMPLE’S ARCHITECTURE

Our project works on two signs: Wall-Temple and Citadel-Habitat by him contained. Wall, that houses the growing of the citadel, and the tower gain the natural resources to turn into energy. Tower accumulator of water from the sea and distribution pipes, whirlwind that exploits the Shamal, photovoltaic cells, are tools able to gain resources, as well as to assure, even, the thermal comfort of the intervention area. Habitat, which will grow beginning from the assigned nucleus, feeds himself with the energy produced by the Wall- Temple. A mix of courts, colonnades and water mirrors with covered spaces, welcomes the requested functions: cafè on two levels with external space, children’ s library and playroom on two levels, congress room with external space.

The tower, epilogue of Wall-Temple, welcomes a double system of energy production: on then top a great helix exploits the winds, and inside, under the natural soil level, a plant of desalination of the sea waters furnishes of sweet water the Habitat.

A system of covered runs allows the visitors to cross the temple system with excellent conditions of comfort. The cuts in the masonries made of coral limestone, assure light and coolness the whole year, as the ventilation channels post on the edge toward the park regulate the climate of the citadel.

To hold together the whole system, artificial dunes made of sand and re-used soil.

The whole system will be part of the Dubai skyline qualifying formally herself in operation of the technological orientation that we imagine to confer him. The imagined structure will be so occasion for the promotion of the tourism and of recreational, scientific and cultural activities, at the same time part of an energetically self-sufficient system and oriented to the exclusive use of renewable sources.

Our project so keeps in mind of the particular Dubai social context and moves itself in the name of the maximum respect of the environmental conditions that characterizes the city.

TEMPLE’S CAPACITY

The projected plant has in itself the possibility of following amplifications that will take place until when it will be possible to feed the habitat with the energy produced by the Wall-Temple.

The expansion will happen until when the self-sufficiency of the system will subsist. Reached that limit new temples will be placed beyond the Temple in Za'abeel Park, online with the first one, that will allow new settlement and development possibilities.

Team members

Giulia Bonelli_ architect (team leader)

Giuseppe Vele_ architect 

Collaborators

Rosa Di Falco_ architect

Lorenzo Morra_ architect

Irma Lupica_ architect

Ludovica Read­_ degree student in architecture

Maddalena Servodio_ degree student in architecture