Life in the Second Machine Age – Designing for Sustainable Development
Caught in the web of globalization, the developed world faces a strain of increased marginalization, where whole communities are being obliterated from the economic network. Urban areas are at the forefront of economic activity yet again, and ‘Global Cities’ with their celebration of human activity and rich social life are leading the way. Newark’s rich tradition of being a blue-collared town and a manufacturing/shipping base is typical of many of the communities that flourished in the last century and face the challenge of reinventing themselves in order to keep up.
On the flipside, with globalization comes an exponentially rising ecological footprint. The built-environment of the last century dominated by automobiles and urban sprawl are severely straining global resources. The challenge for the built environment now is to enable life in a small ecological footprint and enable sustainable development. Sustainable development means providing opportunity for continuous and simultaneous economic, cultural and environmental development over generations.
For Newark to remain a center of economic activity, it needs dense, transit-oriented and pedestrian friendly development with a mixed-use. The shipping container, which Newark has a continuous supply of in this web of globalization, acts as a source of economic activity. Different products are designed and made out of shipping containers and used in the proposed building, which also acts as a design showcase. This is also meant to symbolically represent the close relationship the shipping industry had to the making of Newark and that it has moved on to a new generation. |
