Jungle City

Reducing the emission of cities, which host over half the world’s population, is a vital challenge for this century—and perhaps the forest could provide the blueprint for their future development. Inspired by this proposition, LAVA’s research suggests how cities can replenish the environment instead of depleting it: “By visualizing urban life as a hybrid ecosystem intertwining the power of both nature and manmade technology, we advocate for a self-sufficient city that generates its own resources from energy to food, feeds a circular, zero-waste system and actively improves the environment and lives of its inhabitants,” contends LAVA Partner Chris Bosse.

Nature-informed notions such as this are infiltrating progressive urban planning approaches worldwide; in Singapore, planting actively weaves into architecture from green roofs to vertical façades, improving biodiversity and reducing the heat island effect. In China, the ‘Sponge City’ concept, which layers site-specific landscape design to prevent flooding and naturally purify water, has been adopted into national policy. Similarly, LAVA’s unbuilt design for Jungle City, a new urban area in Southeast Asia, proposes a series of sinuous residential towers with a circular resource management system rooted in the local natural context and the three strata of the rainforest—the undergrowth, the mid-level, and the canopy.

It may seem like a paradox, yet density, living in high-rise buildings in cities, is a more sustainable solution to housing the population of the earth—so land beyond is preserved for nature, and resources can be shared. Not only is Jungle City’s neighborhood of 20 square kilometers with 700,000 inhabitants high density, its central system integrating energy, water, heat, and cooling reduces both consumption and waste: “Multiple individual systems are inefficient,” explains Bosse, “yet combined systems are highly effective. Resources can be concentrated and utilized efficiently through synergies.”

In Asia, megacities are numerous and scale upwards in populations to 60 million plus; rising rural-urban migration means that previously rural domains are increasingly being classified as ‘urban,’ with Southeast Asia experiencing the fastest projected urban population expansion. Alongside this growth, quality of life is improving unevenly; social issues from gentrification to aging societies are occurring; therefore, design must help to increase social cohesion and well-being. The interconnectedness of Jungle City solves some of these problems by breeding social dynamism through its engaging topography formed by a dimensional network of horizontal and vertical relationships.

Crisscrossing walkways and cascading terraces connect inhabitants across levels, flowing indoors and outdoors, and guided by a harmony of materials, smell, and visual clues across the plan informed by the harmonizing philosophies of Taoism specific to its Asian context. “In Jungle City, people can cross these different 'strata,’ much like birds fly from one tree to another. Thus, this ‘canopy’ is its own habitat, interconnecting each of the buildings,” describes Bosse. Elevators are avoided because they often separate people from their surroundings; anything up to five levels, going up or down, should be walked, combining vertical transportation and fitness. Relaxing gardens echo caves and valleys, encouraging curiosity and discovery—aspects of spatial design derived from nature and explored on a smaller scale with LIFE Hamburg, where social sustainability advances through environmental awareness.

Every window frames a view of nature, and apartments overlook a communal central open square into which every route flows; this meeting point and gathering area acts as a radial axis extending in all directions. Like Venice, pathways are explorative and varied, yet pedestrians always return to the Piazza San Marco. Similarly to LAVA’s design for Masdar Plaza in Abu Dhabi, the public space performs as an attraction and community ‘valley,’ a new icon creating an ‘inverse city skyline,’ around which people, railways, and vehicle traffic are separated using a loop system that keeps vehicles underground. “Our concept is defined by the notion of a ‘public city,’ a central public space surrounded by buildings; a ‘layered city,’ where people, railways, and traffic are separated with vehicles underground; a ‘loop city,’ a closed loop system reusing its resources and controlling the out-flow; and a ‘sponge city,’ with recycling processes hidden underground.”

At Jungle City, living in a high-tech environment is blended and balanced with a natural lifestyle – environmental and social health metabolize to a unified rhythm of structure and function. “Our vision imagines a future where architecture, nature, community, and technology become indistinguishable from each other,” concludes Bosse.