The site research project’s goal is to explore how local environmental, cultural, and urban contexts might affect Spectra-inspired projects on the ground. The project started with the question “which areas of the globe might need a new city and why?” To be prepared to meet local needs, the virtual city must imagine a range of scenarios that respond to 21st century challenges like climate change and migration. Just as there may be a need for new cities to house climate migrants and refugees, we can also envision scenarios where existing regions must develop adaptive urbanism in order to give their residents the option to stay in their homelands.
Subtropical Urbanism
Spectra’s initial concept was heavily influenced by subtropical urbanism and assumed a hot and humid climate. Almost all the apartments in Spectra’s block system were designed to have facades on at least two sides of the block, with windows that can open for ventilation and passive cooling. We researched urban areas with high summer temperatures such as in Vietnam, and noticed that their public life often moved indoors. This influenced Spectra’s open ground floor concept, which provides an abundance of flexible, shaded space outdoors, where streetlife can flourish.
Resilient Human Settlements
Clearly there is no universal design that can work in every site, and if Spectra were imagined for a cold climate it might look very different. Furthermore, no urban project can hope to solve every problem, and Spectra does not aim to be a utopia or even to out-perform world-class cities. Rather, our community seeks to offer realistic “pro-topian” ideas for how we might build new, resilient human settlements in places they are most needed, which borrow from the world’s best cities, reflect how we actually want to live today, and leave us better prepared to face the complex challenges this century has in store.