¨Humanizing the Megascale¨

Today I watched a TED talks presentation from Moshe Safdie, a renown architect, you’ve probably heard of one of his most known works, the Marina Bay Sands Resort in Singapore:

Source:http: www.msafdie.com

In the presentation, the architect addressed the difficulties highly dense cities like Sao Paulo or Beijing face by developing with the conventional type of structures that have highly decreased the urban fabric of these cities, creating huge concrete jungles that have deteriorated the quality of life of their residents as well. He then addresses his idea of how a building should actually work in order to be able to keep up the fast increase in population of these cities while giving people a place worth living in, as close to a home as possible. Safdie bases his architecture in a concept im really fond of, the diversification of structures. Here’s an image of the presentation:

You can see how the traditional method separates structures by type, meaning people work away from where they live and from where they ¨play¨, Safdie presents a method that not only integrates all of these in one for a smaller footprint but introduces the shape of a pyramid to create a sort of transparent structure that will develop better cities as light will actually flow throughout. This method has already been implementing and It works great to increase the quality of life of people, an example:

Golden Dream Bay (Qinhuangdao, China)

Source:http: www.msafdie.com

There’s no reason why different parts of a city should house different types of structures, like financial districts or suburbs, we should create projects that resonate with this idea of integration, not only office retail and living but all kinds of living, low, medium and high income as its been shown that diversified neighborhoods host residents with the best health levels, life expectancy and quality of life.

Watch the 5 minute TED Talk here: