The American Dream: DALLAS

European architects and Central Dallas CDC are working towards a major renovation of a city hall parking lot, transforming the plot into sustainable urban hillside. Re:Vision-Dallas was name of the competition and 2011 is the year when the winning design in this year’s international design contest, ‘Forwarding Dallas’, will be ready for action.

Atelier Data and Moov are Portuguese-based architectural companies that came together for this ambitious venture to create an eco-friendly carbon-neutral community plan from an empty inner-city block in Dallas.

New-age valleys and hills will soon dominate the vistas of the region with trees, unusual shrubs and rare plants, to accompany the solar thermal panels, on hilltops where photovoltaic and wind energy will be produced.

For those of us not up to Dallas speed, photovoltaic (PV) is the name for a technology that most commonly uses solar panel to produce an electric current when exposed to light, which highlights just one way to become less dependent on fossil fuels, creating a clean and free energy for the world to use.

The winning design works extensively with innovative strategies that optimize sustainability, without draining funds. Open green spaces, greenhouses, living space and a rooftop water mechanism to recycle water will all be installed in the construction and the project will inevitably serve as an example for others, proving urban design has the very real potential of including environmentally aware technology in every element of the planning and design.

Pictured above is the submission by Little Diversified Architectural Consulting who was recently named one of the finalists in the project.

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by Albertine Fox
Gloobbi Architecture

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