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b o s t o n ’ s _ I n n o v a t i o n _ D i s t r i c t _ a s _ o r g a n i s m

Resiliency is defined as, “The ca-pacity of a system, community or society potentially exposed to haz-ards to adapt, by resisting or chang-ing in order to reach and maintain an acceptable level of functioning and structure. This is determined by the degree to which the social system is capable of organizing itself to in-crease its capacity for learning from the past…” (United Nations - Inter-national Strategy for Disaster Re-duction (ISDR), 2000)

“A new approach is called for on the waterfront – one that is both more deliberate and more ex-perimental… The massive expanse of the South Boston waterfront, with its existing knowledge base, opportunity for growth, and world-class in-frastructure is ripe to produce world-class prod-ucts and services.”

- Mayor Thomas M. Menino

Limits to Growth: Our design proposal for Boston’s Innovation District re-verses Boston’s expansion pattern by giving 100 acres of land back to the sea to help prepare for rising sea levels associated with global warming.

SITE

WATER

ENERGY

HEALTH

MATERIALS

EQUITY

BEAUTY

Urban Agriculture: Our design is of a lesser density than the allowable FAR and we dedicate 12% of our land, roofs, and building facades to urban agriculture.

Habitat Exchange: Our design incorporates a strategy of new canals that gives 100 acres of land back to the sea and provides for roof gardens and living walls throughout the district with the goal of re-establishing long lost ecological conditions. In total our proposal provides over 15 million square feet of green spaces for recreation and green roofs.Car Free Living: The District is now completely accessible by new public transportation trolleys, bicycle paths, and an innovative elevated bicycle called Shweeb. The design extends the existing subway system’s Green Line trolley along the currently underutilized Congress Street (we have closed an existing street). Curbs are eliminated in this car free zone. Bicy-cle paths are provided throughout. All of the existing truck traffic has been relocated to a separate shared facility in a new Eco-Industrial Zone that will shorten travel distances, isolate and treat exhaust, and provide for more efficient freeway access.

Net-Zero Water: ResilienCity gathers 100% water from captured precipita-tion and closed loop systems. Based on historical data, Boston receives 44 inches of rain every year. This amounts to 1.3 trillion gallons of rain on our 1100 acre site. In existing commercial buildings that do not have a storage capacity suitable, they will be eligible to tap into the District Cistern, created from an existing tunnel currently used for bus transit will be replaced by our cistern with a 20 million gallon water capacity, will also serve as RODI/UV Filtration Plant in order to provide potable water.

Net-Zero Energy: ResilienCity provides almost 400% of the project’s energy needs with systems that are both site and district supplied. We have calculated that 5,741,020,030 kwh/yr is required and are able to provide 21,626,228,200 kwh/yr. Our project is able to do this using a variety of processes including photovoltaic systems on building roofs and the roads, biogas using organic waste, and MicroCHP strategies at individual building scales.

Ecological Waterflow: 100% of storm water and building water discharge will be handled onsite or through natural timed release methods such as biofiltration. Buildings will capture what they can and reuse water where they need and can. In cases where conditions limit that ability the system will be supported through a district cistern system.

Civilized Environment: ResilienCity provides fresh air and daylight to ev-ery occupiable space. Our design for new commercial-scale buildings caps heights so that they don’t interrupt solar access to adjacent buildings. Our design also features centralized atrium spaces providing light corridors for typically internalized programs.Healthy Air: Among the standard means of healthy air, vehicular traffic has been substantially reduced in the ResilienCity by increasing public trans-portation and by relocating the tractor trailer trucks to a new Eco Industrial ZoneBiophilia: ResilienCity provides environmental features like bioswales, liv-ing walls, new shade trees, and natural landscape elements including once threatened plant species provide a closer connection to the natural world. Our urban agriculture solutions help teach people about the sensitivity of natural systems. The Canal Districts residential development “softens” the existing hard edged granite seawall so that people can experience the changing of the tides on a regular basis

Red List: All buildings in ResilienCity will contain a building nutrition la-bel that provides nutritional value to occupants. This label will provide in-formation about energy, water, waste, and will also warn occupants of red list materials. In addition, the label will provide occupants with the current embodied energy “debt” related to the building construction. New buildings are being planned and constructed today that we know we will need to re-mediate in the 2035 ResilienCity.Embodied Carbon: In ResilienCity the carbon “debt” of a building will be public knowledge and building owners will need to advertise this informa-tion as mentioned above on the nutrition label. Companies seeking to rent space will also be required to pay for carbon offsets relative to their build out of space.Responsible Industry/Appropriate Resourcing: We believe that due to our location in Boston we can do better than the restrictions shown in the Living City Appropriate Sourcing chart. It is intended that Boston’s Inno-vation District will be home to many companies from the green technol-ogy sector (50% of MIT faculty are working on sustainable practices at all scales) and as a result we are hoping to implement new strategies being developed in the neighborhood. We intend to source all materials and con-sultants within a 500 km radius of our project site.Conservation & Reuse: ResilienCity will renovate existing buildings and all of them will meet all petal intentions. For buildings that are deemed unsafe that cannot be reused materials will be salvaged for reuse in new buildings.

Human Scale + Humane Places: The design & planning for ResilienCity is human-scaled throughout the district & the project embodies active design principles that encourage people to travel by foot or bike and discourages the use of the automobile. Bike share programs & covered parking for bi-cycles is provided throughout ResilienCity. We envision the car-free Con-gress Street Ramla to be thriving with pedestrian activity with restaurants & retail lining up both sides of the street.

Democracy + Social Justice: This neighborhood of Boston has more low-income & moderate income housing than any other Boston neighborhood. The existing condition between this neighborhood & the Innovation District is a heavily trafficked street and a street of industrial buildings. We propose to add extensions of the Green Line trolley system along this street edge to discourage car use. Our new Canal Districts also help to ease this transi-tion by creating a lower scale of buildings that invite existing South Boston residents to the waterfrontRights to Nature: Currently most of the water’s edge at the existing site is inaccessible to the public. An existing 500 meter long industrial building runs parallel to the shoreline on our site. We have opened up the entire length of the building (see image) to provide full access to the water’s edge.All rooftops have full access to sun.

Inspiration + Education: Currently most of the water’s edge at the existing site is inaccessible to the public. An existing 500 meter long industrial build-ing runs parallel to the shoreline on our site. We have opened up the entire length of the building (see image) to provide full access to the water’s edge.All rooftops have full access to sun.

Beauty & Spirit: “We are going to have to find ways of organizing ourselves cooperatively, sanely, scientifically, harmonically and in regenerative spontaneity with the rest of human-ity around earth...” - R. Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983)

History

The grey mass is the orginal (1620)coastline of Boston. This gives the depth to which so much of Boston was property of the ocean to begin with, giving us the precedent for our se-ries of design strate-gies.

ImpactThis blue mass rep-resents a projected 4-foot sea-level rise (the top end of predic-tions) in the timespan of the competition. It is a mainspring of the design intentions. We say, “Let the water come. We’ll be better for it.”

SurfacesThe brown mass rep-resents the impervi-ous surfacing for the district. As is quite evident by the scarcity of the small green par-cels there is little re-spite from the oppres-sive nothingness. The yellowish mass is a toxic (permeable) site. Even the green spac-es are actually green roofs of garages, not charging aquifers.

TruckingThe light Purple boxes represent the low-density truck de-pendent program in the district. This traffic makes for a perpetua-tion of the wasteland. The darker Purple is a high density reloca-tion for them. By doing this, roads are freed up for people (blue)

TransitThere “is” a transit connection in the dis-trict. A very inefficient Bus, that as noted by the dashed portion runs underground from South Station Commuter Rail Termi-nal across the chan-nel. On weekends this service is non-ex-istant. The abundance of parking hardly brings advocacy for greater service.

EnergyThanks to the FAA Height restrictions for Logan International Airport directly across the harbor, it makes the district a very strong solar candi-date. Setting zoning to ensure equitable access is vital. The yellow is the only cur-rent solar. The orange is a natural gas power plant. We advocate a biogas conversion.

GroceryThey are very hard to spot but the dark Blue dot represents the lone “groceria” for the district. The light Blue is a proposed larger-scaled market. While there are a fair share of places to buy food, it advocates take-out over cooking and too often that is more expensive and less healthy.

The District

The green outline en-compasses the city’s designation of the In-novation Dictrict. We have added the Cop-per outline to provide the pull of the resi-dential fabric into the district.

resilienCITY

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Innovation DistrictLand Area 47,916,000 SF

Amount Per Serving

Population 337,000

Caloric Capacity (SF):

Water Capacity (gallon):

Energy Generation (kwh/year):

Waste Generation (lb):

Used

Used

Produced

Produced 541,222,000541,222,000

5,741,020,03021,626,228,20015,885,208,000

2,500,000,0001,250,000,000

665,714,428

Rainfall 1,316,571,428

6,367,175 18.9

0

TotalAvg. per person per year

Reused (grey water)

Net (di�er.)

Net (di�er.)

Net (di�er.)Reused

*other random information relating to the neighborhood

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The Carbon Economy Distributing Responsibilty

With the ever expanding “on-demand” information and the devices evolving to meet that demand for informa-tion and integrating the precedent of the “carbon card” deployed (in research) by London, we expand on that to create a model for the engagement and tracking activities with an embedded synthesis of the eco-nomic (debit card) and the ecological (embodied energy factors) “costs” of things. This device, an evolution of smart phone technologies, becomes your “wallet”. Accessed by the user only, through bio-ac-tivation, is your ID card, your communications/data accessing device, your credit/debit card, embodied energy measurer, as well as health status (i.e. blood sugar levels, cholesterol, etc.).

Innovation DistrictLand Area 47,916,000 SF

Amount Per Serving

Population 337,000

Caloric Capacity (SF):

Water Capacity (gallon):

Energy Generation (kwh/year):

Waste Generation (lb):

Used

Used

Produced

Produced 541,222,000541,222,000

5,741,020,03021,626,228,20015,885,208,000

2,500,000,0001,250,000,000

665,714,428

Rainfall 1,316,571,428

6,367,175 18.9

0

TotalAvg. per person per year

Reused (grey water)

Net (di�er.)

Net (di�er.)

Net (di�er.)Reused

*other random information relating to the neighborhood

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FOOD PRESERVER:Standard model is capable of preserving a multitude of fruits, vegetable, and animal proteins including: flash freezing, freeze drying, vacuum sealing, canning, & pickling.

COMPOSTER:Capable of converting standard kitchen foodwaste/organic mate-rial into a rich compost compatible with urban food growing systems.NUTRIENT MIXERcapable of combining compost and collected rainwater to create a “nutrient” soup adequate to meet the needs of a variety of vegeta-bles and small fruits.

RADIENT HEAT RECAPTURE SYSTEM:Capable of capturing “waste” heat from standard kitchen appliances and utilizing it to temper the air temperature in the “growing” area.

SOUTH BOSTON SENDS: 610,137 LBS OF COMPOSTABLE WASTE TO THE LANDFILL EACH DAY.

THIS WOULD PRODUCE ABOUT 15MW OF POWER PER YEAR (OR ABOUT 3,000 HOMES)

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CRExisting buildings like these should be pre-served and made to breathe outside air.

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20 million gallon storage in Tunnel District Cistern with RODI & UV sys-tems for potability

SYSTEMS + DESIGN STRATEGY SITE SECTION (EAST-WEST)

“NUTRITION LABEL” COMPONENTS ENERGY PRODUCTION COMPONENTS

Convention Center PV array pro-vides enough electricity for 250,000 households.