by: Nathan Burch
Event: Green Screens: e2 design
Location: Center for Architecture, 03.29.08
Speakers: Elizabeth Levison — Senior Producer, e2; Serge Appel, AIA, LEED AP — Associate Partner, Cook + Fox Architects; Oswaldo Martinez — Architect under former mayor of Bogotá, Enrique Peñalosa
Organizer: AIANY Emerging NY Architects (ENYA) Committee
Sponsors: Herman Miller; Benhar Office Interiors
The central arteries in Bogotá include extensive rapid transit bus lanes for the red TransMilenio buses.
Courtesy Google Earth
NYC and Bogotá differ greatly, but green urban planning in both cities is on a roll. The featured projects in “The Green Apple,” and “Bogotá: Building a Sustainable City,” episodes of the PBS e2 design documentary series, include: One Bryant Park designed by Cook + Fox Architects, Battery Park City’s Solaire designed by Cesar Pelli & Associates, Bogotá’s pedestrian-friendly Alameda walkway, and its TransMilenio public bus. The episodes, narrated by Brad Pitt, guide the viewer from NYC’s vertical, technologically based green design, to Bogotá’s horizontal view of sustainability in which a city’s health is measured by the well-being of its inhabitants.
NYC is seen as part-environmental nightmare of concrete, diesel, and garbage, and part-energy efficient nucleus, with its density and accessible mass transportation. “If NYC were the 51st state, it would be the most energy-efficient,” states “The Green Apple.” As One Bryant Park rises toward the sky, it will soon be the “greenest skyscraper in America,” filtering air and flushing the sinuses of midtown smog.
Bogotá comes across as a city emerging from mid-20th century poverty and despair to a continental hub of self-esteem through the enterprising work of former mayor Enrique Peñalosa. By concentrating on the pedestrian rather than the automobile, Peñalosa and city planners designed the Alameda pedestrian walkway and the TransMilenio computerized public transport system, creating new travel arteries that aid the city’s business, leisure, and social spaces. The wide pedestrian/bicycle lanes provide access for the three million residents at the city’s edge who live on less than $1 a day. Initially meant for mobility, the Alameda has also become a park space and a gathering spot. Peñalosa once personally patrolled the area to keep motor vehicles away.
The TransMilenio public bus system is a symbol of the city’s revitalization and renewed quality of life, stated Peñalosa. Main “trunk” lines service large busses that run on exclusive arteries throughout the city. Smaller tributary lines that reach out to the peripheral neighborhoods feed these lines. The busses are now federalized, after long being controlled by the mafia.
Cities that build better live better, and e2 puts it forth that “sustainable design” will eventually be called just “design.”
Nathan JPS Burch is an intern at Dattner Architects.