Beijing

How much value can be recovered from the things we throw away? The landfills of 2015 have become the goldmines of 2100. Located in the Changping district, on the outskirts of Beijing and on the site of a former landfill, our case study site is one of 17 recycling centers located along Beijing’s now electrified fifth highway ring. All these outpost settlements are supercenters for high tech recycling and waste management.

Visitors to the site arrive via hexplane or electric car, and can obtain bicycles at a facility conveniently located within the main transportation hub. A visitor standing on one of the grassy rooftops of the residential area would have a view over the settlement’s remediation park, with its urban-farming towers, as well as the heavily loaded zeppelins arriving and departing from the recycling center’s hangars.

Beijing has become a place of state-of-the art technological bustle. Tons of recyclables arrive daily to be processed and converted into useful products. Materials arrive at the sorting station, which separates glass, metal, timber, concrete and aggregate- based materials, and finally plastics. From there, the materials move to ground-level storage and then factories that convert them into pellets and other base materials. Factories elsewhere manufacture the end-products.

Materials that are to be transported by ground leave by truck, while those that are to be shipped greater distances are lifted to the third floor, where they are loaded onto zeppelins. In all, travel distances for the resources are much shorter than in 2015, with waste converted in and shipped from a single building. Organic and inorganic materials that cannot be reused are pushed into landfill areas under the remediation park, where the methane produced during their decomposition process is used to create electricity. Along with the CO2 captured in the park, methane (another greenhouse gas) is one of the elements used in the production of carbon fiber, which is made in factories located at the northern end of the settlement.

This approach makes carbon fiber more economical and widespread in use, while also providing a method for dealing with some of the sequestered CO2 coming from carbon-capture installations in other 2100 cities. The strong seasonal yellow-dust storms from the Northwest, which occur sporadically during the spring, were a major design consideration for this settlement. Increased desertification and pollution have made these storms more severe, so the street grid is oriented on a north-south axis in order to deflect the wind. For further protection, a structure has been installed on the landform-building façades, creating an operable sidewalk tube system for pedestrians. When dust storms occur, these passages are sealed to the elements, allowing free movement and the regular functioning of the settlement.

Piezoelectric technology is used on the individual panels that shield window and skylight openings, also serving to collect and provide energy for the settlement. Standing between two of the recycling centers’ landform buildings, a visitor can see this façade technology throughout the outpost. One of the urban farm towers is visible just beyond the zeppelin hangar on the left, standing in the park that separates the industrial section from the more residential and civic areas. Like the waste-processing and recycling centers, the park is situated on top of the previous landfill.

[Piezoelectric Tiles to light walkways]

The farming towers are scattered throughout the park; they integrate agriculture, at their upper levels, with plants grown for phytoremediation below. Plantings and sculptural remediation devices within this buffer park help remove toxins that have seeped into the ground from previous landfill activities. In the same spirit, the roofs of the landform buildings are slanted to drain rainwater toward the park, where it nourishes the plants and gets absorbed, cleaned, stored, and reused. Beijing thus forms an integrated system of the built and natural environments, transforming a toxic landscape into a productive one.

The landform buildings are embedded in their surroundings and enhanced by high technology that both produces energy and purifies the site. Waste is used to create energy and new products and materials. All of it creates a virtuous circle, with the waste processes from one activity being used to fuel the next in an integrated and symbiotic loop.