Is it possible that the designers of NYC‘s city seal peered into the future to see how important wind energy would be to us in the year 2009? Most likely not, but their decision to include a windmill in the city’s crest did provide the perfect inspiration for Philadelphian firm Austin + Mergold LLC to rethink the Bronx’s Grand Concourse in a recent architectural competition held by the Bronx Museum of the Arts. The project envisions the wide, urban avenue as New York’s newest monument to clean energy, lined with an army of powerful weblike wind turbines – a.k.a. The Grand Resource.
Just like the Dutch windmills of yore, the gentle giants that dot the whole stretch of the concourse will be structures of both beauty and practicality. In order to preserve the bustling community that currently calls the Grand Concourse its home, the open-diagrid towers will compensate for any space lost to the footprints of the turbines by providing an elevated infrastructure of gardens, cafes and open spaces (similar to the High Line in Manhattan). This skyway will also allow pedestrians to walk along the street without having to worry about the cars passing below.
The Grand Concourse’s high-flying design was chosen as as one of the competition’s 7 finalists and will showcase their project at the Bronx Museum of the Arts this coming November.
+ Austin + Mergold LLC
Via DesignBoom
For the longest time I thought architects had a real profession as an engineer. Now that I am paying attention to what they do I see they are just artists that have seen a construction site.
The Darius turbine shown is pretty – too bad they work so poorly.
Nothing but a big waste of public funds!
The whole concept of providing wind turbines to produce energy from a renewble source is flawed when considered in an urban environment. Urban spaces are simply not windy enough and what wind there is is too turbulant (due to the buildings creating the urban environment) to allow turbines to produce meaningful quantities of energy.
There are other more subtle methods of reducing energy demand or producing energy from renewable sources which could have been considered although wouldnt look as grand as this scheme.
The concept of wind turbines to produce energy from a renewable source is flawed when cnsidered in the urban environment. Urban spaces are simply not windy enough and what wind there is is too turbulant to allow these devices to be effective. There are other more subtle ways of producing energy or reducung demand for energy in cities which should have been considered but none of these produce a scheme which is so grand as this which was probably the designers objective rather than to maximise its use.