Frog's Dream

Recently I have participated in the Re-burbia Design Competition. Organized by Inhabitat.com and Dwell Magazine, the contest challenged designers to come up with future alternatives for the North American Suburbia. In response to the prospect of vacant mcmansions and abandoned cul-de-sacs, my project Frog's Dream transforms vacant mcmansion communities at the periphery of a city into bio-filter water treatment wetlands that filters urban grey water. My project was first selected as a finalist to generate online discussions and voting, and later received the first place for the jury prize.

The project has appeared online at numerous websites and design blogs, including Archdaily, Bldgblog, Bustler, Core77, Inhabitat, World Architecture News, etc. The project will also be published in Dwell Magazine in the US, XXI Magazine in Turkey and C3 Magazine in South Korea.

http://www.re-burbia.com/

Project description:

Many scientists and climatologists suggest we are fighting a losing battle against climate change, loss of rain forests and wetlands, and extinction of species. Historians who study Maya or Angkor warn of an inevitable collapse to civilization when natural resources are overused. Some real estate analysts predict that a change of lifestyle, shrink of household size and a rise of energy prices will seal the final downfall of suburbia.

What makes a better opportunity than the decline of suburbia to revolutionize our unsustainable suburban lifestyle and land-use, and to pursue for a balance of co-existence between man and nature? What to make of all those abandoned mcmansions and their deserted suburban neighborhoods in the future?

In response to this anticipated future scenario, the project Frog’s Dream attempts to re-establish a sustainable relationship between city and the suburbia. It proposes to transform vacant mcmansions, at the periphery of urban centres, into eco-water treatment machines, in which a micro-eco system of plants, algae, bacteria, fish and clams are present to purify grey water from cities. Bigger wetlands will be formed around these bio-filter water treatment mansions to sustain larger fresh water animals and plants. The project also involves transforming the highway system into a multi-functional infrastructure that transports cars, trains and bikes, as well as forming a network to facilitate water transport between a city and its surrounding suburban wetlands.

Frog’s Dream envisions the idea to concentrate human population at efficient urban centres, and to return most of the suburban lands back to nature, except the peripheral zones outside the city, where former mcmansion neighborhoods were once located, to serve as manmade wetlands where human needs (water treatment) and the nature can co-exist.