Rainforest City, designed by Laboratory for Visionary Architecture (LAVA), is basically a 20-square-kilometer green smart city in Malaysia that would be built around a central rainforest designed to mimic forest’s ecosystem by adopting a closed loop system that reuses all its resources and controls out-flow. “Skylines across the world look the same – usually a couple of iconic towers in the center surrounded by lots of lesser quality buildings, which all resemble each other. Here we have designed an inverse city skyline where the icon of the city is a public space, not an object/building. Our central space is a Rainforest Valley and demonstrates the equation: PEOPLE = CITY. From an object to a place,” said Chris Bosse, director of LAVA. Continue reading for more pictures and information.
“The proposed city for 700,000 people would be located on reclaimed land between Malaysia and Singapore and include office towers, residential areas, parks, hotels, shopping malls, and an international school. The city is organized around a central public space, the Rainforest Valley, which is surrounded by a waterfall and serves as a visual reminder of the city as a three-dimensional ecosystem. The valley extends like fingers in five directions to represent the five elements – wood, fire, earth, metal, and water�as well as the five pillars of sustainability,” according to Inhabitat.
