Dragonfly: A Metabolic Farm for Urban Architecture is a concept design that was recently unveiled by Vincent Callebaut Architects for the southern tip of Roosevelt Island in the East River. The Dragonfly is certainly a drastic departure from much of the local architecture we've noted here at gbNYC that calls itself green, but the concept's goals should resonate in a city where a major 21st century challenge will be accommodating nearly a million additional residents by 2030. Calling it a "nourishing, vertically cultivated Central Park," Callebaut's purpose in conceiving the Dragonfly was to "challenge the City of New York to rethink its food production," as well as rethink its concept of the vertical skyscraper that dominates our skyline.
The Dragonfly's design features two towers that are symetrically organized around a greenhouse of steel and glass, which carries the building's structural load and mimics the wings of a dragonfly in form. The greenhouse also serves as a conduit for passive cooling and heating. Two additional inhabited, mixed-use wings surround the greenhouse and are covered in solar panels, which would provide up to half of the 128-story building's electricity. The remainder of the building's power would come from three wind turbines that are arranged along the building's vertical axes. Each floor of the Dragonfly would cultivate different types of food that could be distributed by boat to Manhattan and Queens from marinas on either side of Roosevelt Island.
Check out additional renderings of the Dragonfly below, as well as link to Callebaut's profile page for the project that includes site plans and other materials.
- Dragonfly (Vincent Callebaut Architects)
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