​John Greenan has made it official: He and Brent Brown are going forward with Forwarding Dallas to fill that parking lot behind Dallas City Hall with a self-sustaining building. Says Greenan of his decision to go with the Portuguese architects behind the downtown hillside, “Dallas would be a richer city to have the work of any of these architects represented, but as we went further into our review, we began to see the deep logic of the MOOV-Atelier Data design, Forwarding Dallas. Forwarding Dallas seemed to us to do the best job of incorporating concepts of sustainability into the foundation of the design.”

[Read entire story]

By Tim McKeough

If all goes as planned, a self-sustaining, mixed-use project conceived by a team of Portugese architects will be constructed on a city block in Texas.

In December, Portugal-based Atelier Data and MOOV were named the winners of Re:Vision Dallas, an international competition put on by the Central Dallas Community Development Corporation (CDCDC), an affordable housing organization, and Urban Re:Vision, a national nonprofit group dedicated to responsible city planning.

Read article: Architectural Record Magazine website

Imagine, if you will, a utopia smack in the heart of downtown Dallas. In this green, sustainable building of tomorrow, you might roll out of bed, take a shower and find your runoff water feeding vegetation growing on the roof and walls, upon which you’ll feast later that night. Or maybe you’ll move downtown and become a cattle rancher several stories above the concrete jungle. Or perhaps you’ll grab a bite in the slow-food café downstairs after knocking off your shift working the counter in the holistic pharmacy next door.

Solar panels heat and light your home, and the high-tech and the natural mesh seamlessly in aLogan’s-Run-to-a-kibbutz kind of way. It’s a place so inviting, so self-contained that there’s really not much reason to ever leave home.

The possibilities, say the three architectural firms competing to design this future world, are endless—so much so they can’t really pin down what life in their buildings would be like, which is precisely what makes it so hard to believe one will ever exist. But if local affordable housing advocates Brent Brown and John Greenan have their way—and they insist they will—this world of tomorrow might be a lot closer than you think.

Click here to read the entire article on the Dallas Observer’s website.

Re:Vision Dallas, the competition which gives creative urban design and community development professionals around the world a solid chance at creating America’s first fully sustainable innercity block, is sweeping social media around the world.

Find out about it at www.revision-dallas.com. Enter the competition at www.urbanrevision.com.

In addition to Italy, Serbia, United Kingdom, Brazil, Russia and Spain, here are a few examples from the American social media PR scene:

• Earth Friendly Magazine
• TreeHugger (Discovery Media) 
• WIRED Online
• Death By Architecture
• Sustainable City
• John Greenan
• Sustainability Digest
• Talk Contract
• World Architecture
• Jetson Green

And don’t forget the news media covering Urban Re:Vision…

• DWELL Magazine
• UTNE Reader
• KXAS (NBC) and KDFW (Fox) TV News
• Dallas Observer
• Dallas Examiner
• Dallas Morning News
• Dallas Public Radio
• Worldchanging
• NBC News (TV)
• The Stacey Frost Interview
• Greener Buildings
• Pegasus News
• Inhabitat

UPDATED – Add Hungary (http://www.architectforum.hu/node/12174) and more from Italy (http://www.architectforum.hu/node/12174) to the fold outside the USA.

“The goal is to create the first fully sustainable block downtown,” said Brent Brown, Dallas architect and founder of the buildingcommunityWORKSHOP. “And by sustainable, we mean a place that is socially, economically and environmentally healthy. We’ll take the first step in that effort on Friday.”

Hosted by the City of Dallas, San Francisco-based Urban Re:Vision and Dallas’ buildingcommunityWORKSHOP, the Charrette will look at the common city block in an uncommon way, examining the impact of this particular city block’s development on the City of Dallas and its surrounding area. In rethinking the city block, experts will re-assess the potential value of available resources like water, waste, and air and how to strike the delicate balance between economy and equality.

“Our job on December 5th is to explore how pivotal the city block is in the urban landscape, and how it can be used as a catalyst for a whole new way of living,” said Stacey Frost, Founder of Urban Re:Vision. “This process is one that puts real people first and promotes sustainability.”

Potential requirements, barriers, and changes will be examined in an effort to pave the way for the implementation of the proposed site. This examination will also serve to aid both site-specific, and regional decision-making. Topics will include: energy systems, transportation, the natural and developed environment, community, the economy and technology.

Additional groups involved include Downtown Dallas, The Real Estate Council, Central Dallas Ministries, The Institute for Urban Policy Planning, Dallas Institute for Humanities and Culture, Enterprise Foundation, Fannie Mae Foundation, Vision North Texas and others. Participants from outside the Dallas area include representatives of the Biomimicry Institute, Architecture for Humanity, ARUP, Organic Architect, United States Green Building Council, and others.

Media attendance will be strictly limited, RSVP required
Location: Dallas City Hall
Date: December 5, 2008

Timeline:
8:30 – 10:30:Registration, Discussion & Mayor’s Welcome
12:00 – 1:30: Lunch / Interviews
4:00 – 5:30: Presentation of Regional Plans / Question and Analysis