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

"Forwarding Dallas" is a collaboration among Portuguese architects André Almeida (Atelier Data), Carolina Pombo (Atelier Data), Inês Vicente (Atelier Data), José Niza (MOOV), João Calhau (MOOV)

A rundown area of Dallas, TX is being given an eco makeover by the Re:Vision Dallas winners, Atelier Data and Moov. Their plan is to create Forwarding Dallas, a sustainable community that spans an entire city block that will include hill-shaped buildings adorned with green roofs that grow produce to feed locals.

“The design proposes a series of hillside structures, with public spaces and trees located in the valleys, and solar panels and building-integrated wind turbines on the peaks,” Inhabitat says of Forwarding Dallas. “Renewable energy will completely power the community, while rainwater will be collected and stored for use within the complex.”

The block will include housing and public amenities like a coffee shop, gym, daycare and “a spiritual space.” Construction for Forwarding Dallas will begin in 2011.

http://www.trendhunter.com/trends/forwarding-dallas

[Read entire story at dwell.com]

Based on polls so far, Little Diversified Architectural Consulting’s “Entangled Bank” is capturing the majority of citizen responses for Urban Re:Vision’s “Re:Vision Dallas” (popularity in no way influences the judging process for the most feasible block).

Today we learned that Entangled Bank has been shortlisted (out of over 600 entries) for presentation at the World Architecture Festival. Congratulations to the the design team at Little and to the visionary brief by Urban Re:Vision that made these designs possible.

Learn more:

• Urban Re:Vision (Re:Vision Dallas)
• Little Diversified Architectural Consulting
• Project Media Weblog
• World Architecture Festival
• Central Dallas CDC
• bcWORKSHOP

Take a look:

From the Dallas Observer:

We’ve seen plenty of conceptual renderings of the Re:Vision Dallas finalists, but this morning, North Carolina-based Little Diversified Architectural Consulting provides us with a very impressive video showcasing their self-sustaining downtown block, The Entangled Bank.

Should Central Dallas Community Development Corporation and bcWORKSHOP proceed with this project — which envisions a self-sustaining development behind Dallas City Hall breaking ground some time next year — there’s a very good chance The Entangled Bank, or at least some version of it, will occupy what’s now a parking lot.

For TEDx DBX to host Leo Laporte as its first announced presenter sends a regional message: Leo has never presented in the UAE before. This signals a TEDx that will combine ideas that need to arrive in the region with ideas that need to be exported.

David George-Coch (@itsdgc) just posted this article with The National (UAE) Newspaper:

******* ABU DHABI // A version of a renowned conference that has included such high-profile speakers as Bono, Bill Gates, Al Gore and the Nobel Prize-winning American physicist Murray Gell-Mann is making its way to Dubai this year.

TEDxDubai, affiliated with the Technology, Entertainment and Design (TED) talks held annually in California, will take place in October after receiving the green light from its US headquarters.

“The buzz is amazing. It’s like Woodstock in the 1960s,” said Giorgio Ungania, a marketing and new media manager with the Australian firm SAE, who is organising the event with James Piecowye, a professor at Zayed University.

“It gives me a real [sense] of the hunger in the UAE about ideas and forward thinking.”

TED has emerged as one of the world’s most prestigious conferences after beginning more than 20 years ago as an informal gathering of bankers and architects on the US’s west coast. Since then, it has garnered a reputation for attracting the world’s leading thinkers and doers to share their thoughts on global issues.

[Read entire article here]

TEDx Links:

• Website: http://tedxdubai.com/
• Blog: http://tedxdubai.blogspot.com/
• Tweet: http://twitter.com/tedxdubai
• Face: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=124613070864
• Linked: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=1996524&trk=hb_side_g

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Asheville and WNC locals: we’ll be participating in some form or another with Asheville’s TEDx as well. We haven’t heard much since May 17th officially, but things are clearly moving. Check it out in case you’ve missed the buzz so far: http://tedxavl.com/ or follow them @tedxavl

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Last but certainly not least, we are still waiting for video to come online from Stacey Frost’s presentation at TEDx San Francisco. Cameron Sinclair wrote Urban Re:Vision a love note on the Huffington Post after her appearance there. Here are a few pictures:

Re:Vision Dallas was part of a series on ABC World News with Charlie Gibson last night titled “Downsizing your Dream Home”. The piece focused on housing trends including buying smaller homes, energy efficiency and renting. The Re:Vision Dallas project is highlighted as a new trend towards energy efficient urban living.

ArchDaily featured Re:Vision Dallas honorable mention “Commonwealth” in their latest article. Below is an excerpt – click to read the full article.

We have been featuring several Re:Vision Dallas entries because the competition has attracted forward thinking designers with solutions we’d like to share.  The newest submission from PIKL Studio won an honorable mention for their proposal Commonwealth.   PIKL Studio’s proposal

envisions the urban block as gradually moving toward becoming a natural community built on effective relationships and connections.

Read full article from ArchDaily

The competition is the brainchild of Urban Re:Vision, founded by Stacey Frost, and is the sixth in a series of competitions to develop a holistic framework for building a more sustainable and equitable city block. Unlike many design initiatives, this one has legs. It is situated on a real site just a stones throw from the Dallas City Hall. Additionally the organization began of the process by holding a workshop with a range of citywide stakeholders all looking at how to implement such a project and garnered buy-in from the city and developers alike.

Today, finalists of Revision Dallas were announced and the trio of winners include;

Project: Forwarding Dallas
Design Team: Atelier Data & MOOV from Lisbon, Portugal

Project: Greenways Xero Energy
Design Team: David Baker and Partners Architects and Fletcher Studio from San Francisco, CA

Project: Entangled Bank
Design Team from Charlotte, North Carolina

It was once said that the best way to predict the future is to design it and these three daring proposals are just that. A vision for Dallas and its’ residents to decide if we can build more sustainably in the decades to come. Perhaps this revolution in building might kick start thegreen job revolution in the heart of the lone star state. So Mayors Adams, Bloomberg andNewsom better take note as their respective cities just got a little competition. 

[Read Huffington Post story here]

[Learn more about Urban Re:Vision here]

Chris Cheatham (Green Building Law Update) interviewed Eric Corey Freed last week and just posted the first in a 2-part series interview:

My friends over at Sensible City recently offered me the opportunity to interview Eric Corey Freed. It’s not everyday I get to interview someone who was just interviewed by the New York Times so I jumped at the chance. Even better, Eric is an “organic architect” and studied under a former student of Frank Lloyd Wright. I am getting married in October at Wright’s Arizona home, Taliesin West, so I couldn’t pass up this opportunity.

Eric is involved in a tremendous design competition called Urban Re:Vision, and he describes how Dallas was chosen as the site for the competition: “The mayor, Tom Leppert, was fantastic. He’s got 30 years in the building industry and he understood Urban Re:Vision right off the bat. So the City of Dallas gave us this block next door to city hall and said ‘Here, this would be perfect,’ and everything kind of came together. Now we have what we always wanted, a real city block, with real stakeholders behind it and the winning entry will really get built.”

In Part I of the interview, Eric and I discuss “organic architecture” and the Urban Re:Vision competition in some detail. Eric also provdies insight into liability concerns surrounding the competition. On Wednesday, we will discuss broader legal issues surrounding the green building indusry and a controversy that arose over Eric’s New York Times interview.

Part 1: [ Read the interview here ]