Stack City

Stack City is a speculative project that explores the convergence of technology and urban space in our future cities, and seeks to define new, sustainable ways of life that might emerge from this condition. This exploration is carried out by projecting forward the development logics which have emerged in the new cities of the United Arab Emirates and are increasingly prevalent elsewhere, and using them as a laboratory for experimentation with new forms of urban-scale infrastructure.

Stack City combines a solar-driven thermal updraft mechanism with a flexible, livable, and scalable urban fabric to produce a highly efficient infra­structural framework and a novel urban environ­ment. Solar-thermal updraft is commonly employed on the building scale for passive cooling. Its use has also been demonstrated at larger scale to produce renewable energy (e.g. Jörg Schlaich’s solar chimneys). Stack City employs an urban-scale solar-thermal updraft system to both generate energy and moderate the microclimate of the city. Waste heat from PV panels and solar collectors at the city’s topmost layer drive a centralized airflow towards and through a single super-tall stack, pulling cooled air into the inhabited spaces of the city through a series of under-ground earth ducts. This system helps to shade and cool both private and public spaces in the other­wise intolerably hot and humid climate of Ras Al Khaimah, while also providing for the city’s energy needs. The infra­structural zone that supports the centralized airflow also enables the flexible deployment of other technologies, including photo­voltaics, a personal rapid transit system, district cooling and dehumidification, and other urban utilities. The resulting super-compact multi-layered urban fabric not only produces its own energy, but also makes possible a new way of life.