The media are not toys… they can be entrusted only to new artists, because they are art forms.
(McLuhan, 1954)
Airport Dynamism
Winner of Applied Arts Awards International Competition
Site: East Boston, MA
Year: Spring 2020
Near Future City
Featured by CBC News, Published in Print by Applied Arts Awards, Featured by Harvard GSD, Selected by Dean as Annual Holiday Card
+climatesystem +urban design +neighborhood scale +snow water +landscape+architecture +tactical urbanism
As the private sphere is cooled down, the public sphere bears the
cost of increasing heat. This asks us to rethink the unsustainability
of current cooling infrastructures and asks us to look at eagle hill on
a block by block basis and regional scale to find opportunities where
we can elongate the lifetime of snow from the winter season into the
blaring hot summer, rechoreographing hot and cold distribution in
the community. The chronic risks between Logan’s heat emissions
and local public health in Eagle Hill, East Boston is well documented.
Among the airport’s many local impacts, we argue that urban
heat island effect must be included as a major category of pollution
to be addressed by MassPORT Capital.
Under the GASB No. 49 Act, MassPORT is obligated to pay $7.8
million in liabilities to address the environmental effects that Logan
airport has caused on the surrounding neighborhood. Detailed analyses
of the cost structures of Logan Airport reveals that MassPORT
has a total asset value of $5000 million, and over 700 million revenue
from aviation. Similar cost structures can be found in other
airports near territories with heavy snow, showing the scalability of
snow reuse on a much larger scale. If we install 100 of these coolers,
we estimate the total cost, including material, labor, and maintenance
costs to be $8 million, a cost that Mass Port is certainly
capable of absorbing into their operative budget. Reusing snow for
cooling airport infrastructures can further cut utility costs, the capital
which will be directed towards the neighborhood to build a community-
based district cooling design strategy.
TEAM: With Runke Luo, Yuning Zhang
TEAM: With Runke Luo, Yuning Zhang
