Chijen Wang

PROPOSITION

In response to New York City's desire to reduce 80% GHG by 2050, Parasitic Urbanism is an alternative energy system that reveals and remaps the carbon credit in the city, and rebuilds a relationship between building and people and nature.

BACKGROUND

The practice of carbon trading was implemented by the Kyoto Protocol (1992) as another strategy for tackling climate change, and it allows the city and business to purchase the credits from elsewhere then growing as usual. 24 years later, the Paris Agreement (2016) has again agreed the emission should be cut down to 3 degrees. Although the massive climate events happened in every single year in every country, the carbon market seems to enlarge every year globally. I argue it is because the trading system is hidden behind the scenes. The overexploitation, consumerism, and urbanism are hidden behind our perfect modern life in the distance.

NEW YORK CITY

A megacity, like New York, as perfect example of Morden life. 

The life which you don't know where does the trash transfer to?

where does the leftover-food go?

and where do the vegetables come from?

However in the past, New York was a giant garbage dump , 33 million tons of human waste is buried in this world's biggest landfill. In a way, a person who throws leftover food into the non-recycled trash in New York City might cause deforest in Brazil and, moreover, lead to a massive typhoon in south-east Asia. After the landfill closed in 2001, it costs the city more than $2.5 billion just to ship what it collects from homes, schools, and restaurants (by rail, barge or truck) to distant incinerators or landfills; dramatically, some of the trash is shipped to China or India. The Kyoto Protocol will be replaced by the Paris Agreement in 2020. But, are we acting fast enough? Are we taking lessons from our earlier Kyoto agreement? On 6 October 2017, the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) issued a formal proposal to repeal the Clean Power Plan, A regulation to reduce domestic demand for coal, especially on the power station and air pollution issues. 

One example of reducing carbon footprint is the 80x50 program in New York City, reduce 80 percent by 2050. and 40 percent by 2030 (40 x 30).

The thesis questions: how can architecture serve as a mechanism to facilitate energy infrastructure? In a speculative near future scenario, under the 80x50, New York is turning 6 million square feet of rooftop into a solar farm (reducing tax for the owner), in order to reach the number and replace the traditional power plant (1 nuclear, and 3 conventional power plants).

Trying to intervene in this circle of energy system, envisioning the end of the conventional power station, I am proposing an alternative energy system for the city. 55% of the energy produced from the nearby power stations is consumed by residents, and much of the carbon credit is eventually going into a landfill or being burned. I want to rebuild the relationship between building and people. Internalise waste disposal mechanism, and reveal the waste treatment system.

So, How Do We Do it?

Planting trees is not enough, advertisement threaten is affectless, electric car and home equipment upgrade is pseudoscience.

The public only believes what they have seen and experienced.

Investigating natural resources in the city for example, human waste, tree leaves, waste-food from the kitchen and restaurants, leftover food in the fridge, using these raw materials to generate electricity in the city. In order to achieve this goal, this system will involve every people, building, and trees by using the rooftop and setback space to generate power, collecting food scraps and wastewater from the building, mix them in a digest tank through anaerobic digestion eventually transform the trash to power. The intervention comes with three scales; 1. BUILDING SCALE. 2. STREET BLOCK SCALE. 3. NEIGHBORHOOD SCALE. 

For me, the proposal is more than a power station.

The symbol is important, the institution is important, people need things to believe.

I believe the design not only transforms the city and the skyline, but also sets up a new era which the green intervention leading the trend toward to a post-renewable energy period. 

The design is a beacon in the city.

The design is a flag which shows the direction of the wind.