The Lung of Phnom Penh - no skyscraper reach higher than the flying ones
If you have nothing left but air, can you use it for your advantage and build with it?
"The Lung of Phnom Penh"
There is something mystical about air that triggered my curiosity. I imagined, like Lebbeus Woods, that the City of Air must be an ideal place everyone longs to find – a place of myths, openness, thought and reflection.
I started doing research on the element itself and its structural qualities. I studied the effects of buoyancy, and floated lanterns up into the sky in a park. I imagined a place created by people longing to live up in the sky – in search for the ultimate experience of living with air. This curiosity led me to my TS-report, and my final project on the Boueng Kak Lake in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
"The Lung of Phnom Penh” is sited at one of the urban lakes in the capital of Cambodia. It has recently been transformed into a desert. In 2007 Shukaku Incl. bought the Boeung Kak lake from the government and filled it with sand - forcing 4000 families living around the lake to abandon their homes. The project proposes an alternative setting for the displaced communities once living around the lake. With pressure from the World Bank they are today given 12% of the lakes area back. Set amid modern development of new skyscrapers, they would have to adapt to a new way of living.
If you have nothing left but air, can you use it for your advantage - and build with it?
Phnom Penh
The 12% site for the displaced communities will puncture the modern development on the filled Boeung Kak lake, linking the urban parks in Phnom Penh together by creating a public green north-south axis trough the city.
Vertical Hierachy
Urban public- and private life organized in the heights
Bamboo parks and rain water pools
Rain water is collected and stored in different water pools in between the hanging gardens - providing a cool and green park environment for the citizens of Phnom Penh, in the shade of the flying balloons.
Tensile, hanging living units
When your home is hanging from a balloon it needs to be light - weaved of bamboo treads in tension between the ground and the sky. Life is organized in a vertical hierarchy.
Breathing space; Prototype
I imagined a place created by people longing to live up in the sky, in search for the ultimate experience of living with air.
Seasonal change
Heat controls the height of the balloons. The structure regulates itself according to the seasonal changes in Phnom Penh with floods and droughts. Rainwater is collected from the balloons surface and distributed throughout the structure - eventually stored in the ground.
Hanging markets
The public park stretches across the filled lake, providing a cool and green environment for the citizens of Phnom Penh. Vegetables are sold from the hanging markets, lifting food and tools up and down, to be sold or used in the vertical structure
Air and Bamboo
Building a scaffolding of light bamboo under the hot air balloon structures
Under the balloons
The floating hot air balloons provide shade and regulate the height of the hanging bridges - constantly moving up and down in the new structure.
