Rooftop Gardening in China: Urbanisms Megalomania and Program - Essay Example

McDonough and partners’ conceptual project of rooftop gardening in China (2005) demonstrates how congestion entails the need for new buildings that cater to sustainable communities. See Figure 1. The project fits Manhattan urbanism because of its megalomania, but it also challenges the latter because it seeks to address and reduce the culture of congestion through a program that tackles spaces and actions.

The project illustrates megalomania because it localizes a “world fabricated by man” (Koolhaus, 325). Rooftop gardening is a localization of agriculturalism, through the conversion of a dimension of urban space to a local rural one. Though the project aims to improve the building’s sustainability, it remains evidence of the negative effects of the culture of congestion: an Urbanism that has created the loss of spaces dedicated to agricultural industries. The project is a garden, but it also depicts Urbanism through its features of human-made fabrication and integration into a congested culture.

The same project, nevertheless, addresses and diminishes the culture of congestion through a program that tackles spaces and actions. It represents the programmatic function of architecture that Tschumi believes is its essential role. He argues that architecture must create places that “confront spaces and actions” (Tschumi 141). The project deals with urbanism by promoting an ecosystem in the megalomania, which combines social engagement (through its walkways) and sustainability. It confronts congestion by expressing its desire for ecological balance.

The conceptual project of rooftop gardening in China reveals that Urbanism is experiencing a rupture, as it scrambles to invite back Nature into its form and function. It remains a megalomania that exhibits human-made fabrications of living systems, though it also confronts the culture of congestion by attempting to provide more agricultural spaces that attend to long-run community needs. Read More