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As we have seen in IndustryTap’s recent articles Sky-High “Vertical Forest” Takes Green Living to New Heights and This Building Will Eat Smog And Look Good Doing It, architects are hard at work designing sustainable buildings and incorporating new technologies.

Cairns – A Man Made Pile of Stones

Smart cities, if they are ever to emerge, will likely center around redesign of urban buildings and infrastructure that will make them “self sustaining” and reduce carbon emissions and other “negative externalities.”

The Chinese city of Shenzen, a candidate for green transformation if there ever was one, became a special economic zone in 1979, quickly transforming from a farming population of 10,000 to the booming industrialized city of 10 million it is today through foreign and Chinese investments of more than $35 billion. Shenzen is now one of China’s most crowded cities.

Development of this kind came at a cost: Shenzen has experienced major environmental stress. Now, Vincent Callebaut Architects of France has designed a sustainable building complex to demonstrate how better management of space and resources can improve urban life.

A New Sustainable Development in Shenzen, China

Asian Cairns will be a group of six “space age” looking buildings that will produce food for residents. The project will cover 79 acres (320,000 sq. m) with green vegetation incorporated into the structures of the building. Dubbed “farmscrapers” instead of “skyscrapers” the buildings will include housing, office space, shops and recreational areas.

Photovoltaic and photo thermal solar cells as well as wind turbines will be incorporated into the structure of the building to provide more energy than is consumed by residents. Callebaut designed the building so that no fossil fuels will be necessary, completely eliminating CO2 emissions.

The image below shows the inspiration for Asian Cairns development in Shenzen: