Future Cities Lab Global • Cycles & Districts

Research Modules of Cycles & Districts

Circular Future Cities

A transition to a circular economy, in which used materials may become valuable resources for a new production cycle, is urgently needed. This project aims to develop integrated frameworks and tools based on advanced digital technology for informing the design, construction and management of circular buildings and deploying more effective resource solutions. It addresses the questions of which contributions future circular cities can make to lower adverse environmental impacts and how to derive tailored, site-specific system solutions for sustainable housing.

SDG

Dense and Green Cities

Emerging Models of Sustainable Integrated Development explores sustainable integrated districts (SIDs) as models for high-density high- liveability future cities by studying urban innovations and systems solutions that are deployed and integrated at the district scale. Important aspects of the system performance of SIDs are captured by an interdisciplinary team of researchers that works closely with important stakeholders from government agencies and industry.

SDG

Powering the City

The objective of this module is to efficiently reduce energy consumption and to increase solar energy production in cities while minimizing total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The research includes the development of holistic, multi-scale and interdisciplinary approaches for assessing large scale deployment of (building integrated) photovoltaic in realistic urban contexts under different climatic, socio-economic and architectural conditions. Zurich and Singapore are used as complementary case studies and we are interacting with public stakeholders and agencies to directly apply research into practice by receiving feedback and providing training on toolboxes developed.

SDG

Urban BioCycles Mycelium Digitalisation

This module aims to develop new sustainable technologies by combining composite materials that comprise cultivated, grown and harvested natural resources with digital fabrication methods. Mycelium material grown from fungi is one of the materials of choice for this enterprise, as well as subtractive processes and 3D-printing (3DP). Along with materials and fabrication, a careful assessment of the sustainability and likelihood for application in the construction sector is studied.

SDG

Other Clusters

Infrastructure & Ecologies

This cluster focuses on the connective tissue of settlement systems (roads, rail, ports and airports, waterways) and their transformative effects on land use patterns, working at city-district, the sea-city interface, regional and transnational scales.

Food & Territories

This cluster focuses on emergent edge-city and hinterland regions, to integrate food production, water management, ecosystem services, hybrid land uses and biodiversity in sustainable extended urbanisation.

Integration & Strategies

This cluster focuses on the development of innovative cyber-physical design processes (cognitive, collaborative, participatory, digitally-enhanced) by which the forms, patterns and functions of settlement systems may be arranged in sustainable ways.

Tools & Platforms

This cluster groups various software development efforts at FCL Global to create and maintain a suite of desktop applications, web services, software addons, plugins and processing pipelines. We aim to unify and merge the functionality of new and existing software into a universal frontend and standardized processing middleware to provide a complete, open-source platform.

Future Cities Laboratory Global

Welcome to FCL Global, an interdisciplinary research programme that seeks to address the worldwide circumstances of rapid urbanisation. Our ultimate goal is to promote more equitable and livable urban futures, by bringing together Science, Design, Engineering and Governance.

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