Exponential Innovations Everywhere
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Joost Bonsen's Opinions on How Money, Ideas, and Talent can
Enable Health, Wealth, and Happyness for Each plus Achieve Liberty, Prosperity, and Vitality for All and Ultimately Help Us Spread Beyond Our Cradle Planet Earth
"The Hawthorn Tower will, like its Milanese predecessor, be blanketed in greenery -- and it’s expected to absorb over 5.4 tons of carbon dioxide. The equivalent of one hectare of woods will be installed on the tower to create a real urban ecosystem with over 30 different vegetal species."
"A giant skyscraper as tall as The Shard in London, built with its own complete ecosystem featuring offices, shops and 'huge' parks. London is the proposed city for the mixed-use tower, which would include interlinking ramps connecting different sections of the structure to create a 'vertical city' housing thousands. [...] different areas of the building would be linked by a series of bridges and walkways helping to 'increase exchanges, communications and interactions. It would include a raft of public spaces, entertainment zones and shopping areas to create a 'vertical city'. Residents would be able to walk up a series of interlinked ramps through vibrant streets, plazas, technological spaces and 'huge' parks in a 'complex and rich system like a real city'."
"The Porsche Design Tower under construction near Miami, Florida, features a virtuosic parking system that whisks vehicles up to sky garages adjacent to handsome floor plans. [...] Dubbed P'0001, is a joint venture between Gil Dezer, owner and president of Dezer Development -- a luxury-condominium firm that counts mega-developer Donald Trump on its client roster -- and Germany-based Porsche Design Group, the consultancy founded by sports-car scion Ferry Porsche in 1972. It represents a novel marriage of automotive branding and real-estate development."
NextBigFuture spotlights the Phoenix Towers... "Designed by London-based Chetwoods Architects in partnership with HuaYan Group. The project will consist of two buildings, representing the male and female dualistic aspects of Chinese culture. The taller tower, Feng will have about 100 floors for residential living, offices and retail space. The slightly smaller Huang tower will contain "the World's tallest garden". The towers will be constructed on an island in a lake, covering a 7-hectare (17-acre) site. The buildings will be constructed on a steel superstructure with concrete cores and buttresses. The exterior will be covered in photovoltaic panels. The towers will incorporate green energy technologies including wind, solar, thermal, biomass boilers and hydrogen fuel cells [and] the world’s tallest garden."FastCoDesign has in-depth piece looking Inside China's Plans For The World's Tallest (And Pinkest) Towers...
"In China there’s a lot of competition between cities trying to out-‘spectactularize’ the next city,” [...] Chetwood and his team embraced the mandate to design something grand while layering in symbols that speak to China’s cultural heritage and future aspirations. "They were looking to put Wuhan on the map," he says, and the original design for the mixed-use commercial and tourist hub "wasn't spectacular enough."
Plus, Inhabitat had earlier construction pix & comments... "The two towers measure 260 feet and 367 feet tall respectively, and together they have the capacity to hold 480 big and medium size trees, 250 small size trees, 11,000 ground-cover plants and 5,000 shrubs (that’s the equivalent of 2.5 acres of forest). The types of trees were chosen based on where they would be positioned on the buildings’ facades and it took over two years of working with botanists to decide which trees would be most appropriate for the buildings and the climate. The plants used in the project were grown specifically for the building, pre-cultivated so that they would gradually acclimate to the conditions they would experience once placed on the building."
Starting with Boeri's rendered design visualization... 
The Globe's Leon Neyfakh asks If urban farming took off, what would Boston look like? "Not every farm looks like a farm any more. A new type of agriculture has been sprouting up in urban centers [...] and Boston’s new ordinance opens the city up to a whole range of ideas about how to integrate food production into city life. [...] On the more inventive side, entrepreneurs are trying to reimagine the traditional mechanics of agriculture so that it might be woven into the built landscape of a dense and busy city. Now that Boston has officially signaled its interest, the possibilities are vast -- maybe Boston can even become home to North America’s first skyscraper farm"Neyfakh goes on to spotlight several specific ideas...
" Singapore is one of the most densely populated cities in the world -- but it's also one of the most high-tech when it comes to green city planning. Now, other Asian cities are looking to Singapore for inspiration. [...] Chinese authorities are now beginning to take note and view Singapore as a model in terms of planning and sustainability. [...] Chinese all over the country have been to Singapore... they like what we've done in Singapore and they would like their cities to be developed like Singapore."
