The foothills of Mount Fuji are about to become the home to Toyota Woven City, a living laboratory for testing and advancing mobility, autonomy, connectivity, hydrogen-powered infrastructure, and industry collaboration.
Toyota Woven City, designed via a partnership between BIG and Toyota, is located at a 175-acre former factory site in the city of Susono in Shizuoka. It will use solar energy, geothermal energy, and hydrogen fuel cell technology to strive towards a carbon neutral society. The city is conceived as a flexible network of streets dedicated to various speeds of mobility for safer, pedestrian-friendly connections. There will be three separate street types for different modes of mobility.
The first is the primary street, which will be optimized for faster autonomous vehicles with logistical traffic underneath. The Toyota e-Palette will be used for shared transportation and delivery services. The second street type is the recreational promenade, which will be occupied by micro-mobility types such as bicycles, scooters, and other modes of personal transport. This shared street will allow residents to freely walk at a reduced speed with increasing amounts of nature and space. The final street type is the linear park, a path dedicated to pedestrians, flora, and fauna. These intimate trails will provide a safe environment for leisurely strolls and nature breaks through the ecological corridor that connects Mount Fuji to the Susono Valley.
“By simply ‘reprogramming’ existing streets, we can begin to reset the balance between people, mobility, and nature in cities as diverse as Tokyo or New York, Copenhagen or Barcelona.” said Bjarke Ingels, Founder and Creative Director, BIG, in a release. “The Woven City is designed to allow technology to strengthen the public realm as a meeting place and to use connectivity to power human connectivity.”
See Also: BIG unveils Downtown Brooklyn Public Realm vision
The three different street types will be woven into 3x3 city blocks, with each one framing a courtyard accessible via the promenade or linear park. The urban fabric expands and contracts to accommodate a variety of scales, programs, and outdoor areas, such as large plazas or central parks. The city’s infrastructure, including hydrogen power, stormwater filtration, and a goods delivery network known as the matternet, will be hidden underground.
All of the buildings in the Woven City will be built with mass timber and include photovoltaic panels on the roofs. The construction process will combine Japanese craftsmanship and the tatami module with robotic fabrication technology. Each city block will be characterized by a variety of housing, retail, and business to create neighborhoods that are active at all times of the day. R&D spaces will house robotic construction, 3D printing, and mobility labs while offices will be flexible and accommodate workstations, lounges, and indoor gardens. Residences will be used to test technology such as in-home robotics and be equipped with sensor-based AI technology to perform functions like automatic grocery deliveries, laundry pick-ups, or trash disposal.
Toyota Woven City is BIG’s first project in Japan and will break ground in phases beginning in 2021.
Related Stories
Urban Planning | Dec 4, 2017
Can you spark an urban renaissance?
Thoughtful design, architecture, and planning can accelerate and even create an urban renaissance.
Urban Planning | Nov 20, 2017
Creating safer streets: Solutions for high-crash locations
While there has been an emphasis on improving safety along corridors, it is equally important to focus on identifying potential safety issues at intersections.
Urban Planning | Nov 16, 2017
Business groups present a new vision of Downtown Houston as that city’s unavoidable hub
The plan, which took 18 months to complete, emphasizes the centrality of downtown to the metro’s eight counties.
Architects | Oct 30, 2017
City 2050: What will your city look like in 2050?
What do we think the future will look like 30 years or so from now? And what will City: 2050 be like?
Great Solutions | Oct 17, 2017
Loop NYC would reclaim 24 miles of park space from Manhattan’s street grid
A new proposal leverages driverless cars to free up almost all of Manhattan’s Park Avenue and Broadway for pedestrian paths.
Mixed-Use | Aug 2, 2017
Redevelopment of Newark’s Bears Stadium site receives team of architects
Lotus Equity Group selected Michael Green Architecture, TEN Aquitectos, Practice for Architecture and Urbanism, and Minno & Wasko Architects and Planners to work on the project.
Urban Planning | Jul 21, 2017
Streets as storytellers: Defining places and connecting people
“In a city the street must be supreme. It is the first institution of the city. The street is a room by agreement, a community room, the walls of which belong to the donors, dedicated to the city for common use.” – Louis Kahn
Urban Planning | Jun 26, 2017
Convenience and community lead the suburban shift
As the demand for well-connected urban locales increases, so too has the cost of property and monthly rent; and as suburbs typically offer a bargain on both, more people are looking for a compromise.
Office Buildings | Jun 12, 2017
At 11.8 million-sf, LG Science Park is the largest new corporate research campus in the world
The project is currently 75% complete and on schedule to open in 2018.
Architects | May 26, 2017
Innovations in addressing homelessness
Parks departments and designers find new approaches to ameliorate homelessness.
