The MASDAR Biome is
both a revolutionary and an evolutionary structure intended to embody the best available practices for both sustainability and sociability. Like the new city in which it sits, the MASDAR Biome will be a visual and functional landmark on the pathway to a rational planetary future. We strongly believe that this future must penetrate every aspect of city building, that the ecological perspective has long taught us that natural systems are complex, distributed, and dynamic. We hope that this project, in this remarkable city, will play its role not simply within the perimeter of its own property but as a key actor for the city as a whole and for the new cities its construction so dramatically portends.
As we illustrate in our submission, our proposal will embody and expand upon virtually all of the suggested technologies laid out in the project brief. Understanding that sustainability must be achieved on both supply and demand sides of the equation, we have worked closely with our engineers not simply to assure the lowest energy (actual and embodied), water, waste, emissions and air quality, toxicity, and life-cycle cost, via consumption or production. And, we have sought to achieve this with a maximum emphasis on the most passive available systems. Throughout, we have utilized these technologies not simply as the means to technical solutions to environmental projects but as a way of foregrounding the importance of the people – and the needs of their human bodies – who will occupy this space.