After sort-of designing the Wyly Theater, what’s a starchitect to do? Why, design a plan to redesign Europe’s energy infrastructure in order to make the continent more energy efficienct. The plan is called Roadmap 2050, and here’s the gist:
The proposal’s starting point is the fact that renewable energy sources such as wind and sunshine are erratic and unreliable, which means they have to be supported by other forms of power. But they are also available in different quantities in different places – wind is abundant in Britain, sun in Spain – and in different seasons. The big idea is to create a power network across the continent linking all these sources, which could then compensate for each other. If it was windless in Britain but sunny in Spain, power could travel from them to us, and vice versa.
Koolhaas is not the only AT&T PAC designing vet with green-leaning new projects. Foster and Partners’ have designed Masdar City in Abu Dhabi, a $22 billion sustainable development on view at the Sustainable Futures exhibition at the Design Museum in London.
Image: Diagram showing the decarbonized grid power distribution through Europe contained in the Roadmap 2050 plan.
