I am very excited to announce the beginning of the next phase of Low2No. With a much anticipated round of signatures last week, Low2No has moved from competition to implementation.
Over the coming months, Marco and I will be working with the design team to further develop a vision for the Low2No block. This will include some very real, on the ground design solutions such as the site planning, but the great strength of our newly signed contract is the inclusion of activities that will have systemic impact, such as regulatory reform (e.g. creating a legal framework for mixed-use planning in Finland, investigating ways to integrate multi-story wood construction into national building codes, etc). I have seen many architecture competition entries flush with ideas selected for construction, only to be stripped of their non-architectural content once the design fee and construction budget arrived on the desk of those in charge of the purse. I can proudly say that thanks to an extraordinary effort of our design and development teams, we have a contract that makes possible the pursuit of nearly all of the richest content that emerged from the Low2No competition.
With this contractual backbone for the project in place, we are now obliged and empowered to deliver a new, integrative form of sustainable urban development for cities. Where Masdar pioneered a ground-up solution to carbon neutral development, we hope to develop an analog method appropriate for building in existing cities.
With the public issue of the Low2No Jatkasaari Press Release, I look forward to regular posts to this site as the design process unfolds.