Nature-City
Nature-City reinvents the American suburb, proposing a sustainable alternative that is at once more urban and vital, more green and natural. Commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art for the 2012 exhibition Foreclosed: Rehousing the American Dream, the speculative proposal extends suburban Keizer, Oregon, with a series of high-density urban “piers.” The result is five times as dense as the neighboring suburbs and at the same time offers three times as much public open space.
Within the urban piers, diverse affordable housing types include party-wall townhouses and various multi-unit forms. Extending the idea of a new community, each of these units expands suburban typologies by integrating one piece of vital new sustainable infrastructural services for the community as a whole, from the production of renewable energy to the natural processing of waste, to the creation of water pressure, to the collection of methane gas from compost. Each system inspires a unique new form for housing and public space.
The project drew extensively on the expertise of Gerald Frug of Harvard Law School, Eric W. Sanderson of the Wildlife Conservation Society, Jason Loiselle of Sherwood Engineering, James Lima as economic advisor, and others. Addressing the challenge of winning the public over to suburban alternatives, WORKac also collaborated with advertising agency Wieden+Kennedy to produce a series of commercials promoting Nature-City’s benefits.
