Joshua Bolchover

This book positions Ulaanbaatar as a unique case and one that allows us to view our urban world differently. Operating as a primordial soup of emerging conditions, Ulaanbaatar is conceived as an incubator for alternative urban concepts. The book rejects the agency of the masterplan as an effective tool in emerging urban conditions and instead positions the framework as a tool for incremental urbanism. Although specific to the Ger districts of Mongolia, the story of how people, communities, planners, and politicians are grappling with the effects of becoming urban remains one of the critical issues facing the 21st century. How this process will be materialised and organised spatially, and by whom, will have profound ramifications on the climate and the social and economic make-up of our future cities.

While most attention is given to the booming mega-cities in China and the associated problems of over-population, the rural areas in China are being largely ignored. Yet, a sustainable development of the rural areas is precisely that, which will be decisive for China’s future. Through its rapid development into an industrial country, China now needs to tackle far-reaching problems such as increasing population, growing income gap between the poor and the rich, rural exodus, decreased agricultural production, and environmental pollution. Rural Urban Framework is a work group at the University of Hong Kong that not only researches the far-reaching changes of the last thirty years in China’s rural areas, but has also realized concrete projects aimed at improving supply and infrastructure on site. In this publication, the authors present for the first time the results of their research as well as their built projects in the Chinese backlands, and question whether China’s only future model lies in cities.

Vitamin Green provides an up-to-the-minute look at the single most important topic in contemporary design: sustainability. This new attention to the life of the things we make is changing the way design is practiced at every scale and will be at the center of discussions about architecture, landscape architecture, and product design in the twenty-first century. Projects nominated by an international collection of designers, curators, critics and thinkers were selected to create the best possible sourcebook of the most exciting and original green designs at all scales, from eyeglasses to landscapes and from motorcycles to skyscrapers. The result is an inspirational survey of the enormous amount of innovative work being done in this field, as well as a directory of products, ideas and techniques for both designers and consumers. Filled with projects that are built and in production, Vitamin Green provides a lively and inspiring visual definition of the term 'sustainable design', showing people what really can be achieved today.