Green Desert

Expo Milano Competition 2015

Nowadays, desertification has become a great problem for all the governments around the world. Unfortunately, over one third of the world’s land surface (38 percent) is threatened with desertification. Meanwhile, we are facing the problem of overpopulation. The Green Desert project provides a multilateral solution, which introduces desert as a habitat for people and confront with the increasing of desertification. Iran is located in the Middle East; Southeast Asia and its geological features were studied by many researchers. Desert land forms cover twenty-five percent of Iran’s area. Dasht-e Lut and Dasht-e Kavir are Iran largest deserts. The Lut Desert is one of the largest playas in Iran and includes a great diversity of hydro-aeolian processes with a very interesting pattern of yarding landforms. In this project, we designed a set of cities in Yardang landforms and considered natural energy resources - sunlight, geothermal and wind power- as the basic energy resources to meet the resident’s needs. All blocks have green terraces in front and there is a garden at the center of the complex which includes deciduous. In addition, the complex is surrounded by farmlands. All the blocks will receive sufficient light through the mirrors located in the complex. These mirrors are exposed to the sunlight and each reflects the light to the other one. There is an isolated system in which the water flows. It goes more than 300 meters down and then will be pumped up. This process helps water loses heat. This water will be used in the cooling system.

The water which comes from the qanat and other sources moves through the structures in to the blocks. This process not only decreases the temperature difference between inside and outside and impedes energy waste, but also make the complex cooler. These three gear wheels ‘movements are dependent to each other. Each of them moves through hydraulic system and functions as the transportation system.

At night, the central part of the roof move toward the sides. Meanwhile, the blocks which are closer to the roof move to the sides through the rails located beneath the floors. This process creates us a great opportunity to use night cooling process. In this process the sky of the night is considered as black material which absorbs all the heats created in the complex during the day. Finally, the heat in the complex will be substituted for the cool air existed in the desert at night.