VELO-CITY
TEAM: Tobias Mackrill, Katherine Dauncey
Velo-city //
The obesity epidemic presents a clear and current danger to future global health. Sedentary lifestyles are a key issue where 90% of days are spent indoors doing deskbound jobs, with that in mind there is no wonder that 25.6% of adults in the UK are overweight. Design can encourage active behaviour by making it easy, attractive and sociable. Velo-city is a unique housing typology designed to combat sedentary lifestyles by integrating exercise into the daily routine. Often people’s reasons for not exercising are cost and accessibility – Velo-city incorporates money and energy saving incentives resulting in a healthy lifestyle. The scheme is designed on a 4x4m grid which occupies ‘dead space’, primarily within towns and cities. The modular design provides varying sizes of dwellings and social spaces with integrated private or public exercise platforms. Bikes are provided but residents are also able to clip their own bikes to the system. Residents are required to do a minimum of 2hours/week on these bicycles and the energy generated from these 2 hours goes towards powering community spaces and street lamps etc. Additional time spent on the bike will provide energy for the individual’s dwelling, and therefore reduce electricity bills.
British
University of Sheffield