Belgian ecological architect Vincent Callebaut's firm Vincent Callebaut Architectures has proposed 5 farming modulated bridges made of 55, 000 plus-energy "3D-Printed" housing units to rebuild Iraq's liberated areas remaining from the ruins of war. 

Callebaut's proposal was awarded with the 3rd prize - also named the Rifat Chadirji Prize - which aims to create global awareness on social issues Iraq faces recently. 

The mountainous-like design scheme will rebuild some defined areas on the Tigris River with 5 affordable and adaptable home bridges with replicable architectures, addressing housing crisis of Mosul and fighting poverty after and feeding the Post-ISIS Mosul.

"According to the Iraqi government, more than $1 billion will be needed to rehabilitate basic services throughout Mosul and prepare a resilient urban plan to welcome the war refugees and internally displaced persons to the country with dignity," said Vincent Callebaut in a project description.

"The 5 Mosul bridges connecting the west and east districts across the Tigris were destroyed to encircle ISIS."

Vincent Callebaut Architectures' main concept is to rebuild them as inhabited bridges by building the new city over the old city. It is a matter of recycling the city from its heart, not from rebuilding it to its periphery by encroaching on an obsolescent agricultural land. These inhabited bridges will be printed in 3D using debris from war ruins and rubble to address the shortage of affordable housing, estimated at more than 53,000 dwelling units.

They will be covered with urban farms and agricultural fields dedicated to permaculture in order to guarantee food autonomy to their inhabitants and excellent thermal inertia to the built environment. Urban farms and orchards will be irrigated by water from the Tigris, plowed by Archimedes screws. 

Gray water from bathrooms and kitchens will also be recycled and filtered by plants in lagoon waterfalls connected with the river. Biomass composters will feed their orchards and vegetable gardens suspended in biological fertilizers.

The bridges will also incorporate wind chimneys for cool, natural air, cold ceilings using the thermal energy of the river, solar water heaters for hot water, and hundreds of photovoltaic pergolas producing the necessary kilowatts.

Each bridge will resemble an artificial mountain generated by repetition in the space of one single basic module of 12.96m²: a 3,6m cube creating an edge vault using the intersection of two cradles, which intersect at right angles.

The architect is inspired by the muqarnas - the famous, ornamental honeycomb pattern, used in Islamic architecture since medieval times - stacking these typical houses in a space creates a corbelled structure consisting of thousands of stalactites, which redescend the structural loads towards the bridge piers.

The typical houses will made up of 2, 5, or 10 modules, respectively forming dwellings of 25, 65, and 120 square meters. The constructive system will thus respond to different habitable capacity requirements, according to the size of the Iraqi family to be accommodated. 

Stacked in large groups, the typical houses will form quarters with ocher toned facades, and, over the years, a dense, green, and sustainable village above the Tigris. The facades are reminiscent of the ziggurats with their succession of superimposed terraces, distanced with respect to each other.

Five 3D printers in the form of articulated spiders will allow the construction of 30 houses per day, or nearly 55,000 housing units in five years spread over the five bridges.

"All debris will be transformed into resources. To feed these 3D spider printers, drones will continuously bring them construction materials coming from the districts in ruins; previously crushed and transformed in recycling centers," explained the firm. 

"Equipped with an industrial precision robotic arm, the spiders print the housing modules by directing any building nozzle such as those used to pour concrete and insulation materials, or those using a milling head."

"Restoring the self-confidence of war refugees, their confidence in an optimistic future, and allowing them to participate actively in the repatriation process is essential to the success of this reconstruction in the heart of the city," explained the studio.

400 kilometers (250 miles) north of Baghdad, the rebuilding of the 5 bridges in Mosul, such as the mythical hanging gardens of Babylon (present-day southern Iraq), offers a vision of a positive future and a prototype of affordable and adaptable housing for each family unit.

Vincent Callebaut Architectures envisions an urban planning model that can be easily replicated with the goal of rapidly increasing the housing capacity in the city and providing a practical and inspiring solution for war rapatriates. 

The studio stresses that this pioneering concept could change the way to construct buildings - making the process faster and less costly - fighting poverty and feeding the Post-ISIS Mosul. Vincent Callebaut aims to provide 2 million homes in ten years with this replicable model through these designed areas in Iraq.

All images © Vincent Callebaut Architectures

Vincent Callebaut recently unveiled plans for a shell-shaped eco-resort, preserving Philippines’ local urban ecology. Callebaut's Manta Ray - a floating landscape to recover natural environment of Seoul's Yeouido Han River Park is also another eco-sustainable project of the architect. 

Vincent Callebaut runs his office in Paris. Callebaut produces a great number of projects in varied sizes and scales, in different geographies of the world including Taiwan, Philippines, Belgium, India, Italy, China.

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