Ali Kashkooli a PhD researcher of Architecture and Structural Engineering at School of Architecture, The University of Sheffield, UK, as a team leader and his other team members (AKID consultants) awarded Honorable Prize in Incheon International Urban Design Competition 2009.


The 2009 Incheon International Urban Design Competition for Students aims to contribute to the transformation of Incheon Metropolitan City into a world-class city capable of carrying out functions and roles commensurate to such status and at the same time resolve current urban issues for the city by promulgating a worldwide call for public submissions of urban design plans.
The main theme of this competition is a futuristic U-Eco Community where new technologies, the environment, and people are being organized in acceptable harmonies.
today with the increasing population of people in the world a new challenge has begun. The challenge is in such way that leads human to define new urban areas and develop exiting cities. This in turn, brings along the need of further considerations to sustainability, technology and culture as three principal aspects of urban planning, architecture, and technological design.

•Environment-Friendly City/Sustainable CityTo be an environmentally friendly city, it should meet the following criteria: Energy efficiency and use of clean renewable energy, green buildings, green transportation, ecologically friendly, water management, waste management, social harmony, and heritage conservation.
•The Ubiquitous City (Technologic design)
4 A's: Anywhere, Anyone, Anything and Anytime
The concept of U-city includes information exchange ‘anywhere’ (at work, at home, within or outside the city), and useable and accessible technology for ‘anyone’ (regarding gender, physical capacity, or age). It also provides residents with the capability to connect with ‘anything’ (with the use of intelligent home appliances and communication devices), and all of these can be done ‘anytime’.
U-Cities will be a showcase of the most sophisticated technologies available in the market such as radio frequency identification (RFID) systems, smart cards applications, geographic information systems (GIS), location based systems (LBS), sensor-based computing, wireless communication devices, home networking, digital multimedia broadcasting and video conference technologies, just to name a few.

•Culture and Traditions: The key point of attraction
the definition of high-tech design has been changed through the geographical variation. The difference amongst cultures and traditions, and also local construction materials are highlighted as some major motivations of this change. Moreover, this diversity has been known as a key point of tourist attraction into different cities of the world. Rather than facing American/European high-tech in all the countries, the tourists are mostly eager to visit the local high-tech artifices.
This in turn, reveals the significance of considering the local and vernacular approaches, cultures, religions, political backgrounds, legends and symbols in design procedure.

Hence, Off-Grid City 2009 performed a mixture of these three values in a 21st century city.

Ali Kashkooli-2009