On the field trip to MCNY, we visited the Future City Lab. The Future City Lab is an interactive exhibit that helps teach you about the current state of sustainability in the city and where it can go. There was information everywhere as well as human experiences. On one of the walls there was a video playing with New Yorkers talking about their experiences. There were many different sections about human and environmental issues and you could find the one you were most interested in and learn everything about it. My favourite part of the exhibit was the section where you could design a sustainable apartment building, park or transit station. Not only was this fun, but I learned so much about building these places in sustainable ways. At the top of the screen while you were designing the apartment building, there were three bars to measure how well you were doing. They measured how cost effective and sustainable the building was as well as how many people fit in your design. I thought it was very smart that they measured more than just how sustainable the design was because there are more factors that impact how these apartments get built. I realized that it is almost impossible to fill all three bars because it is not an easy task. If it were easy, all buildings would be cheap to build, house many people and be sustainable. Often lack of funds are the reason the other two categories get reduced in quality. I quickly realized that it is easy to make your building house as many people possible and as sustainable as it can be but often this is too expensive. In the end I was able to achieve 15/20 in affordability, 19/20 in environmental benefit and 20/20 in the amount of people housed. I could’ve had a higher score in environmental benefit but I didn’t want to sacrifice the affordability falling from green to yellow. I achieved a green score in all three categories but it took a decent amount of time. While I was creating the building I was thinking that this should be a model for real buildings in NYC. I feel like some companies might take the time to research environmental benefits but the majority are probably concerned with cost and the amount of money they can get out of it. Overall, I really liked this exhibit and learned a lot.
Above is a photo of the apartment building I designed. There were also plants on the roof and other aspects that got cut off in this photo. At the top you can see the various scores I spoke about above.
Interactive notes and questions.
The created apartment buildings, parks and transportation stations came to life on the big screen. You could stand on the circles on the ground and become part of the space.
There was a multitude of information in the museum relating to different topics.
