My name is Maryam Al-irhayim I’m the current Vice President for students and Associates at the RIBA and when I’m not doing that I’m a student at MSA in CPU, My project explores Zero Carbon Cities for Manchester City council developing a computational tool that helps to aid in the design and evaluation of different design proposals for the Victoria North development (which is the biggest regeneration scheme in Europe). I chose to focus on air quality scores as the opposite of a Zero carbon city would be a polluted city. Air pollution effects everyone. I’m interested in using my skills to always put sustainability and people in the heart of design. I focused on opening the neglected river to create a new public promenade that would help aid in increasing greenspaces within cities such as Manchester. Planting more trees helps offset the carbon footprint as trees absorb CO2 as well other harmful pollutants. I created a unique way to measure air quality and made the data understandable to people by equating it to cigarette smoke. This indicates an understandable metric for the public to understand. I analysed different iterations and created a tool with Human UI that is shown in the video. My final and best iteration helps improve air quality in the city and achieves a Zero carbon score. I have considered the carbon lifecycle in my tool including the ability to select existing buildings to demolish and which to keep for the user this allows for Manchester city council to carefully consider each decision they make. I also used different typologies to calculate the embodied carbon of different building types and lastly the carbon offset of trees.
