Click here to view the complete TsAO & McKOWN website/portfolio.

Background Notes

U.S. Department of State

Singapore is one of the most densely populated countries in the world. The annual population growth rate for 2011 was 2.1%, including resident foreigners. Singapore has a varied linguistic, cultural, and religious heritage. Malay is the national language, but Chinese, English, and Tamil also are official languages. English is the language of administration and also is widely used in the professions, businesses, and schools.

Link to the full report.

Population Trends 2011

Department of Statistics, Singapore

A bold new entry into the sometimes dreary world of real estate subdivisions is turning heads. American Dream is an unprecedented initiative bringing together thirty-eight internationally renowned architects to design affordable homes that also push the envelope of contemporary design.

Buy the Book Here

Wabi-Sabi: for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers

Leonard Koren

Wabi-sabi is a beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete.
It is a beauty of things modest and humble.
It is a beauty of things unconventional.

Buy the Book 

Tadao Ando

The Japanese view of life embraced a simple aesthetic that grew stronger as inessentials were eliminated and trimmed away.

Eataly

Eataly is more than a supermarket with restaurants. It is an energetic marketplace, an opportunity totaste and take home the products of artisans who till, knead and press to bring you the highest quality products at a fair price. We have assembled the absolute best Italian producers from every region under one roof and the absolute best chefs to cook their wares; Eataly is the heartbeat of Italy. We want to challenge the idea that quality products are accessible only to a select few.

Read the Eataly Manifesto

Geomancy: Ancient Chinese Urban Planning Principles Inspire Contemporary Cities

Yong Ma

This creative project introduces the general knowledge about Fengshui and focus on researching the ten Fengshui principles related to ancient Chinese urban planning, in order to find the inspiration for contemporary sustainable issues in urban planning. 

Read the PDF.

The Zangshu, or Book of Burial

Guo Pu

Read the Chapters.

Fengshui Theory in Urban Landscape Planning

Sun-Kee Hong, In-Ju Song, Jianguo Wu

In this paper, we discuss recent concepts and methods of landscape ecology and urban planning from the viewpoint of Fengshui, the traditional land use patterns in Seoul, whose application has so far been restricted only to traditional land evaluation. We conclude that, to maintain the sustainability of the urban landscape, it is necessary to develop a new urban planning framework for the region that is based on the integration between landscape ecology principles with the traditional concepts of Fengshui.

Read the PDF.

Mandala and its Significance in Magindanao Muslim Society

Mark S. Williams

Starting as an Indic symbol for meditation, musings about the universe, and striving towards the end of suffering leading to Nirvana, the mandala has actually had a much more practical legacy for political leadership in which one central ‘divine king’ is flanked and protected in tributary relationship by a ‘circle of kings’ that owes the one ‘man of prowess’ their allegiance and devotion in some binding fashion. Used in Hindu India, Buddhist Southeast Asia, and also in the Islamic Malay regions, mandalic polities have seemingly defied the odds against other systems of governance that would vie against them for legitimacy and acceptability among the subject peoples under their spheres of influence. 

Read the eBook

Mandala Form Cities – Challenges to Asian Urbanization in the 21st Century

Edited by: Ashok K. Dutt, Allen G. Noble, G. Venugopal and S. Subbiah

The city in South Asia stretches back to pre-historic time. In some of these urban center efforts of early planning can still be discerned. They follow a mandala form and are thus related in some fashion to the Hindu (or less often Buddhist) religion (Noble 1998, 24)

Read the eBook

Japanese Mandalas: Representations of Sacred Geography

Elizabeth ten Grotenhuis

Anyone looking closely at the Diamond World mandala will probably be struck by its visual similarity to the city plan of Chang’an in the Tang period. 

Read the eBook

Mandalas and Yantras in the Hindu Traditions

Gudrun Bühnemann

Mandala patterns have had other far-reaching influences. They have, for example, had an impact on ancient town-planning.

Read the eBook

Bright Farms

BrightFarm Systems, in turn, grew out of New York Sun Works, a non profit organization set up in 2006, by environmental engineer and urban farming visionary Dr Ted Caplow. Its mission was the design and promotion of ecologically responsible systems, for the production of energy, water and food within the urban environment.

Brightfarms Building World’s Largest Rooftop Farm

At Edge of Paris, a Housing Project Becomes a Beacon

Michael Kimmelman

A 1960s housing tower in a poor Paris suburb now stands as a symbol of pride for the neighborhood.

Read the Article

Living PlanIT

It is projected that by 2050 70% of the world’s population will live in cities consuming the vast bulk of the world’s resources. New insights and solutions are urgently required to manage these scarce resources efficiently and to operate new and regenerated urban spaces for the benefit of all. This trend is already underway, with new generations of sensor networks in public and private managed physical spaces being developed. Living PlanIT has developed the essential platform that extracts, aggregates, analyses and manages sensor data in these environments. We are in an emerging growth sector, collaborating with many of the world’s leading technology companies.

Learn about Living PlanIT     Read the Fast Company Article

Roberta’s Pizza

Hailed as a “Cathedral to… culinary excellence” by the New York Times Dining Pages, Roberta’s is an artisanal pizzeria located in the post-industrial neighborhood of Bushwick, Brooklyn. Founded in 2007, Roberta’s was an instant hit even when “there was no gas in the kitchen and no liquor license and no heat in the winter save what came off the oven”.

Visit Roberta’s

Brooklyn Grange

Brooklyn Grange is a commercial organic farm located on New York City rooftops. We grow vegetables in the city and sell them to local people and businesses. The goal is to improve access to very good food, to connect city people more closely to farms and food production, and to make urban farming a viable enterprise and livelihood. Brooklyn Grange supply a number of local Restaurants, including Roberta’s in Bushick, Brooklyn whose owners are founding partners in the rooftop project.

Learn about the Farm

The Vertical Farming Project

The concept of indoor farming is not new, since hothouse production of tomatoes, a wide variety of herbs, and other produce has been in vogue for some time. What is new is the urgent need to scale up this technology to accommodate another 3 billion people. An entirely new approach to indoor farming must be invented, employing cutting edge technologies. The Vertical Farm must be efficient (cheap to construct and safe to operate). Vertical farms, many stories high, will be situated in the heart of the world’s urban centers. If successfully implemented, they offer the promise of urban renewal, sustainable production of a safe and varied food supply (year-round crop production), and the eventual repair of ecosystems that have been sacrificed for horizontal farming.

Learn More

Healthier Eating Starts on the Roof

New York Times, Alison Gregor

Developers of subsidized housing are providing land or roof space for urban gardens.

Read the Article

Living City Block

By the year 2050, eighty percent of the world’s population will live in cities. In addition, the Urban Land Institute predicts that eighty percent of current building stock will still be in use in the year 2050. As America and the world work to build a new, sustainable foundation for the 21st century, we need new models of what our urban spaces and places can become. Living City Block will be just such a model.

Learn About the Project

Country in City

China Daily, Liu Yujie

As China becomes increasingly urbanized, it has to find space for its urban and rural citizens as both groups become increasingly integrated. Experts suggest a possible model may be “re-inventing” a “garden city”. Liu Yujie explores the concept.

Read the Article

Beautiful People 2012: Amaryllis Fox

Paper Magazine, Abby Schreiber

Amaryllis Fox credits two epiphanies, 13 years apart, with having led to the creation of Mulu.me, a site equal parts social networking, e-commerce, curation and fund-raising.

Read About Amaryllis