Beyer Blinder Belle Architects & Planners LLP won yesterday’s City of the Future design challenge to imagine what Washington would look like in the year 2108. The winning team went green, envisioning a self-sustaining city with soaring towers built on the sites of former forts that once defended Washington, transforming them into centers for wind and solar energy production, hydroponic farming and defensive security systems. In this environmentally friendly city, cars have no place. Metro has been drastically expanded. The diagonal streets designed long ago by Pierre L’Enfant have been turned into pedestrian-friendly green belts, or the “lungs of the city,” as described by Hanny Hassan, partner at BBB. Above-ground public transportation runs on the square street grid of the city.

The Washington Post also has a story up about the competition today.

DCist readers wondered if any of the teams would dare break the sacred height limit on buildings, which has long served as a design guide. BBB preserved the height limit in the historic section of the town, but dared to break it in other segments of the city, to allow for additional density.

A photo of the winning design is at right. The bottom segment is an up-close look at the Anacostia neighborhood. The middle shows the overall design and layout for the city, while the top expands upon the vision for some of the new eco-friendly features in any representative neighborhood. The orange buildings show strategic allowances for density. Underneath, the blue zone collects rainwater to reuse in irrigation projects. The green zone represents harvested energy from the eco towers. The yellow zones represent the expanded Metro system. The vertical reddish tubes represent thermal wells for energy.

Would you want to live in this Washington in 2108?

Photo courtesy The History Channel