‘Smart City’ designed concept to be showcased at Cityscape in Dubai

DUBAI- Nikken Sekkei, the renowned Japanese architect and sustainability engineering consultant, has agreed to establish and explore the feasibility of a ‘Smart City’ in Krasnoyarsk after an MOU was signed recently with Mayor Edkham Akbulatov.

Following the MOU execution, the Mayor issued the order to establish a multidisciplinary working group, comprising of city officials, chief architect office, academia, consultants and representatives of real estate development and construction. 

The working group will assess energy consumption in a new master-planned development in Krasnoyarsk City, which is situated 2,000 miles east of the Russian capital Moscow.

Nikken will also lend its expertise by examining the most efficient way to design a sustainable infrastructure, able to support million-plus population by linking transport, power, water and waste, essentially creating a ‘Smart City’ concept. The working group has devised a two year plan, to establish the “Smart City”concept and strategies for implementation. 

“Cost-efficiency through sustainability is the key to this project. We will start by examining our existing infrastructure and then rationalise to create economies of scale and enhance to provide greater efficiency, mitigating the need to spend disproportionately on our infrastructure in the future,” said Mayor of Krasnoyarsk City, Edkham Akbulatov.

The administrative centre of the Krasnoyarsk Krai region and located on the banks of the Yenisei River, Krasnoyarsk is the third largest city in Siberia after Novosibirsk and Omsk. It forms an important junction on the Trans-Siberian Railway and is one of Russia’s largest producers of aluminum.

The MOU has been established after Nikken Sekkei’s successful partnership with Monolitholding, a group of companies providing a full range of construction and installation work in Krasnoyarsk having developed a range of integrated districts. This will include the 500,000 square metre, US$1 billion K City development in northern Krasnoyarsk. The development will accommodate 15,000 residents with a total of 6000 units ranging from five to 25 storey buildings.

Speaking ahead of the unveiling of the K City development at Cityscape in Dubai, Dr. Fadi Jabri, Nikken Sekkei’s regional manager for the CIS and MENA regions and India: “In conjunction with our partners, a range of innovations will create advanced levels of urban living by combining modern technologies to provide a more integrated, energy-efficient city which will impact positively on residents and the environment, whilst acknowledging and indeed planning for future population increases over the next two decades.”

A range of technologies including heat exchangers that convert cold air to heat, smart traffic and parking management, automatic garbage segregation and waste management, the promotion of natural ventilation, high insulation windows and energy monitors to track usage are planned to be used in the K City development. 

Nikken Sekkei has been working in Krasnoyarsk since 2011. Other notable developments by the company in the Russian market include the creation of the-state-of-the-art large mixed use development district Metropoliya, just 3km from the centre of Moscow and covering an area of 21 hectares. Other projects include Evo Park a 200,000 square metre residential development in Volgograd, Novy Bereg in St. Petersberg and Novinki in Nizhny Novgorod.