Translator: Nadine Hennig Reviewer: Ellen Maloney
Good evening.
Thank you for the kind introduction.
Thank you for having me.
I would like to talk tonight about
how architecture has such a profound impact on all our daily lives
in so many different aspects,
and how a more systemic approach towards architectural design
might help us to develop more holistic design solutions
which cater to the various requirements
that architectural design is facing today.
Let us start here, in your home,
in our home, in everyone's home.
Home is sort of like the nucleus of everyone's life.
It's the place where we come to to rest,
to recreate, to gain strength for the next day.
It's the cozy place where all of us have been growing up,
where we raise our families, where we raise our kids,
where we meet our friends.
But for so many of us home is so much more than just a shelter.
It's the thing which a lot of people refer to
in the architectural scene as the third skin.
A lot of people have the desire for a home
to complement their lifestyle,
to express their inner beliefs,
and to be part of their way to see the world.
Huge industries have been growing around this aspect of home.
Now, the problem is if home is not so much subject to individual ambitions
but is subject to top-down city planning,
and developers in free-market forces,
home might look like this.
What you see here is the serial copy of the same typology over and over,
spread out on a piece of land
like you would spread out peanut butter on your sandwich for breakfast.
What you see here
is the serial production of an individual dream.
Which is a contradiction in itself, of course.
What we're looking at here
is not only an aesthetic problem but also a functional one
and an environmental one.
In terms of functionality,
this kind of settlement fails to provide spaces for a society
to communicate, to gather, and to exchange thoughts.
In terms of environment,
this is probably the most inefficient typology of a human settlement.
It consumes so much land, relies heavily on personal transport,
and requires a lot of resources.
However, the human settlement, highly densified human agglomerations,
have been proven to be the one single model
to manage our society in the best possible way.
Rapid urbanization is what we can observe today
which oftentimes leads to unprecedented density in built-up areas.
More often than not looking like this.
Again,
non-articulated buildings copied next to each other, undividual.
Maybe these models might cater to the need for housing,
or might be an efficient model
when it comes to the economic aspect of it.
But truly they do not succeed in catering to
what humans are looking for in a home;
coziness, individuality, high-quality spaces to meet,
talk, and exchange thoughts.
What most of us are looking for in a city
is the quality that can be observed here.
A vibrant urban fabric
with a combination of built-up area,
and open spaces densely interwoven.
A mix and interplay of built-up mass and open space
creates this vibrant urban feel that a lot of us are looking for,
ideally with a human scale, as you can see on the left
which is the Piazza Navona in Rome,
or on the right which is the Plaza Mayor in Madrid.
Under the influence of rapid urbanization
oftentimes also our urban cities look like this,
again, failing to provide those spaces that we're looking for.
Now, when talking about cities we should not forget
that cities are not only kind of like the organizational framework
that our societies rely on
but also are the institutions that help us to constitute societies.
In a way, if you like, cities constitute societies.
They provide the spaces for us to exchange thoughts,
come to conclusions, exchange, communicate,
and gather as a society.
In that sense, again, cities constitute society,
and at the same time, are the expression of the societal model that we live in.
Different types of societies will bring about different cities.
On a more practical level,
cities also provide the infrastructure that all of us rely on
to manage our everyday lives.
Cities provide streets, tracks, train stations, airports,
municipal buildings integrated within the urban fabric.
With all of these building activities what we are doing as humans
is we create an artificial environment
which is a player against the natural environment.
All of this building activity is, of course, in --
in heavy exchange with that natural environment.
We consume a lot of the resources when we build,
and we have a profound impact on the climate.
This can be observed
if we look at the energy consumption of the building sector
which makes up about 40% of the energy consumption of humans in total.
To summarize all the things that have been showing to you
I would like to introduce the term of designed environments.
All those different building activities,
your home, your workplace, cities, urban designs, open spaces,
could be submerged under the term of a designed environment.
It's a non-natural environment, an artificial environment,
which - and that is something we should never forget -
we are free to choose what it looks like.
It actually is all of your choice what our environment looks like.
It might be designed by one single architect
but still you are the customer of an apartment,
or you're the tenant of an apartment.
It's up to market forces,
and up to all of you what the environment looks like to a certain extent.
The other key aspect is that these designed environments
are in constant exchange with the natural environment.
For a long time
architecture used to look at this as a single direction road.
We were only looking at how the natural environment
would influence our buildings,
and think about solar orientation, and stuff like that.
Lately, we have come to think that it is also our designed environments
which have a profound impact on the natural environment.
There is a constant exchange going back and forth.
The starting point of my architecture career was this question: what if?
What if we were to develop design models
which would allow us to integrate all of those various requirements into design.
What if we were able to design buildings
not in a linear manner but to design them integrative,
and use all of those forces that I have been showing,
and all of those aspects to generate the form
in a sort of evolutionary process.
So that the building itself is generated
under the influence of forces and requirements
rather than first putting up a building
out of some sort of magic creative process,
and then learning later how it performs.
There is a very good example for this sort of design process.
It can be found in nature.
It is called evolution.
What you see here are the key players in the game of nature.
You see plants, animals, bacteria, fungi,
and all of those species are exposed to the climate
which you see on the left hand side.
The temperature, solar activities, radiations, and the atmosphere.
And there is a complex back-and-forth
between the climate and all of those species.
Now, we could start looking at architecture in the very same way.
What you see on the right hand side
is my abstract representation of what a building could be like.
The idea is to read a building as a system
which is composed of different subsystems.
There's the spatial system with certain proportions,
neighboring conditions, and so on.
There's a structural system, an MEP system,
a facade system, a material system.
At the moment all of those systems are very often still designed in a linear way.
First, a spatial system will be designed,
then the structural one, then the MEP one,
and lastly the facade one.
What if we were to think of design models which are capable of integrating
all of these different systems,
have those associatively connected, and have them talk to each other
to come up with a smart interconnected system.
And then, of course, this system composed of subsystems is not a stand-alone system,
it's integrated in surrounding systems.
That is the environmental system,
the spatial system, an infrastructural system.
But also - non-physical ones, like the social-political system,
or the economic one.
There is a constant exchange and impact of all of those surrounding systems
onto our building system, and vice versa.
What I would like to propose is to start reading buildings as systems.
And also, use generative design models
which are capable of using all of these different parameters
to drive the generation of geometry
to come up with more holistic design models
which integrate all of those different influences.
I'd like to share four examples of my work.
The first one touches on an issue that I've been raising in my thesis,
which is the rapid urbanization.
This is a project we have currently under construction in China.
It's a mixed-use development of 600,000 square meters,
two twin towers, both 280 meters tall.
What you can see here in these image
is that we moved all the buildings to the outer perimeter of the plot,
to form a calm and peaceful pocket in the centre of the building plot.
Now, in large cities in China land is one of the most expensive things,
and it is given by the government.
So, moving the buildings to the outer perimeter was a bold move
which took about three meetings and three travels to China
to convince everyone that this is the right thing to do
because usually cities are designed for cars and infrastructure,
and not so much for people.
What we did here is
we threw the buildings at the outer perimeter of the plot,
just as you would throw stones into water,
and those buildings would sort of create ripples,
and all of those ripples would swing with each other,
and generate one holistic landscape,
which is the seamless continuation of the building itself.
The quality can best be seen in these two diagrams.
What you see on the left-hand side is the traffic diagram.
You see that all of the traffic is on the outside
of the plot all of the drop-offs, carparks, access points,
all of the dirt and the noise of the traffic stays outside.
What you see on the right hand side, with the green lines,
is the pedestrian traffic.
We created this calm pocket like a lake sitting in between mountaintops.
For the building design itself we applied that quasi evolutionary design process
that I was talking about.
What you can see here is the generation of the final tower design scheme
that we came up with.
As you can see on the right hand side, the starting point
have been five different species of massing models for the high-rise.
Then we started evaluating those different tower models against certain criteria,
efficiency of core to usable space, structure, facade performance,
and from an urban point of view.
And then we started creating cross breeds of these different types -
in this kind of evolutionary design process,
finally end[ing] up with the final tower design scheme.
The result is what you see here on the left hand side,
a design which is capable of providing different views and different sights
from every spot of the city.
So, it is a highly efficient geometrical model for a tower.
Yet, it looks different from every spot [of] the city.
At the same time
the facade which gives the tower its iconic appearance
is not only a decorative one
but it reduces the heat gain on the facade by 40 percent.
It is what I would call a multi performative object,
it performs on multiple levels at the same time.
That's what the construction site looks like
where you can see how our project stands against this kind of urbanization
that I've been mentioning earlier.
The copy of the same high-rise typology
which fails to be iconographic, and provide identification,
or quality of life.
Second project I'd like to show
was done for the government of the Federal Republic of Germany
for a new institution by the United Nations,
called Green Climate Fund.
It was part of a pitch.
The country of Germany pitching to host that institution.
The idea here was to derive a language from the river Rhine
because that building is located exactly on the banks of the river Rhine,
at the same time create an Energy-plus-building,
and create a new type of vibrant work space
with high quality workspaces.
As you can see the office spaces are grouped around three internal atria,
and these atria are not only a representational feature of the building
but they provide highly communicative spaces for workers
to exchange and to fertilize cross communication
in between the work units.
Research has shown
that the efficiency of an office group can be raised significantly
if there is informal communication throughout the building.
At the same time, based on generative design principles,
the building incorporates certain sustainable features,
such as an LG reactor on the north-facing side,
and PV cells on the back side of the building.
Again, what you can see here
is what I would call a kind of performance-based shape
because it's driven by performance,
but then it's a highly articulated shape.
[The] last project is this one
which even takes that idea of integrating multiple tasks
at the same time,
being multi-performative, one step further.
This was done for a competition in Los Angeles.
This is a series of rafts which are free to move on the ocean,
and are capable of purifying saltwater.
It's actually a mobile desalination unit, if you like.
It's composed of all of those elements which you see here at the bottom.
We have floaters which allow the pavilion to float,
then we have a raft which provides a gathering and lounge area,
and then on top we have a conduit system
and desalination tanks
which make it a highly functional building
which integrates high quality spaces
with the functionality of desalination.
Water being the most scarce resource of our time,
especially in California and Los Angeles.
This building manages to combine high-quality spaces
communicating sustainability issues outside of the river,
and providing fresh water
which can be enjoyed right on those rafts.
This would be a freshwater bar, part of the water which is purified
can be consumed here right away,
while learning about human impacts on nature,
and while learning about sustainability and water scarcity.
A good part of the water
will be streamed into the local Santa Monica water consumption.
Last project I'd like to show, which sort of summarizes
all the things that I've been saying
is located where I live, in Berlin.
What you see here is an image of [the] Karl-Marx-Allee in Berlin,
an urban design model which clearly has not been made for humans
but has been made for cars,
and maybe more so for tanks and military parades.
It's a total inhuman proportion,
it's impossible to cross these roads without having a red light.
Now, all of this city model relies on the integration of cars into our cities.
What if we would need less cars because cars would be smart?
What if we would need less traffic because we have less transport
because food production is localized,
energy production is localized?
What if we could use a big part of this huge stretch in the inner city,
and turn it into a high quality space,
which does this.
So, of course, this one is meant to trigger thought,
it's not an actual proposal.
But the idea here is to show the potential
that would be at our fingertips once we start reducing the space
that we waste for cars and for inefficient infrastructure.
What you see here [are] self-driving cars with detection system.
At the right hand side
you see how we gain new space to install a new type of infrastructure
which integrates spaces
for meeting, for urban gardening, and for gathering into the city
which have not been there before.
As you see, we kept the old buildings
but have given those an upgrade.
[You] could also say that we sort of live in the era of upgrade in Europe
since a lot of area is already built up.
But we upgraded those with local food production,
local energy production,
minimizing the need for transport,
and maximizing the good quality in the inner city space.
Because we turned this from a purely infrastructural area
into a human-centered space to stay in.
Thank you.
(Applause)