Ecological Urban Architecture : Qualitative Approaches to Sustainability 9783034611756, 9783034608008

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Ecological urban architecture

Ecological urban architecture Qualitative Approaches to Sustainability Thomas Schröpfer With Contributions by Limin Hee John Hong Mitchell Joachim Sheila Kennedy Nico Kienzl, Benjamin Shepherd, Shanta Tucker (Atelier Ten) Achim Menges Federico Parolotto Eduardo Rico Matthias Sauerbruch Sven Stremke Zdravko Trivic Christian Werthmann

Birkhäuser Basel

The author would like to thank the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, the Harvard University Real Estate Academic Initiative, and the SUTD-MIT International Design Centre for their generous support of this publication. Graphic Design: Antje Sauer, Berlin Hannah Schönenberg, Basel A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress, Washington D.C., USA. Bibliographic information published by the German National Library: The German National Library lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de. This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, re-use of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in other ways, and storage in databases. For any kind of use, permission of the copyright owner must be obtained.

© 2012 Birkhäuser Verlag GmbH, Basel P.O.Box, 4009 Basel, Switzerland Part of De Gruyter Printed on acid-free paper produced from chlorine-free pulp. TCF ∞ Printed in Germany ISBN 978-3-0346-0800-8 987654321 www.birkhauser.com

Contents

08

Introduction

20

Case Studies

40

Materialize

80

Mobilize

120

Simulate

164

Transform

194

New Perspectives

200

Appendix

5

MATERIALIZE 8

INTRODUCTION:

20 CASE STUDIES:

ECOLOGICAL URBAN ARCHITECTURE BY THOMAS SCHRÖPFER 10

 ow-Tech Vernacular L Architecture

11

( Environmental) Machine for Living

12

Material Ecology

14

Techno-Science

16

Green, Literal

18

Transform

19

(Re)examining the City

40 Material Integration:

PLANNING AND IMPLEMENTING ECOLOGICAL URBAN ARCHITECTURE BY THOMAS SCHRÖPFER

21 VAUBAN, FREIBURG,

41

22

Ideas and Ideals

22

 ools and T Implementation

24

Critique

AUSTRIA 25

Ideas and Ideals

25

 ools and T Implementation

27

Critique

29 VALDESPARTERA,

ZARAGOZA, SPAIN 29

Ideas and Ideals

29

 ools and T Implementation

31

Critique

Mobility, Infrastructure, Society

BY THOMAS SCHRÖPFER

BY THOMAS SCHRÖPFER

 aterial Efficiency: M Dematerialize  nergy Efficiency: E Rematerialize

46

 hermal Efficiency: T the Immaterial

50 The Practice of

25 SOLARCITY, LINZ,

80 Mobilizing Connectivity:

Architecture in the Urba­n Environment

44

GERMANY

MOBILIZE

81

Integrated Mobility Systems

85

Interdependent Mobility: The Masdar Concept

86

Holistic Outlook: Mobility of Energy

88 De-Infrastructuring

Sustainability

Cities – Toward a New Urban Framework

BY MATTHIAS SAUERBRUCH

BY FEDERICO PAROLOTTO

52

Urban Integration

56

Avoiding Fossil Energy

56

Ventilation

57

Cooling

58

 olar Protection and S Therma­l Insulation

58

 rchitecture as User A Interface

59

 oward a Sustainable T Architecture

61 Materially Informed

90

Mixed-Use Densification and Alternatives to Car-based Mobility

94

R econsidering Road Infrastructur­e in the Urba­n Environment

97

R emoving Infrastructure in the City

98 Relational Urbanism:

A Systemic Approach to Urban Design BY EDUARDO RICO 100 E  merging Global Regions and

PAMPLONA, SPAIN

Computational Design in Ecological Architecture

33

Ideas and Ideals

BY ACHIM MENGES

102 T  ypological Research and

33

 ools and T Implementation

32 SARRIGUREN,

35

Critique

36 BO 01, MALMÖ,

SWEDEN

the Processual Paradigms the Environmental Question

62

Computational Design

63

 esign Computation and D Materializatio­n : Wood

70 Biotic Rooftops

103 R  elational Modeling and the

Management of Flexibility in Urban Systems

110 Sustainable Energy

36

Ideas and Ideals

for Ecological Urban Architecture

Landscapes: The Power of Imagination

37

 ools and T Implementation

BY CHRISTIAN WERTHMANN

BY SVEN STREMKE

38

Critique

72

Roof = Refugium

112 Sources and Sinks

74

Roof = Ground

112 System Size

76

Roof = Farm

114 Symbiosis

78

 otic Rooftops for Bi Ecologica­l Urban Architecture

114 Di  fferentiation of Niches 116 Food Chain 116 Storage 116 Biorhythm 117 W  ays of Transition: From

Biospher­e to Technosphere

6

SIMULATE 120 A New Synthesis BY THOMAS SCHRÖPFER 121 P  arameterize: Revolution

of Choice 122 Si  mulate: Dynamic

Scenario Planning 124 Synthetic Processes

TRANSFORM 150 E valuation of Sus­

tainable High-Densit­y Environments BY Limin Hee with Zdravko Trivic 152 Hi  gh-Density Environ­­ments

and Ecology

128 B  eyond Benchmarks

130 Modeling the Future

153 Research Methods

By Nico Kienzl, Benjamin Shepher­d, Shanta Tucker (Atelier Ten) 132 W  hy Simulate? 133 Simulation in Planning 133 The District Scale 133 The City Scale 134 The System Scale 134 A Caveat 136 District Scale Case Study:

Harvard Allston 138 City Scale Case Study:

PLANYC

194 NEW PERSPECTIVES:

Exposing Potential

Taking Stock of Green

BY THOMAS SCHRÖPFER

BY THOMAS SCHRÖPFER

166 A  daptive Reuse on the

195 Interdependent Design

Urban Scale

152 Concepts and Tools:

of Sustainable Cities

164 Transformation of Use:

Evolution, INFORMATION, and Parameterization

153 Documentation:

Urban Space Typologies 154 Evaluative Framework:

Urba­n Space Attributes

168 Material Reuse

198 A New Framework for

170 Mining the Site

Ecologica­l Urban Architecture

173 Maximal Impact

174 The Necessity of All

Scales. Planetary Desig­n in the Age of Globality BY MITCHELL JOACHIM

154 Classification System:

Geometr­y, Use, and Ecology Frameworks 156 Qualitative Values of

Ecologica­l Viability 156 Mapping the Process –

SUSIE

Environments



Appendix

200 On the Author and the

Contributors 203 Illustration Credits

185 Intersecting

Ecologies

204 Index of Names 206 Subject Index

BY SHEILA KENNEDY 187 P  ortable Light: Mobilizing

Digital and Physica­l InfrastructurE 190 RiverFirst: Meshing Physical

Access and Wireless Connectivity 192 New Paradigms For Design

140 Simulating Inter­

dependent Complexit­y: Beyon­d Prescriptiv­e Zoning bY John Hong 142 Si  multaneity:

Methodologica­l Considerations 144 Investigating Simultaneity:

Daylighting and Lot Lines 147 Convergent Solutions

and the Designer’s Role

7

INTRODUCTION Ecological Urban Architecture by thomas Schröpfer The 21st Century is producing dramatic new modes of living and understanding. The first decade of this century marked the threshold in which half the world’s population now lives in cities. Furthermore, the urban areas of the world are expected to “absorb all of the projected population growth in the next decades while at the same time drawing in rural populations.”1 Hence our ability to understand density and productive urban modes of living becomes ever more important. In concepts and in discourses, trans-territorial networks of connected nodes and urban tissues have replaced the finite limits of city, countryside, and state.2 There is a characteristic duality in that the majority of the world’s population, in one sense, moves away from nature to an urban context, while at the same time we are increasingly aware of our complete interconnectivity within a greater ecological context.

8

Architecture plays a critical role in this new organization. The Italian architectural historian Manfredo Tafuri remarked that the very conceptions of nature in Western and Eastern societies express themselves through the parallel manifestations of the Tempietto and the Japanese Garden.3 It is through architecture that our relationship with nature is mediated. Nature and human­ kind are interconnected in a synthetic existence and architecture mediates these states. But architecture must be critically re-understood in its relationship to a more comprehensive system. There is a paradigmatic shift in our understanding of architecture and humanity’s place within the environment rather than apart from it. A building can no longer be thought of as a discrete object. Its design must be conceived in terms of its urban context within a greater ecosystem, situated at the key intersection between macro-scale world systems and the microimplementation of architectural scale. Any architectural detail is both far-reaching and acutely specific – in an understanding that is at once global and local. The necessity of large-scale system thinking within architecture was traced back by Rem Koolhaas to the post-war work of Buckminster Fuller: “Perhaps Buckminster Fuller’s contribution to the field was the apotheosis of this combination of nature and network. He did the most with the least, producing on the one hand diagrams of ponderous simplicity. On the other hand, he worked on radical inventories of the world, both of cultural and natural elements, documenting the neck-and-neck race between them in a very forward-looking way … Now, if you put everything that’s happening in the late 1960s and early 1970s in a cloud or cluster, it seems that there is a very confusing mixture of good and bad. But if you put the events into different zones or categories, a pattern emerges. There are of course many crises, but an explosion of green consciousness as a response to those crises.”4 This explosion of thinking that Koolhaas discusses is the reaction to the crises of the time – the social restructuring of post-war, post-colonial society, the crises of energy, resources, and population epitomized by the Club of Rome’s publication of The Limits of Growth in 1972, and the world oil crisis in the following year. This was also a crisis of modernity, of the singularity and autonomy of modern architecture as proliferated after the war. This modernism was that of the technological revolution which allowed for the ubiquity of cheap energy, lighting, and air conditioning, creating what Michelle Addington termed “the manufactured homeostasis,” a homogeneous interior environment for the maximum amount of people that is neutral, goes unnoticed.5 Some members of the architectural establishment attempted to ignore these crises, epitomized by Reyner Banham’s quote of a supposed position of some faculty of the Architectural Association at the time, “never mind all that environmental rubbish, get on with your architecture.” 6 These crises, however,

Atelier Bow-Wow, Miyashita Park, Tokyo, Japan, 2011, aerial view. 9

sparked the creative energy of a number of architects. Fuller, along with Banham and other contemporaries, engaged this technological age with a utopian scale of vision, a technological utopianism that saw a radical use of technology’s capacity to rethink the existing ”on the scale of the world.”7 The world scale of these issues reiterated itself again as the nations of the world convened in the United Nations Rio Earth Summit in 1992, followed by the eventual establishment of the Kyoto Protocol in 1996. These events alerted the general public to the “consequences of man’s pillage of natural resources, the worrying rise in global warming and the rapid and spectacular destruction of ecosystems.”8 Architecture holds a central place in these crises not only through its mediating existential and philosophical role but through the deeply pragmatic questions of its material existence, of the scale of resources and energy use that goes into the construction and operation of the built environment. In her essay “No Building is an Island,” Michelle Addington stated that “the most recent data released by the U.S. Department of Energy attributes 40 % of energy used in the U.S. to the building sector, including the energy of electricity generation, of which more than 70 % is consumed by buildings. Furthermore, the use of energy by the building sector is increasing at a rate faster than that of the other sectors.”9 The solution to this problem is not driven purely by the reduction of numbers and statistics. The act of architecture, by its very nature, uses matter and energy, transforming them into the architectural manifestation and continued operation; and consequently the question is about the total impact of a work – how it engages itself as part of a greater (eco)system.

Low-tech Vernacular Architecture

Foster + Partners, Swiss Re Tower, London, UK, 2004.

10

Some of the early work to engage an environmental consciousness attempted to embed itself, literally, within the natural environment. This mode of ecological thinking in architecture is characterized by a low-tech or vernacular approach, which looks to time-tested solutions reacting to existing environmental conditions and tradition. Such projects opt for passive solutions, often tied to inherent material properties and the conditions of the land. Technology, if used, as for instance with solar panels, is explicitly employed to achieve energy independence – to be ‘off the grid.’ An engagement with passive strategies as well as local materials and techniques is, undoubtedly, a fundamental necessity of well-developed architectural production. Yet such an approach is also problematic for the crises we face. These solutions may be simple and intuitive but often are implemented

in a rural context and on a singular scale. The desire to exist off the grid, while notably positioning buildings as producers rather than solely consumers of energy, isolates the projects. Through their very disengagement with the greater urban system, their environmental agenda is obfuscated. Again, buildings tend to become autonomous objects, explicitly aware of their environmental agenda, but unable to feed back into the greater ecosystem. Generated at the scale of the individual, these solutions cannot be reproduced at a scale or density appropriate to solve the needs of any more than a select few. Doing so would create an unfathomable sprawl, further disintegrating the condition of the natural environment. This places them in a context removed from the places that our future depends on – cities, and limits their ability to fully engage the problems of modernity, density, and urbanity at a larger scale.10

(Environmental) Machine for Living Engaging issues of sustainability requires a fundamental understanding of inherent passive and contextual environmental strategies, but to do so at a large and dense scale has also led to active strategies of sustainability. These active methods articulate themselves with an almost mechanic resolution, producing a finely tuned and engineered architectural work. The practices of Norman Foster and Renzo Piano exemplify this technological mode of architectural production. Foster, who began his career in collaboration with Buckminster Fuller, carries forward optimism in the power of modernism, if not the technological utopianism of Fuller. His projects have engaged the issues of sustainability with the building type of modernity, the skyscraper. The Commerzbank Headquarters in Frankfurt reflects a watershed in this mode of thought. Commerzbank re-engages the skyscraper with the greater environment, utilizing natural daylighting and controlling the internal environment through an operable facade. The building is no longer the container of an autonomous air-conditioned homeostasis. It becomes an environmental machine for working. The Swiss Re Tower in London and the Hearst Tower in New York, among much of Foster’s work, have continued to explore the environmental response of the skyscraper. The performative building has seen the most attention in the facade. Many of Foster’s projects introduce adaptive, multilayered facades. The articulated facade can be seen in Renzo Piano’s New York Times Building, consisting of a fully glazed curtain wall protected by a screen of ceramic rods on the exterior and a mechanized screen on the interior. The development of the intelligent facade can trace a lineage to Jean Nouvel’s

Foster + Partners, Swiss Re Tower, London, UK, 2004, floor plans.

11

Arab World Institute in Paris. Mechanically controlled apertures expand and contract, mediating the light and temperature. Malaysian architect Ken Yeang has called for the Bioclimactic Skyscraper, whose skin is thickened by performative layers of mediating louvers, screens, and even vegetation. While referencing the role of veranda and terraces in vernacular solutions for the ground-level architecture of the tropics, the variable deep air facade introduces a multi-ply facade system, actively negotiating with the ambient conditions of the exterior.11 The performative facade as seen through these examples provides the opportunity for architecture to actively negotiate with its surrounding environmental context rather than being a discrete separator between inside and out – between the climatecontrolled homeostasis of air conditioning and the variable and changing world. But, as Michelle Addington has pointed out, “rather than mediating between the interior and exterior, the performative wall is compensating for the environmental penalties wrought by a material choice.”12 The many layers of the performative wall often serve only to mitigate the effects of the environment on an interior housed in glass. On a greater scale, even at the scale of a skyscraper, projects of this kind, whatever there engagement with external environmental variables, produce an environmental resolution only for a building object. Though instigating new strategies in a large and dense context, it becomes equally important to not only consider how the external environment can influence the internal, but how to engage the building within the greater urban environment – to achieve architecture that functions as more than a discrete, isolated object, and becomes part of the city.

Material Ecology The material foundations of architecture have provided a strong basis for engaging sustainability. William McDonough and Michae­l Braungart have become central figures in the discourse on material sustainability of architecture with their Cradle-toCradle manifesto. They argue to reframe our understanding of architecture material around its entire life cycle rather than its inert physical existence. Material is considered in space and time, beginning with manufacturing processes that turn raw elements to usable product to its transportation, through its usable life within a building, and to its eventual removal and replacement. The expanded definition of material not only includes the physical changes that occur but also the embedded energy and environmental cost of these processes.13 This understanding productively places a material into an interconnected web, in which materials are related to one another, and a single building is embedded within a global network of manufacturing and Renzo Piano Building Workshop, New York Times Building, New York City, New York, USA , facade detail (top) and exterior view (bottom).

12

.

transportation. Yet, as with McDonough’s own proprietary material certification system, this understanding has remained focused on the quantification of the material. Projects emerging from this line of thought tend to produce architectural checklists of the ‘best’ environmental materials and sometimes little more. McDonough and Braungart were also central figures for the definition of the organizing principles of the Hanover Expo 2000. With the theme of sustainability in the 21st Century and a list of nine principles of design, this Expo provided a ground for different modes of ecological thought to coalesce, cross-fertilizing toward the production of new hybrid understandings. Of the pavilions that approached sustainability agendas through material understandings, the collaboration between Shigeru Ban and Frei Otto exemplified complexity achieved through simple material means such as recycled paper and bamboo. But the project that fully engaged the potential of material ecology, pushing a Cradle-to-Cradle understanding of material into a fundamental architectural manifestation, was Peter Zumthor’s Swiss Sound Box Pavilion. Zumthor’s proposal explicitly engaged the inherent temporal nature of a pavilion. Thousands of cut pieces of standard dimensional timber were stacked with smaller cross members providing a gap for air and moisture. Towering to a height of over 4 m, the stacks were held in compression by tensioned steel strappings, which were attached from the foundation to a plate on top with an adjustable tension screw. The rods were held away from the wood in a reveal, periodically attached with metal clips that spanned the air gaps in the wood. This post-tensioned system created structural walls without mechanically fastening the wood. After the Expo concluded, the pavilion was dismantled and the wood, undamaged by fasteners, was easily reused. The power of this project is that its architectural realization was inherently tied to the dynamic nature of the material, as a life cycle, rather than as an inert object. This understanding was used not as an end in itself but toward the manifestation of a greater architectural idea – Cradle-toCradle as an impetus for design rather than a sticker of certification. The pavilion takes the extended definition of material that McDonough proposed and expands it further beyond a single material to the scale of architecture as an instance of the entire system. It is this profound redefinition that places a work of architecture within the urban ecosystem and accepts a city in flux, re-organizing and adapting to the changing conditions and needs of people and the natural environment.

Peter Zumthor, Swiss Sound Box Pavilion, Expo 2000, Hanover, Germany, 2000 (top). Shigeru Ban Architects, Japan Pavilion, Expo 2000, Hanover, Germany, 2000 (bottom).

13

Techno-Science The performative approach within much of the greater world of building has led to the organization of information into quantitative systems and applied to independent technologies and products, with McDonough’s Cradle-to-Cradle criteria and certification list serving as examples. The seemingly simple and concrete numeric rationality of such approaches makes them popular and seductively justifiable to a larger audience. The U.S. LEED ® system and similar environmental programs become a literal checklist of environmental solutions. The intent of such programs does expand the availability and general acceptance of environmental thinking within architecture. But within the code itself, there are often competing, if not contradictory variables. It is problematic if the end goal becomes not the realization of an environmentally conscious building but the satisfaction of the checklist and the certification itself rather than what the certification is meant to represent. A prime example of this dilemma is a type of street organization often found in ecologically conscious urban developments. An explicit separation of functions – a pedestrian lane, a bike lane, parking, automobile, public transport, landscaping – intends to create a productive and generous urban condition, but in doing so creates a street section of such width in relationship to the density of inhabitation that the urban experience is emptiness. In a sense, the intent for urbanity becomes anti-urban. In very acute focus on the environmental systems and strategies, such projects actually fail to grasp the totality of their situation and the holistic implications of the decisions. In a comment of the mid-1990s, James Wines declared that “much of the ecologically motivated work today, acclaimed as green or contextual, is nothing more than a catalogue of environmental technology and land conservation systems tacked onto otherwise conventional buildings and landscapes.”14 Sustainability in this spirit becomes an end rather than a fundamental and productive part of a greater architectural ends. In the pursuit of environmental solutions, the building envelope becomes the limit of thought and the building becomes an isolated and autonomous object that fails to acknowledge a greater environmental and social context. The emerging use of computational models within design has led to a powerful new adaptation of data to analyze the behavior and form of complex systems. As Michael Weinstock argues, “processes produce, elaborate and maintain the form of natural systems, and those processes include dynamic exchanges with the environment.” Computational models have the ability to find and organize the complex behavior of systems finding patterns

14

UNStudio, Mercedes-Benz Museum, Stuttgart, Germany, 2006, 3D section (top), climate concept (bottom), exterior view (opposite page).

and opportunities. They can allow for greater specificity within the environmental response of a work of architecture, enabling it to fulfill the specific needs and react to the specific and fluctuating environmental conditions around it rather than a generalized rule of thumb. Importantly, computation allows for architecture to “extend this thinking beyond the response of any single individual building to its environment.” It can organize the “collective behavior of distributed systems” – organize the fluctuating operations of the city as an organism, and of buildings that “have sufficient intelligence to adapt and to communicate” in an optimization of the whole system. Computation can be a powerful tool toward the emergence of intelligent cities and urban ecosystems.15 The Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart, Germany, designed by UNStudio and most discussed in terms of its geometrical implementation of the trefoil knot, can serve as an example for the ability to derive complex spatial systems and material use in response to their environmental capacities. The concrete construction of the trefoil, that creates a central vertical void, goes beyond structural need, producing an extreme thickness of concrete lining that central void. The resulting thermal mass maintains a thermal stasis within the mass and produces a thermal differentiation that results in an airflow through the

void. The stack effect of the airflow is calibrated through a sophisticate­d louver system in the roof that maintains desired temperature and air cycles within the building. This also provides an example for the complex and often conflicting variables that must be balanced toward a holistic solution. The structural excess of concrete is used for a specific and calculated end. Minimization of material is negated toward a greater efficiency of the total environmental system. The dynamic and specific potentials of this project were achieved through computation and its ability to model performance. While an increasing computational specificity can provide the architect with greater control and responsibility over the design process, it has led to some potentially problematic trends as well. The introduction of ever more sophisticated computational tools to the design and building process has led to a rise of consultants that focus on certain aspects rather than the building as a whole which requires an active management by the architect. A team of knowledge specialists and large sets of data can produce a rich and complex understanding of an architectural work in a larger system, but these tools must be synthetically used toward a cohesive ends. Otherwise the data remain as meaningless numbers and each consultant a specific filter of a total project.

15

Green, Literal While low-tech solutions have often sought to bring architecture into the landscape, other approaches have sought to bring land­ scape into architecture. They produce an image of ecology through the literal greening of a building. The iconography of such an approach can trace its way back to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon; within the recent modern era, landscape has increasingly made its way into architecture. Roger Ferri’s New York skyscrapers of the 1970s brought a literal greening into the buildings of modernity. At the same time, the housing projects of Jean Renaudie focused as much on the outdoor green space as the interiors to create a dense, organic arrangement of building clusters overflowing with vegetation. Stan Allen and James Corner spoke of these new natures as they further embedded themselves into the architectural idea in the following decade: “The radical claim of the 1980s was for extending architecture and urbanism into the territory of landscape – in other words, promoting culture over nature and making landscape artificial.”16 The Paris Parc de la Villette proposals of the mid-1980s reflected the radical position of the artificial. More recently, a new information-based model of nature has emerged and, with it, a notion of landscape as synthetic nature. MVRDV’s Dutch Pavilion for the Hanover Expo 2000 reflected

TR Hamzah & Yeang, EDITT Skyscraper, Singapore, 1998, rendering (top). Jean Renaudie, Rue Georges Gosnat, Ivry-sur-Seine, France, 1975 (bottom). 16

this changing understanding of nature from the artificial to the synthetic through the literal inclusion of natural ecosystems into the architectural proposition itself. Housing six ecosystem landscapes typical of the Netherlands, stacked one on top of another, complete with windmills on the roof, the building polemically stated a new relationship between the built and the natural. Not only did this pavilion literalize the interconnectivity between architecture and environment, it placed it within an inherently dense and compact context, highlighting the need to effectively engage the full potential of a dense (urban) condition. The literalized landscape embedded within the Dutch pavilion produced a captivating image of sustainability embedded within architecture, within an intensely urban nature. But while the project was a powerful and effective tool for propagating this mode of thought, its literal sustainability as a project left much to be addressed. The use of vegetation on a roof has become a generally accepted state with numerous architectural works across the world, from Ford automobile plants to city halls to skyscrapers utilizing green roofs. Yet in the beginning of the 21st Century, the merging of landscape and architecture within this synthetic understanding has produced a number of proposals that have rethought the integration of the natural and the built. Patrick Blanc’s vertical gardens have repositioned the role of plants. In his collaboration with Herzog & de Meuron on the Caixa Forum in Madrid, the vertical garden takes on the architectural role of a wall, framing the square. In MVRDV’s competition entries for Gwanggyo outside of Seoul and Galije in Montenegro, vegetative terraces are proliferated to a vast scale. This produces architecture of an extreme mountainous landscape. Architecture no longer is only a receptor of the natural but begins to take on topographical characteristics of a geologic scale. The problematic of literally green architecture is that the utilization of green on or within a building becomes a purely symbolic representation. It produces a fraught correlation between seeing green and being green. The performative use of vegetation is a way in which this problematic can be addressed. Ken Yeang’s bioclimactic skycrapers have attempted to use vegetation toward performative ends. His EDITT skyscraper in Singapore produces a radicalization of green that overtakes the building with the intent of shading and cooling the interior from the extreme tropic sun. But even in this performative implementation, the use of vegetation remains an artificial representation of the natural used for the internal performance of an isolated building. For the literal use of green in architecture to become fully productive, it requires synthetic integration of the urban and natural ecosystems.

MVRDV, Dutch Pavilion, Expo 2000, Hanover, Germany, 2000, section (top). Roger Ferri, New York Skyscraper, 1976, rendering (bottom). 17

This thinking has been explored elsewhere. James Corner and Stan Allen through their work as Field Operations have claimed, “synthetic landscapes make use of the logics of natural systems and the dynamics of ecological feedback without the romantic attachment to a pastoral idea of nature … Natural operations are used to produce artificial, ambient effects. Instead of nature as a scenic, benign force, we are proposing a new metabolism – the synthetic landscape as a bacterial machine. Here, innovative landscape-based urban practices draw from geography, politics, ecology, architecture, and engineering in working toward the production of new urban natures.”17 These are more than theoretical conceptualizations of the urban. New architectural realizations were able to emerge through their ability to embed this understanding in the very act of architecture and landscape. New York City’s High Line has become a vehicle for landscape and architecture, not only as a collaboration between landscape architects James Corner Field Operations and architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro, but as a unified hybrid understanding of the urban condition. What takes the experience beyond the inherent possibilities of the elevated rail itself is the dynamic understanding of the project through time – through the phasing of its development, and its changing states through seasons and across decades, as plant life develops and gives way to successive iterations, organizations, and occupations. The High Line is not conceived of as a park in homeostasis, forever preserving the elevated industrial, but as an organism in dynamic flux.

Transform An engagement with the existing matter of the city is essential toward the transformation of its ecological future. In a literal mode and on a basic level, adaptive reuse takes advantage of the existing embodied energy of a building, minimizing its waste and the addition of more. It also allows for continuity within the social and cultural context. Yet the architecture of reuse can become more than a numerical minimization of waste or the nostalgic longing for a past. The tension and complexity achieved through these projects can produce a hybrid realization of the city – an architectural power that neither the old nor the new could achieve alone. Herzog & de Meuron’s museum projects for the Tate Modern in London, the Caixa Forum in Madrid and the Museum Küppersmühle (MKM) in Duisburg show the adaptation of once generic industrial spaces to become important cultural centers. The quality of these spaces for their repurposed use is due to the ingenuity of the architects in knowing not only what to create, but also what to let alone. The machine hall in the Tate is a prime example of such a decision. James Corner Field Operations and Diller Scofidio + Renfro, The High Line, New York City, New York, USA, 2009, aerial view (top). Riyue Nishizawa, Moriyama House, Tokyo, Japan, 2005, exterior view (middle). Herzog & de Meuron, Caixa Forum, Madrid, Spain, 2008, exterior view (bottom). 18

(Re)EXAMINING the City The city itself has been a testing ground for ideas of ecology through a close examination of the greater systems already in place. Existing urban conditions can be used to inform greater architectural understandings beyond the reuse of a single building. Coming out of the post-bubble economy of late 20th-century Japan, the partners of Atelier Bow-Wow used their time to closely examine the structure of Tokyo as it actually existed – full of banal, leftover and improvisational solutions. Patterns emerged from the seeming chaos, establishing a sophisticated understanding of the metabolic structure of the very fabric of Tokyo. A catalogue of cross-fertilization of building typology brought an understanding of the inherent hybridity of a dense urban context. An index of the smallest interstitial spaces led to an interconnected understanding of the space between houses. These smallest organizations of space have expanded their influence back out to affect the urban, with interstitial void space acting as a basis for a new understanding of Metabolism: not as the megastructure spanning Tokyo Bay of the Tange generation, but as the very city of Tokyo itself – allowing the plug-in of the individual space into a dense mesh of connectivity and convenience. This idea, explored with Ryue Nishizawa of SANAA, produced a synthetic understanding of the city as an overlay of systems and processes, relating to the specificity of the city and of Japan yet also related to a global-scale organization of social and natural ecosystems. This understanding of the inter­ connected nature of architecture within the city is deeply rooted in the physical and social reality found in the city, rather than in an applied and manufactured theoretical understanding. It is through this very specific methodological distinction that these modes of inquiry are exceptionally important in the production of complex and responsive urban architectural potential.18 Much of Atelier Bow-Wow’s work has directly engaged with their body of research. Atelier Bow-Wow’s own house and atelier space exists in this mode of architectural inquiry. The project is specifically placed in the emerging land zoning succession of a flagpost lot, placed literally in the back yard, surrounded entirely by houses save a 2 m-wide path from an alleyway street. The project acutely responds to the specific urban and environmental conditions to achieve a new form of dense urban living and working. It engages a hybrid existence as place of privacy and openness. It strategically utilizes the interstitial space of its neighbors, responding to their typical opaque walls by providing large expanses of glazing, even with neighbors often less than a meter away. The atelier pulls back, allowing these narrow spaces to expand and light to reach the ground for both the atelier and its neighbors, activating an otherwise unusable and wasted interstitial space.19

Ryue Nishizawa has explored these ideas through a number of projects as well, most notably through his Moriyama House, also in Tokyo. Less a singular house, the Moriyama House is a collection of living volumes for Mr. Moriyama, a reclusive retired shop-owner, and a number of tenants. Specific volumes are given a flexible programmatic use as the needs of Mr. Moriyama and his tenants change. Within this project, the social interconnectivity of the interstitial space leads to an understanding of architecture as “the physical form that envelops human lives in all the complexity of their relations with their environment.”20 The Moriyama House pushes forward the Void Metabolic idea of the city to reveal new potentials of the existing order and reformulate social and architectural relationships. The house provides a space for negotiation between individuals and the collective and between architectural and urban environments. This methodology of research and architectural implementation can be a productive mode toward the production of an ecological future of the city and of the interconnected network of urban and natural environments.21 Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6

7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

19 20 21

 nited Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division. U World Urbanization Prospects, the 2009 Revision: Highlights. New York, 2010. p.1. S assen, Saskia. The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1991, 2nd updated edition, 2001. United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division. World Urbanization Prospects, the 2009 Revision: Highlights. New York, 2010. p.1. S assen, Saskia. The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1991, 2nd updated edition, 2001. Tafuri, Manfredo. Theories and History of Architecture. New York: Harper and Row, 1980. p. 82. Keynote address for the 2009 Harvard University Graduate School of Design conference “Ecological Urbanism: Alternative and Sustainable Cities of the Future”. Mostafavi, Mohsen, with Gareth Doherty (eds.). Ecological Urbanism. Baden: Lars Müller Publishers, 2010. Addington, Michelle. “No Building is an Island” in Harvard Design Magazine, Spring / Summer 2007. pp. 1-7. Ibid. Koolhaas, Rem. “Sustainability: Advancement vs. Apocalypse” in Mostafavi, Mohsen. Ecological Urbanism. pp. 56-71. Gauzin-Müller, Dominique. Sustainable Architecture and Urbanism. Basel: Birkhäuser, 2002. p. 12. Addington, Michelle. “No Building is an Island” in Harvard Design Magazine Spring / Summer 2007. p. 1. Gauzin-Müller, Dominique. Sustainable Architecture. Basel: Birkhäuser, 2002. pp.12-23. Yeang, Ken. Bioclimactic Skyscrapers. London: Artemis, 1994. pp. 21-27. Addington, Michelle: "Contingent Behaviors" in Architectural Design v. 79, n. 3, May / June 2009. pp. 12-17. McDonough, William and Michael Braungart. Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things. New York: Macmillan, 2002. Wines, James. “Passages – A Changing Dialogue” in l’ARCA (Sept. 1995), p. 53. Weinstock, Michael. “Morphogenesis and the Mathematics of Emergence” in Architectural Design, v. 74, n. 3, May / June 2004. p. 17. Allen, Stan and James Corner. “Urban Natures” in Tschumi, Bernard and Irene Chang (eds.). The State of Architecture at the Beginning of the 21st Century. New York: Monacelli Press, 2003. p. 17. Ibid. Kaijima, Momoyo and Yoshiharu Tsukamoto. Bow-Wow from Post Bubble City. Tokyo: INAX, 2006. Kaijima, Momoyo and Yoshiharu Tsukamoto. Graphic Anatomy. Tokyo: Toto, 2007.

The author would like to thank John Todd and Tiffany Wey, Master of Architecture Graduates of 2011 from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, for providing research assistance for this Introduction.

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CASE STUDiES PLANNING AND IMPLEMENTING ECOLOGICAL URBAN ARCHITECTURE by thomas Schröpfer The following case studies are a result of an ongoing interdisciplinary research project started at the Harvard University Gradu­ ate School of Design in 2006 that documents and analyzes recent and current built experiments of ecological urban architecture. The case studies describe dominant themes of progressive projects and cities that implemented active sustainability policies and procedures for the design of urban architecture and landscape architecture.1 These projects were mostly conceived in the early to mid-1990s and completed over the following decade. Each of the case studies investigates the architectural substantiation of ideas from stated ideals to policies and tools for implementation. The projects embody mixed-use programs, social agendas as well as innovative design solutions; they are documented as built and discussed in terms of the ideals embodied in their inception, raising questions of idea versus actual form. Overall, these projects demonstrate today’s status quo of sustainable urban planning as largely pragmatic (certainly with some potential of design innovation), with a focus on energy reductio­n, alternative urban transport, and the addition of green spaces. Despite their limitations, these city quarters ambition to establish an architecture that reformulates the relationships between the individual building’s inhabitants and the greater environment. The projects engage social and environmental sustainability in myriad ways, with specific attitudes toward community formation and development, engagement with open space and green infrastructure, and architectural resolutions of addressing environmental measures. Tools and implementation, such as regulatory design mechanisms of building codes, tactics of off-the-grid energy production, and passive strategies precisely calibrate the architecture within its specific environment. These discussions form the basis of a critique of how these ecological urban architectures perform as entities within the city and their potential for future growth and adaptation.

Vauban, Freiburg, Germany, aerial view (top), Vaubanallee with tramline (bottom left), housing (bottom right). 20

Vauban, Freiburg, Germany The ambition to address sustainability on a city scale is Vauban’s defining feature. The project encompassed the entire process from the inception of planning, implementation and community development. It shows that the partnership of politicians, city authorities, planners, different citizen groups, committed environmentalists, and design professionals such as architects and landscape architects – from the concept stage through the refinemen­t of the process of public participation and learning – is critical to the success and continued commitment and ownership. Freiburg, a university town in the southwest of Germany with some 20 years of environmentally sensitive policies and practices, has often been called the European capital of environmentalism. The purchase of Vauban, a 38-hectare former French barrack quarter, which was used from post-war times to German Reunification, presented the city of Freiburg with the excellent opportunity to build a flagship environmental city quarter with a vibrant social mix. The project was completed in three phases between 1998 and 2006. Currently, Vauban comprises 2,000 homes with 5,000 inhabitants, and business units to provide more than 500 jobs. The city also houses the headquarters of Solarfabrik, one of Germany’s largest solar panel manufacturers, and the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems. The main aims of the urban development project were to achieve a good mix of housing and workplaces, alternative modes of transport, preservation of existing mature trees, protection of the green area in the environs of an adjacent stream, a balanced relationship between external and internal spaces, and low-energy buildings.

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Ideals and Ideas The planning paradigms of Vauban promote choice and diversity in architectural expression of the housing forms, and a sense of ownership through the following principles: Diversity in place – a community to be created in place by achieving a wide mix of demographic groups, cutting through different generations, work, culture, and abilities – the new, inclusiv­e city quarter is envisioned to comprise privatelyfinance­d homes mixed with social housing. Design by choice – allotment of small parcels to be developed by different architects working with different client groups, allowing for a variety of design solutions based on simple guidelines set by the city authorities. Solutions developed from the ground-up instead of the top-down planning model encourage a sense of shared responsibility in developing the form of the community. Self-organizing communities – the integrative approach to shaping the form of the city quarter through innovative processes and an interdisciplinary approach. By articulating their needs and expectations, the communities are formed in space even before the first building is erected. Open-ended development – layouts allow for openness for a multitude of uses through flexible planning; design makes room for future change in family type, size, and composition. Public spaces at different scales – created with a strong emphasis on public safety through design and layout. These spaces form the backbone of the new city quarter. Environmental urbanism – clear guidelines for the development of the new city quarter favor car-reduced neighborhoods through removing the need for automobiles as well as restrictions to car-parking. Tram lines form the backbone of public transportation in linking the new city quarter with the rest of the city. Local amenities and public institutions are located within walking distance.

Tools and Implementation ıı The incorporation of new energy concepts and community participation into the planning process solidified key environmental and socially sustainable aspects of the design. The Freiburg city authorities had been able to achieve their environmental and social aims through planning regulations and conditions for the sale of individual plots. The aims included increased building density, social and functional mixes, flat roof greening, and rainwater disposal within the building boundaries.

ıı A large part of the success of the development could be attributed to the ground-up community planning process facilitated by the non-profit organization, Forum Vauban (now Stadtteilverein Vauban), founded in 1994 at the inception of the project. Their activities as a forum to initiate public participation went far beyond what was legally required. The Baugruppen (groups of future builders) model proved to be crucial for Vauban. Extended citizen participation led to a large number of workshops in which participants discussed topics like designing residential streets, green spaces, and energy consumption.

ıı The implementation of joint building projects and public participation through Forum Vauban helped to forge a mix of residential buildings and workplaces. Community relations were built even before physical building. In an attempt to determine a heterogeneous community, a model called Block­ profil (block profile) was developed along categories of resident types in terms of marital status, number of children, occupation, etc.

ıı Regarding environmental measures, already the masterplan for Vauban took into consideration factors like prevailing winds in the area. All buildings must meet the low-energyhouse requirements of an annual heating energy consumption of 65  kWh / m2 or less. With few exceptions, buildings were restricted to a height of three to four floors to ensure good climatic performance in outdoor spaces and a good quality of daylighting. Many buildings are equipped with solar panels, while others have green roofs. Buildings consume only about 30 % of the energy that comparable but “unsustainable” buildings consume, and 65 % of this energy comes from renewable sources. About two thirds of Vauban’s houses are served by a combined heat and electricity plant that is powered by a mix of 80 % wood-chips (which are considered a renewable and carbon-neutral source of energy) and 20 % natural gas.

ıı Also included in the development are buildings designed as passive houses that do not need conventional heating systems. The heat requirements are covered by so-called internal gains, passive solar gains and a technically simple heat recuperation system. The buildings are insulated with 35 to 22

40 cm of mineral wool or polyurethane and have triple-glazed windows that are coated with a heat-reflective material. The buildings are oriented north to south and unobstructed by adjacent plus-energy buildings. This setting enables them to produce 15 kW / m2 per year of energy. Designed by architect Rolf Disch, the Solarsiedlung (“Solar Settlement”) is an ensemble of multi-story townhouses, being part of a larger development that also includes an office / housing block called Sonnenschiff (“Sun Ship”). The project includes five rows of 50 two- to three-storey terraced houses plus nine penthouses on the roof of the Sun Ship add up to 7,850 square metres of living space. The residential units that aim at following the German Passive House and Plus Energy House directives as well as showing good stewardship of the environment through material selection, appliance choice, energy consumption, and construction method. By making full use of passive solar heating, with insulation exceeding German building requirements, and extended roofs with solar photovoltaics, the houses in Disch’s development produce more electricity than they use. All of the houses are wood buildings, with high-performance transparent insulation and heat recovery. The terraced houses face south and the distances between buildings allow solar radiation to passively heat each house and provide solar insulation. Large glazed openings on the south facade maximize solar gain, while small openings to the north minimize heat loss. The massing of the buildings also helps to reduce energy consumption by allowing the low sun angles in winter to penetrate the houses and by screening summer sun through the terraces and the solar arrays on the roofs. The sun provides most of the energy for the project. A local network of solar hot-water evacuated tubes located on the Sonnenschiff generates heat energy. The hot water is also used for heating. Any additional energy required in the winter months is provided by a woodchip-fuelled power station. Energy-positive, the massive solar grid of the rooftops generates profit from producing excess energy that can be fed into the public grid. As no onsite energy storage is provided, energy is fed into the grid or extracted as needed.

Vauban, Solarsiedlung with Sonnenschiff, exterior view (top), aerial view (middle), site map (bottom). 23

Critique The achievement of environmental sustainability goals, the tangible sense of Gemeinschaft at Vauban, and the continued viability of community forums and discussions vouch for the successful combination of the principles of social and environmental sustainability. The fact that Vauban was conceived on former French Army barrack grounds allowed for an experimental community on a site that in parts offered almost a tabul­a rasa condition. Such a condition afforded innovation but to some degree also detachment from the surrounding environs of Freiburg. Employment opportunities within the new quarter are few, consisting mainly of operators of the small retail outlets, services providers such as cafes, schools, and a limited number of small offices. The adjacent communities may add to the conviviality of Vauban’s center, but it remains to be seen if these communities form social networks. The most successful public spaces in Vauban are the small-scale residential streets, which are car-reduced zones, and function as children’s play areas. These streets act like extended front porches, often providing meeting places of neighbors with a good sense of public safety. However, as one moves toward the scale of the main street and the arcaded walkways, a real sense of urbanity is lacking in the public space. While the abundant linear green parks are heavily populated with playing children, the oversized main street that would have offered the opportunity of a vibrant street life forms a fairly vacant space in the middle of the quarter. It seems as though there is a lack of critical mass of population to make these areas lively. In some instances the open spaces feel almost overly generous, with the linear parks attracting more users than the generous main boulevard. This raises the question to what extent a “green” city needs greenery in the literal sense. Vauban did not prescribe rigid planning, building type standardization and facade control mechanisms, but rather gave free rein, within clearly principled limits, to individual expression and negotiated coexistence. Without a preconceived model of architectural typology or urbanism, Vauban is a bold experiment in the planning and design of housing for the future. It brings back the qualities of the city into neighborhood developments, yet at the same time seeks alternatives such as limiting (but not prohibiting) car-use by making a need for it almost non-­ existent. Vauban allows a glimpse of an urban neighborhood development which creates flexibility for change and avoids depleting the resources for generations to come.

Vauban, housing (top), Solarsiedlung, site plan (bottom).

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solarCity, Linz, Austria solarCity demonstrates the aestheticizing of sustainable urban design and architecture to reveal new possibilities of expression. Diverse building types that exploit solar energy provide quality urban design that reacts to local requirements. In 1996, the Wohnbund Salzburg was commissioned to develop an overall structural plan for a sustainable community. Based on a masterplan by the Austrian planner Roland Rainer, the new city quarter of solarCity Linz was conceived as a model residential community with a potential settlement of 5,000 to 6,000 homes, using the state-of-the-art eco-technologies. solarCity was developed in two phases by the City of Linz in collaboration with the most important non-profit-making residential construction organizations from the region. The first building phase from 1999 – 2003 included homes by Foster + Partners, Richard Rogers Partnership and Herzog + Partner. A total of around 1,300 homes as well as a school, a kindergarten and a community center were built until 2005.

Ideas and Ideals The goal of the project was to achieve an exemplary Public Private Partnership in sustainable planning, design and construction. A mix of housing types, owned as well as rented, and a broad range of apartment sizes were built to ensure that a diversity of family types would be able to afford to live in the new quarter. Active participation from the future community was encouraged, who will also eventually care for the areas in the vicinity of their homes as well as for some public spaces. The plan’s ambition was to achieve energy independence by widespread use of solar installations, with the aim to not only exist off the city grid but to even return energy surplus to it. The city also prioritized minimizing negative environmental impacts of the new open spaces on the ecology of the Traun River.

Tools and Implementation ıı To promote pedestrian and cycle traffic, the network of road and paths was planned such that cars would be parked in collective garages and the estate connected to the city center via trams, express buses and the Ebelsberg bypass. The plan respected the site’s natural topography and made the most of building orientation and the local climatic conditions. Planning kindergartens, schools and a multi-function center in the town center are to not only serve to the new district, but also attract members of nearby existing communities.

ıı A compact layout was agreed and established, with buildings largely south-oriented, using highly insulating facades, natural ventilation and lighting, and optimum storage of heat. The two to three-story buildings follow a linear pattern. The builders compiled a catalogue of construction materials based on eco-building principles and criteria.

ıı The masterplan for solarCity is modeled in many ways after the Garden City. Both are designed in a radial form with neighborhood wards in each quadrant. While in the historic model the Garden City is linked to the Central City via train, solarCity is linked to Linz City via tram. In both concepts, the town center and commercial facilities are located in the center of the radiant, and the city is surrounded by a green belt – the nature reserves of solarCity border on the development almost on three sides, while the existing districts of Ebelsberg and Pichling are on the west and southwest. Where the Garden City was controlled in form and spatial development, solarCity is tightly bound by regulations for sustainable development and building orientation.

ıı Like the Garden City, solarCity’s form and density tend toward decentralization in being a satellite city quarter. However, while the Garden City is developed as a co-op, solarCity is a project initiated by the municipal government as public housing. Nevertheless, the environmental “stakeholding” as well as the participation of the community in shaping the public spaces near their homes give the community some influence on the development. In solarCity, a range of building types and building guidelines were employed to demonstrate that energy-efficient design could be achieved through various combinations of low-energy strategies.

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The city center is separated into two halves by the 40m-wide boulevard, Heliosallee. Auer + Weber + Assoziierte designed a proposal that bridges this bisection by closely aligning several narrow bar buildings and orienting them perpendicular to Helios­ allee. The modular buildings of both parts house commercial and cultural programs that serve the district as a whole. Their concrete frame structures act as thermal storage mass, with supporting glass-and-timber curtain walls. The energy demand of the buildings is just under 40 kWh / m2 per year. Steel structures between the buildings cover the various alleys and courtyards and span over of the main boulevard. The central courtyard, also referred to a market place, is partially covered by strips of colored glass roofs, made of various foils inserted between the glass roof panes. The colored shading structure connects the bars on each side of the boulevard, thus unifying the center by effectively integrating the buildings with the boulevard. By defining the central plaza, Solar Square, this project provides a spatial connection between the north and south parts of the district. Neue Heimat, designed by Foster + Partners, is located south of Solar Square in the center of solarCity. Seven three-story buildings are arranged in three parallel rows facing south. The complex consists of 171 two- to five-bedroom rental units of various sizes. Communal meeting spaces and services are located at the conjunction of the community facilities and the path to Solar Square. Open spaces between building blocks have zones for socializing, playing, or meeting sheltered by trees. These garden spaces are visible from the apartment balconies, making the area safer while providing pleasant views. Parking garages and driveways are located under the building podium, making room for additional undisturbed open space and pedestrian walkways. Each apartment, accessed by way of interior staircases or loggias, has a 9 m2 balcony. A large gable roof with a metal decking system cantilevers 1.5 m on the north side and 3 m on the south side and covers the spacious, cantilevered south balconies. The north and south facades of the concrete structure are constructed of multi-layered wood composite. The windows’ sandwich elements consist of exterior aluminum cladding with vernacular wood inside. Heating is supplied by Linz AG, the district heating network. Thermal solar collectors on the building roof supply up to 50 % of the energy for water heating, and rainwater is collected and reused. Ventilation is controlled by heat recovery from the exhaust air with computerized ventilation systems ensuring consistent, good air quality and highly efficient heat recovery. The complex’s energy consumption is 23-25  kWh / m2 per year. Herzog + Partner designed a number of different housing projects and types in various locations throughout solarCity. The GWG housing complex, located to the west of Solar Square, consists of five three-story building blocks with units ranging

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from 42 to 96 m2. Unlike most of the other residential structures, GWG has a north-south orientation, which is not ideal for solar accessibility, but it makes use of natural cross-ventilation from the east-west wind, with windows facing east and west. The design compensates for the orientation by introducing a deep plan, a compact shape and atrium space. The four deep buildings have a concrete structure, and the narrow building has a timber frame structure. The low surface-to-volume ratio reduces heat loss through the building envelope, which exposes only a small portion of the building to the outside to help reduce external heat transfer through the walls. Because a deep plan is prone to producing dark interior space, atria and loggias were introduced to bring sufficient natural light to the interiors; these loggias also act as thermal buffers between the apartments and the exterior environment. The apartments have radiant floor heating systems, using heated water from thermal solar collectors installed at an angle on the roof of the loggia. The buildings have a high glazing ratio of more than 40 % of the external wall. The facades have curtain wall systems and use double-glazed windows with argon gas filling. The compact desig­n, the optimized thermal insulation properties of the building envelope, and the use of solar gains all contribute to the buildings’ energy efficiency. GWG’s energy consumption ranges from 26 to 29 kWh / m2 per year.2 The WSG Housing Development, designed by Richard Rogers Partnership, is located north of the center. The buildings are grouped into four meandering two-story rows. Their orientation varies up to 15° from south to achieve an optimum passive use of solar energy. With few exceptions, all entrances to the duplex apartments are located on the southern facades and are through winter gardens. These so-called “solar atria” are cooled in the summer through the intake of air from the north. On the north side, the buildings are embedded in the ground up to the parapet level. Their layout is based not only on solar accessibility but also on passive wind control. The curved housing rows not only create a strong morphological characteristic but also take maximum advantage of natural summer ventilation of Linz’s prevailing east-west winds, while obstructing winter winds. In addition, large canopy trees and berms are placed between the building terraces to create a windbreak, keeping the wind above ground level and reducing heat loss. WSG’s housing morphology was carefully designed to maximize solar penetration of the buildings and the open space as well. The complex has 5,000 m2 of green roof, which contributes to reduce energy and water consumption. Almost every building has thermal solar collectors or photovoltaics on the roof and the complex is also supported by a biogas power plant. By implementing integrated passive energy design during the site planning and building design stages, the energy consumption of WSG was reduced to 37 kWh / m2 per year.

Critique The overall spatial configuration as well as the low building density makes this development a suburban model rather than an urban model for a sustainable community. Its similarity to the Garden City brings forth the well-known critiques of such a model, whereby the move to decentralize from the central city makes these developments “bedroom communities” rather than real cities The green-field development and remote location of the district is opposed to more land-conserving strategies of infill into existing city fabric, where infrastructure is already a given. The low density of the district and its over-supply of open space are incongruous with the attitude of environmental urbanism that considers land to be a scarce commodity. The urban layouts of buildings generally relate to the streets only on their short ends, so that the streets of solarCity actually have little interaction with the building facades. The circular shape of the development suggests a closed-in and finite entity rather than an open-ended grid that would have enabled expansions of new neighborhoods with new centers.

TRANS

Being commissioned by the municipal government, with strict environmental and ecological regulations and control, the project gives residents little scope for altering their dwellings in the long term. This shifts the focus of the development more towards a model community for learning about ecological construction and mode of living – an educational showpiece.

URBAN

TransUrban is an ambitious project that attempts to chart design ideals, ideas, and processes of recent

The estates’ situation of being bordered sides and current experiments foron citiesall of the future. Theby nature idea of sustainable cities is examined here in more reserves or existing urban developments means that than the environmental and ecological aspects, and there is the emergent forms of urbanism documented and little scope for growth and expansion. At the same time, the analyzed for lessons that inform on the shape of cit to come. These built experiments embody complex commuclear boundaries allow littleiesoverlap with surrounding topics of design, dwelling, community in space, buildenvironmental strategies, as well as nities. It remains to be seeningiftechnologies, the existing communities near models of affordability, but at the same time, explore the new city quarter would actually useof the ofcity. facilities pronew trajectories inmake the development Topographies of change re-contour the forms of urbanism vided in solarCity or if the development would become a selfas we know it, and do not conform to a generic type, but create in concert a shift of paradigms. The patterns contained community of likeminded residents. that emerge reveal complexity and integrated thinking across disciplines. TransUrban charts this terrain to find applicable design strategies for the future.

Planning contributed to the development’s energy savings by SolarCity, the second in a series of case studies, de optimizing the district heating system both techniscribesdistribution the guiding principles and their implementa tion in the planning and design of a new major develcally and economically. By incorporating the district heating opment of a sustainable city district in Linz, Austria: the project currently comprises about 1,300 homes system into the infrastructure planning at an early stage, and 3,000 inhabitants. It was designed as a flagship development for renewable energies in urbanand debuildings are able to be energetically independent even sign and includes projects by architects like Foster become energy suppliers ofandtheir greater Partners,surplus Richard Rogers,to anda Thomas Herzog electriciand landscape architects like Peter Latz and Herbert ty grid. Dreiseitl. Construction time of the nucleus of solarCity took place from 1995 to 2005.

SolarCity, site plan

Auer + Weber + Assozierte, solarCity Center, Linz, Austria (top).

The architects of solarCity developed a differentiated repertoire of building types that expands earlier standard architectural solutions for the use of solar energy. Foster and Rogers 7 both followed the principles of traditional solar architecture with south-facing orientation, modulating the grounds and

solarCity, site map (bottom).

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planting trees to counter the chilling wind. Foster’s housing is characterized by an expansive gable roof covering the large, cantilevered south balconies. Rogers’ buildings, with their curved form and south-facing atria, provide for the maximum use of solar energy. Herzog countered the disadvantage of an eastwest orientation by introducing a deep plan, a compact shape, and atrium space. All three designers restricted energy consumption to levels between 23 and 37 kWh / m2 – 40 % under the 65  kWh / m2 consumption rate of conventionally constructed buildings in the same geographical region.3

Herzog + Partner, GWG Housing, Linz, Austria, interior view (top), exterior view (middle). solarCity, partial aerial view (bottom). 28

Valdespartera, Zaragoza, spain Eco-Ciudad Valdespartera, residing on the southwest edge of Zaragoza, is a new district to the city that purposes itself to provide a new model for sustainable urbanism. Venturing with the University of Zaragoza, Valdespartera is part of a larger research agenda exploring water management, energy, building methods and typologies, and waste management in the context of social housing. Built on land acquired from Spain’s Ministry of Defense in 2001, the 234 hectare project provides housing to nearly 10,000 people, with a further capacity for 24,000. The project was built from 2001 to 2010.

Ideas and Ideals The overall goal of the project was to complete the Zaragoza master plan improving environmental, economic, and social sustainability, reduce the ecological footprint, explore positive social discrimination, provide a new organizational, legal and management form, and improve upon technological innovation. The project was also meant to contribute to the city’s overall economic sustainability. In collaboration with the University of Zaragoza, plans and guidelines were developed to explain how to properly implement new methods of sustainability. These were joined with precise monitoring systems to understand and adapt to how people actually use them.

Tools and Implementation ıı Bounded by two large boulevards, Avenida del Séptimo Arte in the north-south direction and the Avenida Casablanca in the eastwest direction, this development is divided into quadrants. An orthogonal grid within each quarant orients building units to face an optimized direction. This orientation encourages the collection of solar energy, utilizing and blocking prevailing winds and vegetation to create microclimates in public and private areas.

ıı A building code developed with support from the University of Zaragoza directed much of the resulting site layout. Road­ way deployment, regulated by a prescribed ideal block size of 12 m by 120 m, maintains a legible hierarchy of larger collector roads, smaller local roads, and alleyways. The planned addition of a tram line will provide new opportunities to enhance the transportation alternatives.

ıı Rather than having a localized town center, the development follows a decentralized model of civic gathering spaces. Each cluster of flats has adjacent access to a dispersed network of community-centered open spaces as well as schools, hospitals and daycare.

ıı There are three types of open space, which total 11.5 % of the developed area or 68.2 acs. At the largest scale, a regional park for large public events was established in the southwest sector of the site. Community parks with playgrounds and passive recreation grounds were created at the neighborhood scale. Lastly, each building group of two or three units has an internal courtyard built and designed independently by the developer, that functions as semi-private space for building residents. Pedestrian transportation remains important through the conservation and preservation of open spaces keying into an ambitious proposal to connect Valdespartera to the Zaragoza Expo and Milla Digital sites through a greenway, enhancing the city’s already prevalent bicycle and jogging culture.

ıı The community selects housing candidates through an application lottery to create a purposefully heterogeneous collection of residents. The available housing options include social housing (91 % of the housing stock), affordable housing for rental (6 %), and market-rate detached housing (3 %).

ıı Most flats have been constructed to use approximately 20  kWh / m2 / year, well under Spain’s requirements of 50  kWh / m2 / year. While solar panels are used to produce 35 % of hot water, no use is made of photovoltaic panels, purportedly because the resulting energy impact would not be significant enough to generate a substantial difference.

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Energy is provided by a variety of off-site sources, including coal and natural gas. Power and gas lines are laid underground in an extensive network throughout the site. Voluntary monitoring devices can reduce energy usage to a maximum of 80 % in the winter months, provided that the flats are operated in accordance with the instructional sheet.

ıı The guidelines for the passive utilization of environmental forces to regulate temperature of air and water are grouped under a larger category termed Bioclimatic Exploitation. They require buildings to be shaded partially from the summer sun and utilize winter sun light for passive heating through the use of deciduous vegetation. In addition, an optimized orientation of buildings provides shade in courtyards and open spaces. The choice of vegetation is determined by the required duration of shade: for example, evergreen trees shade the north-facing facades of alleys from the summer sun and serve as a windbreak against cold winter wind, while deciduous trees shade south-facing facades during the summer and allow sunlight to pass during the winter. Some attempts have been made to establish microclimates through juxtapositions of vegetation and water elements, utilizing evaporation as a means for cooling.

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The normative building code has created a repeated formal typolog­y in which the dimensions of each of the buildings vary quite little. The primary building type is the elongated rectangular block, oriented in an east-west direction, 12 m deep and 120 m long, with an average height of 6 levels. The prescribed distance between buildings is 30 m, to prevent shadow from being cast on adjacent buildings. The ensuing interstitial spaces are occupied by either courtyards or roadways, often surrounding the unit with public and semi-private uses. Most building units face south with their long facades to reduce energy consumption. This orientation also optimizes the rooftops for solar panel use. South-facing gallerias, small north-facing apertures, structural concrete, and tiled exterior facade materials encourage passive heating and cooling through control of sunlight and ventilation. Resident education is paramount; the numerous passive systems are clearly explained in a pamphlet given to each resident when they move in. Regulations direct residents precisely how they should be operated. Guidelines also extend to the internal design of each flat, in relating aperture size and room placement to orientation. The code directs choices of facade materials, entry­ ways and in several instances color and style. The aesthetic style of each building is in part dictated by its form, which is largely prescribed by the code. The materials of the facade often incorporates, as specified in the building code, a type of insulating tile, which has the ability to create a buffer of air between the building wall and tile surface. Buildings using these materials often employ vibrant color schemes. Alternatively, a developer may choose to construct a thicker wall to assist in temperature regulation. These buildings often use a flat finish or brick with lighter color schemes. Gallerias form an important component of the facades and at times even become the actual facade. The value of this feature for bioclimatic purposes clearly outweighes its use for recreational or other purposes. The operability of the galleria is suggested to be restricted by the normative building code: residents are instructed to open at least 50 % of the glass surface through­ out the day to guarantee proper ventilation and prevent overheating. They often prefer draping the glass panes with curtains or blinds to obstruct the light, or installing an air-conditioning unit, measures that result in significant increases in energy expenditures. The flats accommodate a variety of family sizes, and vary stylis­ tically from building to building, while functionally remaining quite similar. The distribution and layout of rooms is most notabl­e in this respect: as suggested by the building code, rooms that

are often occupied throughout the day, specifically the living room, are located adjacent to the galleria to better regulate the room temperatures. Select bedrooms are also located at the south-facing facades, while others front the northern facade. Rooms used only occasionally throughout the day are categorically placed along the north-facing facade, where constant temperature control is not as crucial. In the same vein, the assemblage of the dwelling units within each building follows a standard prototype of organization that is meant to optimize the flat for energy efficiency and passive use of environmental forces.

Critique Valdespartera shows the use of regulating building design to allow multiple designers to create a functionally cohesive community according to the development team’s goals. One problematic aspect of the architecture is that there are very few basic typologies. The same superblock is repeated throughout the entire development, with variation on the facade articulations but not on the urban experience. The stringent codes also require new residents to use the apartment as originally intended, even extending to the use of the different spaces and fenestration. The pervasively controlled repetition extends also to basic modules of public spaces. The buildings’ courtyards, for example, vary significantly in their aesthetics, but the absolute repetition of their boundaries remains quite legible. This results in spaces that begin to feel normative, and lacking the life public that spaces gain when they are spontaneously modified or adapted. This is corroborated by the usage of these spaces by residents as places to pass through rather than to mingle in. The public plazas are also clear repetitions of a normative module, and while they tend to be neatly organized and relatively well maintained, they also lack an infusion of cultural life and vigor that can often be found in the neighborhood parks. Valdespartera prompts designers to consider the opportunities and liabilities of a rigorous building code. While it provides a baseline that guarantees a certain degree of performance when adhered to, an overly restrictive code can quickly be relegated to a mere checklist of preventative features. While some blocks exemplify the highest level of material experimentation and desig­n quality, including for example an innovative tile facade systems in which an air pocket mediates building temperature, other designs do the bare minimum to follow the regulations. In creating such regulating principles, it is important to embed within the rules a degree of interpretive freedom, to grant ambitious architects room to innovate.

Valdespartera, Zaragoza, Spain, aerial view (top), housing with courtyard (middle), site plan (bottom). 31

Sarriguren, Pamplona, spain When real estate values skyrocketed in Spain as the result of an enormous housing bubble at the end of the 1990s and in the early 2000s, it became important to make affordable housing available to Spain’s young professionals and recent immigrants. Despite today’s dramatically different situation of Spain’s real estate market, Sarriguren is a case study that shows that these social targets can be tied to ecological principles. Sarriguren also features a close integration of green industries and businesses with the development, seen as a strategic move on the part of the city government in relation to the development of the region as an “innovation corridor.” Pamplona, a city of 200,000 inhabitants and hub of a thriving regional economy prior to Spain’s economic crisis, positions itself as a leader in industrial manufacturing and renewable energy. To accommodate part of the urban growth and at the same time avoid the suburban sprawl that happened in the area, the hamlet of Sarriguren was converted into a small town with future capacity for some 13,000 inhabitants. Since the site had existed as a rural hamlet since the 13 th Century, it was decided that the original structure would remain and form the heart of the new town, which would expand onto the surrounding agricultural fields. Sarriguren, Pamplona, Spain, aerial view.

The new town, conceived within stringent environmental criteria, would provide affordable housing mainly to those who did not participate in Spain’s extensive construction boom, mainly younger families and recent immigrants. The governments of Navarra and Valle de Egüés proposed that the Sarriguren development would address this situation by setting aside most of the units for first-time buyers with moderate to lower incomes. This, however, does not necessarily dictate a homogenous population. The development was designed for a range of costs and variety of programs and typologies, together with a variety of unit types to accommodate people from different income levels. Construction of the project started in 2002 and was largely completed in 2008.

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Ideas and Ideals Green infrastructure with adequate open spaces for community building was a major goal. Two tributary arroyos of the river Agra surrounding the site were to be allowed to function naturally; together with a new large central park, a lake, and semi-private internal courtyards they would ensure differently scaled gathering spaces for residents. While the site is straddled to the north by a major highway connection to Pamplona, the goal was to minimize vehicular traffic and encourage public and alternative means of transportation. Taller de Ideas, the group that developed Sarriguren’s masterplan, and the Madrid-based think tank, Fundación Metrópoli, analyzed the infrastructure and larger goals of the region around Pamplona and raised two important issues: one was to connect the development to a system of green corridors that the City of Pamplona was proposing around the Agra river; the other was to develop the potential for the city to become a leader in alternative energy by exploiting its ‘innovation corridor.’ This corridor begins in western Pamplona at the high-speed train station, passes through research centers, major hospitals and the University of Navarra, goes into the center of town and ends in Sarriguren to the east. In this vein, businesses, commercial developments, and light industry, especially companies dealing with technology and alternative energy production, would be part of the development of Sarriguren. With some of the areas around Valle de Egüés already experiencing North American-style suburban sprawl, the main concern was to make Sarriguren into a town. Building on variety rather than a homogenous condition, the plan seeks to create large boulevards, interior pedestrian streets, large green and recreation areas, and plazas at many scales. The new urban condition would not be focused in a center but instead create a multitude of systems that diffuse activity to the entire development. The old hamlet, a large central park and surrounding lake compose the new town center. The housing blocks closest to the central park form an internal pedestrian boulevard with commercial activities that transverses the majority of the development. The condominiums, rectangular buildings directly adjacent to the central street, feature internal courtyards.

Tools and Implementation ıı Building regulations required energy certification of 25 % improvement over existing energy codes. Numbers were checked before construction using energyPlus, a simulation software developed by the United States Department of Energ­y. The average building in Sarriguren is 51 % more energ­y-efficient than similar buildings in Pamplona.

ıı Protected Housing – VPO’s and VPT’s – Out of the 5,577 units to be built in Sarriguren, 98 % or 5,457 are planned to be protected social housing, with the remaining 120 units available for the free market. Out of the social housing units, 2,879 have official protection (VPO), while the other 2,578 have controlled pricing (VPT). While social protections favor younger Pamplonans or recent immigrants, the income levels for VPO and VPT are flexible; furthermore, higher-priced free market units as well as social, educational, commercial, and recreational programs seek to attract people from a variety of socio-economic levels.

ıı The development was carefully planned to incorporate a variety of urban conditions and programs. The Innovation Park of Navarra is an effort to mix the economic activity in lightindustrial areas with housing; it hosts many leading Spanish companies that specialize in renewable energy, including Acciona, a solar energy provider, Gamesa, a wind specialist, and Spain’s National Center of Renewable Energies. Some buildings serve as built experiments for the technologies they research. For example, Acciona Solar has a facade composed mostly of photovoltaic cells that provide the building with clean energy. Programmed community spaces include Innovation Cubes in the Central Park; these are multi-purpose meeting places that can be flexibly used by the community as needed. The development also contains many schools, sports fields, clinics and other public services that serve Sarriguren and its surrounding communities.

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The architectural resolution of Sarriguren has resulted in eight distinct building typologies that directly relate to the overall urban strategy. Each building type had criteria prescribed on to it such as building height, program variety, bioclimatic methodologies, and number of units. The architects were free in their design solutions to implement the prescriptive elements as well as in the design of circulation systems, entry sequences, and facades. The rules make for a cohesive overall architectural articulation, while different facades provide some variety to the complex. The buildings are constructed using non-toxic materials from local sources, when possible. Bioclimatic principles direct the design of the buildings that are mindful of their siting, with facade controls for air, heat, and light to achieve maximum energy efficiency. Passive solar water heating, efficient appliances, and new insulation systems support these techniques. Urban landscape design functions as an important aspect of the bioclimatic design of the buildings. On the northern side of streets, evergreens provide year-round shade and protection, while on the southern sides deciduous trees provide summer shade, and upon shedding their leaves, permit solar heat intake during the winter. The planted vegetation consists of a local variety of perennials, which are watered with drip irrigation to reduce waste from evaporation. Internal and semi-private gardens and parks within the condominium housing block typology were designed and built by the same team that developed each individual plot. They vary in character and amenities, from simple grass and paths between buildings to more elaborate landscape designs with a variety of trees, benches, and other public furniture.

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Critique Although variety was initially planned at every scale in Sarriguren, it is unclear how the community can adapt to changing urban conditions without a clear plan for citizen participation in its growth. The planning processes that included cooperatives, government development offices, and private developers differed only slightly from the norm, and although it brought together a community early on, the majority of the housing blocks were planned, designed, and built without any input by their future inhabitants. The fact that 90 % of Sarriguren’s housing is “protected” carries the potential threat of negative social homogeneity, compounded by the town’s relative isolation at the outskirts of the greater Pamplona region. The designers countered with a series of commercial, social, and recreational programs. In the meantime, more free-market units have been planned with the intention of attracting people with a diversity of incomes. Despite this uncertainty, it can be said that Sarriguren’s exemplary public infrastructure brought highly valuable assets of new recreational opportunities and social services to its surrounding communities in the Valle de Egüés, galvanizing the otherwise amorphous municipality.

In terms of the architectural resolution, the presence of a building code created variety within a set framework. However, the code did not prevent an uneven quality in the design and implementation of the established criteria. Some exemplary blocks created fully articulated systems that control light, heat, and wind and achieve effective aesthetical and environmental performance, while other units are underarticulated despite fulfilling the prescribed criteria. While the central open space succeeds in providing recreation space for inhabitants, a lack of programming results in an uncomfortable scale. The impact of the Innovation Cubes on this issue is marginal as they do not succeed in instigating a sense of urbanity by encouraging a variety of activities. The potentials of the open spaces created here is not fully exploited; for instance, the large swaths of turf grass could be instrumentalized with vegetation which would engage onsite stormwater collection, facilitating groundwater penetration rather than exporting the issue to the municipality or nearby ecosystems. This lack of engagement appears to be indicative of an attitude toward the landscape as an amenity, and rarely a resource.

The development enjoys green spaces at many scales, pedestrian boulevards with a variety of commercial and recreational programs, urban plazas, and spaces for social programs and services. These are set within an urban design that offers a variety of spaces, many reminiscent of similar spaces in established cities. In some cases, however, the urban forms seem to lack the programs and idiosyncrasies that make them work in other urban settings. The Gates of Sarriguren attempt to act as landmarks for the entire development with a plaza-like layout, but do not offer the programs and activities of successful public gathering space. By contrast, the central pedestrian boulevard forms an active urban space, most likely due to the degree of activities available and the more sensitive tuning of scale.

Sarriguren, typical street view (top), housing with facade controls (middle), site plan (bottom). 35

Bo 01, Malmö, sweden Bo01 was completed in 2001 as a mixed-use district resulting from an international housing exhibition initiated by the Swedish government. It was planned as a demonstration project for sustainable urban development. Today, Bo01 comprises of 1,420 privately developed and owned dwelling units for a population of approximately 2,000, on 22 ha of land located in the Västra Hamnen district of Malmö, Sweden. Bo01 touts an infrastructure that relies on 100 % renewable energy. Electrical and heating energy is supplied by a wind turbine, an array of solar photovoltaic panels, solar collectors, and a geothermal energy system.

Ideas and Ideals Bo01 was designed to be a national example of sustainable city-planning, where mixed uses could be integrated even on the building scale, and where people with different experiences, knowledge, and ideas can meet and interact. The goal was to formally demonstrate a commitment to 100 % locally generated renewable energy, combining low energy consumption with maintaining a high quality of living. Bo01 demonstrates the exemplary use of information technology as a feedback loop and monitoring system via broadband Internet or television channels for the use of energy in ecocities, in order to create greater aware­ ness of the need to lower energy consumption.

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Tools and Implementation ıı A Quality Program sets guidelines for architectural qualities, choice of materials, energy consumption, green issues, and technical infrastructure. The city required that post-implementation scientific evaluations of Bo01 be made, with the goal of capitalizing on the experience gathered for future projects. A number of research projects quantified energy use, material use, indoor and outdoor comfort, as well as life cycle costs. Other studies include a post-implementation evaluation on the quality of housing and its surroundings, such as soil decontamination, traffic, storm water management, recycling, environmental information, and education.

ıı Bo01 not only sets targets about the heating and cooling of the buildings (70 kWh / m2 / a) but also for the general energy use (35  kWh / m2 / a). 85 % of the heating comes from geothermal sources (aquifer and ocean) and 15 % from solar collectors. Electric power is generated through windmills and biogas made from sewage. The electricity grid and district heating network is linked to the main city grid and network in order to bridge the time-lapse between the production and use of energy, without the need for specialized energy storage equipment. The development also closely monitored its energy use, finding that most buildings operated above the set target of 105 kWh / m2 / a. It is speculated that the energy performance was affected by poor insulation, unexpected wind tunnels and in some cases large glazed facades.

Deviating from the norm, this strategy did succeed in creating three distinct urban conditions that successfully enhanced the plan’s organization:

ıı On an extremely exposed site, a microclimate is created by the taller wall of apartment buildings of five to six stories, which protect the interior areas of two to three-story buildings from the strong coastal winds.

ıı The contrast in scale helps to establish a natural hierarchy of urban space, ranging from the large public promenades to the semi-private street lanes and into the private small courtyards. There is a clear structure of organization with front entrances facing the hard-surfaced public spaces and private entrances into lushly planted gardens.

ıı The difference in scale affords natural diversity in massing for a variety of housing types, from large apartment blocks with internal courtyards to individual single-family houses. The streets in Bo01 are generally designated car-free and allow only a limited number of low-speed vehicles, giving priority to pedestrians. Parking is limited to 0.7 parking lots per dwelling. Semi-public streets, lanes, plazas, and building masses are juxtaposed to form a labyrinth that is reminiscent of a medieval town setting. The streets and plazas are paved and have a general speed limit of 30 km / h. Transport options include a comprehensive bus system, as well as carpooling and hybrid vehicles.

ıı Incentive programs such as the Green Space Factor and the Green Points have resulted in a rich and varied foliage in the parks, courtyards, streets, and squares. The Green Space Factor ensures that each plot in Bo01 has a minimum amount of greenery, while green points were awarded to single measures that encouraged biodiversity in landscape and buildings. Examples included providing bird-nesting boxes, earmarking of courtyards to grow naturally, and providing courtyards with at least 50 species of Swedish wild flowers. Klas Tham, the principal architect and urban designer, initiated the idea of creating a perimeter wall against the sea and a smaller, more intimate interior scale. This strategy was initially met with much criticism because of the resulting east-west oriented apartments that lose the benefits of passive south-facing orientation in favor of views towards the sea and canal park.

Bo 01, Malmö, Sweden, partial aerial view (top), housing (bottom). 37

Heterogeneous building heights and well-distributed open spaces create a human-scaled environment and help establish a natural hierarchy of urban space. The European Village, comprising a series of single-family houses, is located along the canal in the northernmost part of the Bo01 quarter. In its design and construction, the Swedish government invited all member states of the EU, applicant and EFTA countries to build one or more homes for the housing exposition. Various European countries participated, featuring the styles, materiality, and construction methods that are typical for their traditions and adapting them to Malmö’s climate and construction conditions. These fully furnished houses were open to the public during the exposition and sold afterwards. This area was also the testbed for a wider application of the European Construction Products Directive (CPD). The CPD aims to create a single European market by removing the technical barriers to trade between Member States through the use of common standards and approvals. The red brick Tegelborgen is a signature building by Mansson and Dahlback Arkitektkontor, with its characteristic oblique windows and vacuum solar collectors unabashedly expressed as six vertical fins integrated into its facade and roof. It consists of two upper-story housing units and a ground-level restaurant. The south-facing vacuum solar collectors maximize exposure to sunlight and are used to heat water for the district heating system. While explicitly expressing its energy conservation devices, Tegelborgen ironically uses far more energy than antici­ pated: the measured energy use in 2005 exceeded by almost three times the limit of the annual average of 105 kWh / m2 required by the Quality Program. The internal environment is controlled according to the individual needs of the apartments; fans are speed-controlled to adapt to the residents’ behavior and motion sensors control lighting. An emphasis is placed on clean ventilation and temperature control within each apartment. Despite these efficiency measures, it has been reported by residents that the apartments are not adequately heated during the winter.

Critique Bo01 exemplifies how a strong government involvement, dialogues with stakeholders, openness to experimentation, and a belief in high standards of sustainability can be instrumental in achieving the local sustainability goals of Malmö. Bo01 remains a prestigious and well-marketed sustainable development, despite the tensions between design, sustainability goals, and affordability. Even in this eco-friendly plan, it seems that energy saving loses out when it comes to prime real estate. The departure from the traditional south-oriented building blocks is a novel approach, with an intrinsic beauty and logic in the creation of exterior perimeters formed of taller buildings functioning as windbreaks for an organic, low-rise, medieval-inspired center. There is no doubt that the urban design has benefitted the architecture and eventual design of the interior streets and plazas. These have been extremely successful in creating highly distinctive spaces for both residents and the public. However, while the massing capitalizes on the sea and canal side views, it pays a penalty by losing the passive solar advantages of south-facing glazing. Heat loss through large views-oriented windows is also exacerbated by the strong coastal winds blowing through the vent openings of perimeter buildings. Bo01 highlights the importance of regional thinking related to energy use: With the energy requirements of Bo01 generally exceeding the mark, it is questionable whether Bo01 is indeed a net-zero energy development as it was intended to be. This suggests that strategies for renewable energy production may require more multi-scalar energy infrastructure, involving the whole region, rather than aim for local self-sufficiency. While energy consumption targets were not fully met, and affordability sacrificed for design and use of sustainable technology, the research and experience generated for the city is invaluable.

Notes 1

2

3

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 he project titled “Transurban” was founded by Thomas Schröpfer and Christian T Werthmann in collaboration with Limin Hee at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design in 2006. Research Assistants include Christoph Hesse, Jon Kher Kaw, Kyung-Sun Lee, Jennifer Myers, Quilian Riano, and Andrew tenBrink. Lee, Kyung-Sun. “Energy-efficient Design Strategies for Housing Developments in Temperate Climates.” Doctor of Design Thesis, advised by Thomas Schröpfer (Chair), Peter G. Rowe, and Daniel L. Schodek. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Graduate School of Design, 2010. pp. 156-173. Lee, pp. 156-173.

Bo01, Malmö, Sweden, housing with facade controls (top) and site plan (bottom).

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MATERIALIZE Material Integration: Architecture in the Urban Environment by thomas Schröpfer

Architectural effect is inherently tied to material choice. Through its material implementation, architecture elaborates from the reality of new conditions of living, by exploring not only the atmospheric and poetic qualities of materials but also ventilation, temperature, light, and humidity and how these elements mingle within the urban context to create an urban ecology. A coherent, non-dichotomous architectural concept of nature builds the “natural” within the domain of the constructed world and materializes human inhabitation within the urban environment. Growing social, political, and media interest in sustainability is shifting the focus of architectural practice and design techniques, as Iñaki Ábalos explains, from tectonic assets to “thermodynamic” comprehension of the design object, requiring the assistance of experts such as physicists and ecologists as well as new ways of approaching projects.1 In the face of such change, architects stand between technological revolution and everyday life, increasingly assuming a role termed by Paola Antonelli as the “astute generalist:” acting as intermediaries between research and production, as main interpreters in interdisciplinary

Herzog & de Meuron, 1111 Lincoln Road, Miami, Florida, USA, 2010, view of parking garage and penthouse with garden. 40

teams, to devise scenarios and strategies. As mediators, designers are expected to develop a new material sensibility – a new material intelligence – in tandem with transformations prompted by other industries, as society’s “new pragmatic intellectuals.”2 Material design can act as more than a compensatory tool for environmental penalties wrought by other design choices. Rather than adding separate systems for temperature control, plumbing, electricity, and communications to the building struc­ ture, designers can now instrumentalize material technology to implement holistic systems that work in tandem, rather than additively. Thinking beyond the “checklist attitude” endemic of ecological design rating systems like LEED – which emphasize additive “fixes,” like bike racks and high-efficiency air-conditioning units – a holistic understanding of energy consumption, organization, and urbanism through material components, especially through their use cycle, reduces waste, pollution, and environmental degradation. Beyond facilitating comfort, health, and aesthetics through mediating temperature, humidity, and privacy between interior and exterior, newly developed or enhanced materials can enable a building to act as an active participant within the larger environment rather than a passive, autonomous receptor. In the urban environment, the definition of material expands from the physical to including also the immaterial – the sensory and cultural phenomena that characterize the climatic and social environment of the surrounding context. A general goal of eco-efficiency is to decouple material use from economic growth, by doing more with less. If industry can become more efficient, using less material toward the same effect, sustained building can be achieved, minimizing resource extraction and environmental harm. While traditional design is

often limited to the adaptation or retrofitting of existing materials through cutting or shaping, computational design and the design of nanomaterials allow for the possibility of creating or modifying material on an elemental level, thereby minimizing embodied energy and redefining the factors that demarcate spatial boundaries.3

Material Efficiency: Dematerialize Traditional notions of sustainability consider the ratio of input to output, following a type of dematerialization that refers to an absolute or relative reduction in the quantities of materials required to serve functions. Sustainability has been associated with doing more with less: decreasing use or increasing re-use of material to reduce the pressure that construction exerts on natural resources. Specifying sustainable building materials involves, among other strategies, choosing products that use the least amount of energy in their extraction, fabrication, and delivery, also considering materials that are made from recycled products or are likely to be reused or recycled, and materials that are produced from easily renewable resources and do not release toxic elements. The embodied energy used to make, transport, stock, market, and eventually dispose or re-purpose a material, has become central to the notion of efficiency. The Bamboo Oblique Pavilion, created for the Gwangju Design Biennale in 2009 by Schröpfer + Hee, uses digital technologies to determine fractal tessellation patterns in aggregating bamboo into a precise cubic arrangement. Each plane of the cube is uniquely customized for the desired lighting orientation on the interior, yet the geometry is designed to ensure that bundle-to-

Schröpfer + Hee, Bamboo Oblique Pavilion, Gwangju Design Biennale, Gwangju, Korea, 2009, material packing and partial axonometric. 41

bundle connections are preserved. This type of ecological design is characterized by resource efficiency, low embodied energy, and the use of surfaces for passive techniques. In this context, the selection of the material is affected by its embodied cultural value; in how it reflects the character of the particular building site through negotiation of local ecology, geology, climate, and needs of builders and users. The same material can be perceived differently across cultures of differing social and environmental factors; for example, comparing timber fram­ ing in America to that of the Ise Shrine in Japan, it becomes obviou­s that the value wood embodies is not a precious extrava­ gance, but an accessible utilitarianism.4 The contextual significance and perceived value of material often translates to careful maintenance. Design that is underpinned by a strong sense of craft and materiality has the capacity to create an architecture that engages its physical and social contexts. These values are championed by Peter Zumthor, an architect whose approach to ecology and materials has already been discussed in Part 1 in the context of his Swiss Pavilion for the Expo 2000 in Hanover, and can be observed in his design of the Kolumba Museum. Situated in Cologne, Germany, a city that was almost completely destroyed in World War II, the museum houses the Roman Catholic Archdiocese’s collection of art that spans more than a thousand years. Knitting historical urban fragments together, the facade of grey brick integrates the remnants of the church’s facade into a new face for the contemporary museum, mediating the urban context between old and new. Through incorporating constituent elements of the surrounding urban environment into its material palette, the museum utilizes the cultural value of historical context, as embodied in the architecture’s cultural value and specificity, and also material ecology, to generate memory and to garner longevity and presence.

Ise Shrine, Ise, Japan, ritually reconstructed every 20 years, 690-current.

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The Carabanchel 16 Housing Project by Foreign Office Architects derives its ecological and urban qualities from its composition of low embodied energy material, engaged by its collective inhabitants. Faced with a shortage of public housing, the City of Madrid commissioned FOA to create a sustainable multi-­ unit residential alternative for its new public housing development at Carabanchel, a regeneration area in the southern suburb­s of Madrid. The layout is a parallelogram oriented north-­ south, comprising through units flanked by 1.5 m-wide terraces at both ends that create a semi-exterior space to accommodate a variety of uses during certain seasons. The terraces are enclosed with sliding screens filled in with bamboo louvers. The screens help to diminish the solar gain and to create modulating shadow and light effects. The bamboo is treated through fireproofing to last, but it can easily be cut off the mesh and replaced. The homogeneous skin is able to incorporate a gradation of differences that express the individual inhabitants’ preferences, blending them into a continuous volume. The embodied energy is lowered by relying on a rapidly renewable facade material that is manually operated, engaging the veranda as not only a thermal buffer space, but also a social buffer space where members of the community can socialize. The Hearst Tower by Foster + Partners in New York City is an example of material efficiency achieved through expanded collaborative relationships between architects and structural engineers – marking a cultural shift of the last decade that was deemed as “New Structuralism.” 5 In order to minimize material usage of structural steel with its high level of embodied energy, the design process reversed the traditional sequence of form, structure, and material: architectural design was simultaneously developed, structured, and materialized in collaboration with the engineering and computational methods, following a reversed sequence of material, structure, and form. The struc-

ture’s diagrid system required 21 % less structural steel than a conventional steel frame. Extensive computational calculations determined its ultimate material composition, for instance obviating the need for large corner columns and providing a better distribution of load. Computational methods enable designers to model material performance and hone efficiency through using less material. The rise and technological empowerment of these methods can be seen as a historic development in the evolution of architectural engineering, with the design engineer prioritizing materialization over formalism.6 The creation of digital tectonics, a systematic use of geometric and spatial ordinances, executed in combination with construction-related details and components, marks a turn from formalism toward a material practice open to ecological potential.7 The cultural shift toward sophisticated form and digital skills opens new ways of addressing the need for increasing cus­ tomization as well as rising standards of environmental performance. “Ceramic Futures,” a project of the Design Robotics Group at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, is a holistic, process-centric research exploring the manufacturing of sculptural shading screens.8 The intent is to transform facade cladding and to mitigate energy consumption by examining the ceramic lifecycle from production, distribution, and installation to operation and eventual dismantling. To start, a ”form-suggesting” algorithm optimizes tile surfaces as shading elements in consideration of annual heating and cooling loads. Software scripts then automate the generation of the instructions for the robotically controlled deposition system. When the tiles are digitally established, the software rotates and positions the louvers for virtual production, and then generates the individual robotic code for actuating a variable pin mold. The pin ends act as control points for the virtual tile surface. A proprietary mechanism locks the mold in place, while the Foreign Office Architects, Carabanchel 16 Housing, Madrid, Spain, 2007, facade.

Schröpfer + Hee, Bamboo Oblique Pavilion, Gwangju Design Biennale, Gwangju, Korea, 2009.

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roboti­c deposition system extrudes clay through a custom nozzle head attached to an ABB robotic arm. This production method prevents the need to customize many different tile molds that are rarely re-used, as in traditional tile-making, minimizing waste throughout the process. The current prototypical process is planned to be further developed for potential incorporation into low-volume industrial tile production settings. Another example for the “digital tectonic” serving ecological agendas is Schröpfer + Hee’s New Jurong Church in Singapore. The project is conceived as a new “dense and green” building typology, also using formally expressive and environmentally optimized facades. The harsh climate of the tropics is mitigated by extensive green spaces as well as climatically responsive facades, parametrically adjusted depending on their orientation to mediate sunlight and views. The size and shape of each opening in the aggregated facade units is strategically calibrated through quantitative analysis to achieve desired illuminance levels for the specific building programs. Going beyond the quantitative, the qualitative capacity of this system creates a rich visual and spatial experience within the building as well as form that situates it in its surrounding environment.

Energy Efficiency: Rematerialize A contemporary wave of material technology allows for the development of new structures, of a “culture of lightness” as described by Michael Braungart, which seeks to limit mass, reduce energy consumption, and design materials that can safely circulate through closed-loop cycles.9 Material technologies are looking at material composition on an elemental level, 0 0

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Foster + Partners, Hearst Tower, New York City, New York, USA, 2006, section. Section

A custom tool was developed for ex­truding ceramic material onto molds. The robot is driven by code generated directly from the design model, using another custom Rhino Grasshopper component. 44

A system of clips holds the louvers in the aluminum frame.

evaluatin­g it not only in terms of its embodied energy or performance, but also in terms of its transformative properties that can be instrumen­talized in building processes across multiple uses. Composite materials often have greater efficiency than their traditional counterparts. Carbon fiber, for example, is a composite material with much untested potential in the building industry, considered as a natural transition from heavy, compressive materials to lightweight tensile structures. Michael Maltzan explored the visual qualities of carbon fiber in his Leona Drive Residence project proposal in LA. A lightweight house made of a shimmering meshwork of translucent halls, its walls are composed of “ghost fiber,” a stiff, light material created by binding aluminum powder to the carbon fibers. The technical challenges of this proposal raised questions about the building industry: while carbon fiber is not an unusual material for trans­ port vessels, it is virtually unknown in the North American construction industry, where housing construction is normally managed with a catalog of predetermined parts.10 Peter Testa, with his partner Devyn Weiser, designed a mixeduse high-rise tower constructed of composite materials, a Carbon Tower prototype which would be pursued in partnership with the industry as a systemic examination of intermediatelevel building systems. The tensile strength of carbon fiber affords the building, if built, to be the lightest and strongest tower type yet. In the prototype, the primary structure is woven from carbon fiber, with other components manufactured from composite materials and a lightweight resin membrane that replaces the traditional curtain wall. Resin-impregnated carbon fiber strands are lighter and stronger than steel, which results in less energy spent on transportation and lifting. The double-heli­x design of the perimeter leaves interiors open, while the usual

Harvard University Graduate School of Design, Design Robotics Group, Ceramic Futures, rendering. The final design of the shading element features 300 uniquely shaped ceramic louvers.

central core is replaced by a distributed system of ramps and elevators. Spiral ramps provide both emergency egress and lateral bracing. The open interior space allows for displacement ventilation throughout the building, which minimizes energy consumption. In this project, material efficiency reconfigures the notion of a skyscraper, allowing for an openness within and a visual and spatial connectivity to the surrounding environment. Apart from material efficiency, new material technology is capable of creating intelligent infrastructure for new confluences of energy, information, and light, which traditionally form separate, centralized building systems. In their contribution to the East 34th Street Public Ferry Terminal, part of the East River Ferry Project, a sustainable transportation initiative commissioned by the New York City Economic Development Corporation, Kennedy & Violich Architecture investigate the mobility and adaptability of digital information and energy generation in a distributed network.11 The design of the ferry terminal surface contains a distributed network of services scaled to the passenger, integrated in undulating perforated wall screens, benches, and public furniture elements. Smaller ferry landings act as nodes along the network, including public furniture elements with infrastructures composed of durable composites and luminous materials that absorb and recycle light for public safety. As a public architecture, the transport infrastructure integrates the physical experiences of the waterfront with the expanded virtual experiences of the working commute: GPS, cell phone, and Internet access, integrating architecture and the “materials and equipment of daily life.” Treating information and light (“soft technologies”) as infrastructural elements embedded throughout the urban system, and introducing new forms of distribution and material coupling, this project radicalizes historical notions of shared physical resources from public spaces.

Schröpfer + Hee, New Jurong Church, Singapore, 2010-2013, rendering.

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Thermal Efficiency: The Immaterial While ecological design is traditionally associated with issues of interior heating and cooling as creating individual comfort levels, architectural “atmosphere” uses these same technologies to convey an ambient quality. Michelle Addington argues that “a rigorous application of current knowledge regarding local heat transfer coupled with existing technologies could easily manage the thermal needs and sensations of each and every­ body, and do so with several orders of magnitude of less energy use.” 12 In current practice, most atmospheric effects of the climatic are relegated to the interaction between two separate technologies: the building envelope and the HVAC system. The incorporation of other options – gradients of intensities and variability of spectra of light, thermal diffusions and transfers, levels of relative humidity – offer an opportunity to understand boundaries and surfaces rather as fluctuating intensities that more efficiently manage human comfort within a larger building system. An active negotiation / performance of intangible qualities challenges the notion of the building as a homogenous container of the body’s environment. A recalculated thermal system designs for thermal diversity rather than neutrality, and for local heat transfer rather than total heat regulation, based on the tenant that promoting homogeneity is wasteful. The restoration of thermal diversity creates motion and negotiation throughout the space. According to Phillipe Rahm, these varying temperatures and atmospheres create a dynamic relationship between body and interior climate regarding heat exchange, which can be seen in his Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster House, a project based on the principles of thermodynamics.13

Philippe Rahm Architects, Convective Museum, Wroclaw, Poland, 2008, thermal diagrams and interior rendering. 46

The FAZ Pavilion for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper, situated on the northern embankment of Frankfurt’s Main River and designed by Achim Menges and the Institute for

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The integration of environment in a larger-scaled civic and open space is exemplified in Toyo Ito Associates’ 2011 competition entry for the Gifu Cultural Center in Japan, a mixed-used singlestory building including a library, situated within a large park. The open interior is demarcated by hanging “lamp spaces” which serve as gathering spaces with individual “atmospheres,” based on radiant geothermal heating and cooling.These spaces create micro-climates within the library, which also are extended outward.

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The House and Atelier of Atelier Bow-Wow provides an example of a domestic local heat transfer system within a high-density residential district, pushing the capacity of the micro plot and investing in the broader order of the urban environment.14 Situated in a flagpole site in Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo, the building is enclosed on all sides by neighboring houses; because of its constrained footprint, the volume becomes unavoidably vertical in order to secure the maximum volume permitted by the building regulations. Supporting the heating and cooling system, wellwater is pumped up to the roof and streams down the surface of the external wall, cooling the wall by vaporization in summer as a kind of “massive rock sweating, with a dragon-like internal water vein, which can be glimpsed between the houses.” 15 The wall is covered with granule-faced asphalt to hold the water as it evaporates. A radiant heater / cooler, positioned vertically through the building further, diminishes boundaries between climates. Water drips down the vertical radiator system, condensing and vaporizing to cool the interior. The radiators serve not only to visually mediate the open interior, but also to locally cool spaces of activity.

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Atelier Bow-Wow, House and Atelier of Atelier Bow-Wow, Tokyo, Japan, 2005, section perspective (top) and view from street (bottom). 47

Computational Design at Stuttgart University, investigates autonomous, passively actuated surface structures responsive to changes in ambient humidity. Based on the biological principles of conifer cones, the entire envelope of the pavilion responds to weather changes without any embedded sensors, energy-drive motors, or regulating devices. Space, structure and climate are synthesized in one integral design process. The surface fully opens on sunny days with relatively low ambient humidity. The structure closes to form a weatherproof skin in the event of rain, when the increase in relative ambient humidity triggers a rapid, autonomous response. Beyond operating as a convertible roof, the responsive leaves perform a unique environmental and spatial experience, actualizing their encoded functions autonomously. Earlier experiments of such material systems include Steffen Reichert’s and Achim Menges’ Responsive Surface Structure II. Growing awareness of how atmospheric effects can be attuned to individual thermal needs is instigating more efficient thermal sequences in buildings. Herzog & de Meuron’s project for 1111 Lincoln Road in Miami, Florida exemplifies this hybridity of the “outdoor interior,” stabilizing a range of comfortable outdoor temperatures to make a cooler exterior space by natural means: city, site, and institution are conjoined in continuous, open civic space; a public veranda facilitating community, nature, architecture, and contemporary art.

Steffen Reichert and Achim Menges, Responsive Surface Structure II, Department of Form Generation and Materialization, HfG Offenbach, Offenbach am Main, Germany, 2008, detail model.

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Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

10 11 12 13 14 15

 balos, Inaki. “Beauty from Sustainability?” in Harvard Design Magazine v. 30 A (2010). p. 14. A ntonelli, Paola. Design and the Elastic Mind. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2008. Ibid., p. 24. S chröpfer, Thomas. Material Design: Informing Architecture by Materiality. Basel: Birkhäuser, 2010. p. 23. O xman, Rivka and Robert. “The New Structuralism: Design, Engineering, and Architectural Technologies” in Architectural Design v.80, n.4 (2010). p.14. Ibid. Ibid., p. 23. Yurkovich, Corey. “Ceramic Futures” http://www.gsd.harvard.edu/news/gsd_storie­s/ ceramic_futures.html. Accessed 3 June 2011. Braungart, Michael. “Beyond the Limits of Sustainable Architecture: A New Material Sustainability for the Twenty-first Century” in Gissen, David (ed.). Big and Green: Toward Sustainable Architecture in the 21st Century. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2002. p. 114. McQuaid, Matilda (ed.). Extreme Textiles: Designing for High Performance. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2005. S ee Sheila Kennedy’s essay titled “Intersecting Ecologies” in this book, pp. 185-193. Addington, Michelle. “Contingent Behaviors” in Architectural Design, v. 10, n. 3 (2009). p. 16. Rahm, Philippe. “Meteorological Architecture” in AD, v. 79, n. 3. pp. 30-41. Kaijima, Momoyo and Yoshiraru Tsukamoto. “On the Behavior of Houses” in Graphic Anatomy: Atelier Bow-Wow. Tokyo: Toto Publishing, 2007. p. 113. Ibid.

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MATERIALIZE The Practice of Sustainability by Matthias Sauerbruch

Climate change is a reality now. There is an obvious need for action. Almost all Western governments have made promises to limit CO2 emissions and fossil fuel consumption drastically. The European Union plans to cut its emissions by 30 % by 2020 and foresees all new construction to be carbon-neutral by 2050. At this moment, no one really knows exactly how these promises can be fulfilled. We are all part of a gigantic experiment, an experiment that is condemned to succeed. Still thinking and acting in the tradition of modernity, we, as architect­s and engineers, obviously feel challenged to support these initiatives with our expertise and creativity. We understand architecture as an eminently social and political territory – but, what is this new sustainable architecture going to be and what will it look like? As there is virtually no history of sustainable architecture and very little reliable track record, there is a lot of hyperbole and confusion. Therefore, we should exchange the little knowledge that we have with the greatest degree of critical awareness and sobriety.

Sauerbruch Hutton, Brandhorst Museum, Munich, Germany, 2008, facade.

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Urban Integration The discussion about sustainability tends to oscillate between a rather abstract debate of global problems and passionate efforts to optimise the performance of one or a few small components within larger systems. It is obvious that sustainability has to be discussed in a wide context, yet given the limitations of an average architectural practice, these efforts as a rule will not reach far beyond the size of a city. The average European city is indeed a body of a scale that an individual person or organisation can have a reasonable impact in. And since it is actually in the city where most energy is consumed – 40 % is supposedly due to the field of construction – intelligent urbanism will possibly contribute more to the overall reduction of carbon than individual buildings. The City of New York is a good example: due to its high density, its relatively efficient public transport and its mixed programmatic fabric, the carbon footprint of Manhattan – a place not exactly known as a reference of best practice in low-energy building design – is well below all other American cities. Densification and the mix of uses are the most obvious general strategies for a more sustainable city. This entails the renovation or conversion of existing structures and urban situations. The practice of addition, continuation, and reformation raises questions of urban and cultural continuity and tradition versus renewal; it generally asks what the contemporary city should be. Within the multitude of situations that is the contemporary city there are, of course, only very few general answers to be made. Trying to avoid generalisations, I would like to illustrate the topic with examples from our own office regarding urban integration. Jessop West, a building for three academic departments of the University of Sheffield, completed in 2008, is located on the Sauerbruch Hutton, Jessop West university building, Sheffield, UK, 2008, aerial view and axononometric showing the project in its urban context.

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inne­r-city site of a former hospital in the middle of a more or less accidentally grown university campus, which still consists for the most part of spread-out former residential buildings. Sheffield has been destroyed to equal measure by wartime bombing and post-war planning, with a very heterogeneous urban fabric as a result. The Jessop West site was surrounded by a group of more or less unrelated building fragments that date from the last one and a half centuries. In the search for a retroactive logic that would tie these disparate pieces together, we tried to re-establish the existing street grid as a hierarchically organised sequence of legible spaces, as well as to reinforce and articulate pedestrian connections. Thus the outline of the new building delineates the street space and reacts to pedestrian flows in general. The volume of the building acts as a mediator between the surrounding building heights and protects the interior of the block from the noise of the nearby ring road, thereby providing usable outdoor spaces which naturally extend the interior during the warm seasons. The inner organisation of the building emphasizes the identities of the three departments it houses. The entire project performs like an urban tool: it protects and defines territories, provides public spaces, and relinks the torn urban fabric. The necessary re-organization and rationalization of the University was seen as a catalyst for the densification of this site and its revival as a pleasant urban environment. Likewise, the congenial juxtaposition of buildings of different generations now literally embodies the history of the urban fabric of the site. The Federal Environment Agency in Dessau, completed in 2005, was projected into a somewhat similar situation. The city center was severely affected by war damage and post-war industry. After the economic collapse that came with the German reunification it was left in a ruinous and contaminated state, having to deal with a shrinking population and an urban fabric badly in individual identities

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Sauerbruch Hutton, Jessop West university building, view from street (right) and conceptual diagram (left).

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need of repair. The site is a former goods yard that used to be taken up by railway tracks. By 1998 it had fallen into permanent hibernation. Its dilapidated, semi-rural state inspired us to create an urban situation where architecture and landscape would form a synergetic ensemble: a built landscape that would not only provide an appropriate setting for the Agency but also extend and enhance the existing urban infrastructure. Now, a linear park runs across the site and offers a pedestrian and bicycle link to the main railway station, as well as a pleasant green for the community. This coexistence of a national institution and the local neighbor­ hood, the synergy of anorganic and vegetal architectures, the openness and spatial generosity of an urban situation that is well connected into local and national networks of public trans­ port might well be a blueprint for a future urban fabric, particularly in small cities with stagnant or shrinking populations. Low2No provided the opportunity to design a whole city block in the former docklands of Helsinki. These are currently being transformed into a new city quarter to tempt the growing population away from the suburbs back into the city center. Our design combines a headquarter building with affordable housing and a number of communal family support facilities. Our approach combines density, programmatic mixity, and strategies for carbon efficiency on all levels of urban living. These efficiencies will not only be achieved by building technology, but with all systems that we have grown used to in the city, such as traffic, food supply, social and other services as well as power generation. Our proposition also suggested to reform near-site and off-site systems and even to use the project as a catalyst for possible reforms in local energy production. However, the crucial question how the energy of the future should be generated is a politically very sensible one. Should it be produced,

Sauerbruch Hutton, Federal Environment Agency, Dessau, Germany, 2005, exterior view (top), interior view (middle), view from street (bottom).

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very efficiently, in few centralised locations run by large companies? Or should it be produced in a smart grid by thousands of individuals and small institutions? The state might be more enlightened than private investors but very slow to perform. Private clients may not see the immediate economic gain of the extra investment that is needed. The Helsinki project is a good example for the compromised conditions of transition: we finally agreed on a mixture of scales and probabilities. While decentral solar and geothermal systems will produce some electricity and heat immediately, we are also campaigning for the conversion of a local combined power plant from coal to bio fuel to make the big difference. The Sheffield, Dessau and Helsinki projects all demonstrate the general need to discover a new type of economy. More than ever, buildings need to be considered in terms of their interaction with the city rather than in terms of the benefits they provide to an individual client or user. The way they improve an existing infrastructure, or what type of amenity they offer to their surrounding is what will make them part of a long-term perspective of a well-working urban environment to be sustained through the generations.

Sauerbruch Hutton, Federal Environment Agency, interior (top) and exterior view (bottom).

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Avoiding Fossil Energy As architects, we theoretically have significant influence on the choice of construction materials. Trying to use low-carbon materials has been part of our practice for some time: the facades of both Jessop West and the Federal Agency were constructed largely in wood and the Lo2No development in Helsinki includes a prototypical six-story office building that employs structural timber. However, over a lifecycle of 60 years, the embedded energ­y of materials and construction only amounts to approximately 10 to 15 % of a building’s total carbon emission and energ­y consumption. By far the most energy is being used by technical building systems. This is where we have the best possibilities to intervene. Intelligent architectural strategies can supplement or even replace mechanical systems for heating, cooling, ventilation, and lighting and thereby help to drastically reduce consumption and emission.

Ventilation Even with hot summers and cold winters in central Europe it is possible to ventilate buildings naturally, at least during spring and autumn. Even though some of the office buildings we designed are tall and therefore exposed to strong external wind forces, we have always insisted on implementing the possibility of natural ventilation for all of them. Natural ventilation brings many advantages: the energy bills of a building can be halved, the internal climate will be healthier, and people will simply like it, because they can decide for themselves when and how often they open the window for fresh air. In the Berlin GSW Headquarters, built in 1999, controlled natural cross-ventilation on every office floor was achieved with the help of a solar flue that covers the whole of the western facade. Sauerbruch Hutton, GSW Headquarters, Berlin, Germany, 1999.

Sauerbruch Hutton, KfW Westarkade, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, 2010, exterior view.

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A wall of warm air is constantly rising due to the stratification of temperature along the height of the double facade and pulls a gentle flow of fresh air across every floor. Each user can control the ventilation individually by opening a window. The system has been in operation successfully for more than 10 years. The Jessop West University building allows for natural ventilation even in the midst of heavy traffic. Fresh air flows through noise absorption chambers, enters through perforated metal panels and is being pulled by natural convection into the interstitial space between layers of windows. The exhaust air rises naturally in a flow between the facade layers and escapes at their top.

The KfW Westarkade in Frankfurt am Main, completed in 2010, shows a new generation of natural ventilation. The central core structure of the tower seemed to make cross-ventilation difficult at first. As a solution we developed a pressure-ring facade that protects the window openings at each individual desk from the forceful outside wind pressures. The openings in the outer layer of this double facade are operated according to external wind conditions, so that the flow of fresh air between the two facade layers is kept at constant low pressure. The offices can be ventilated by the simple opening of a window. Exhaust air is pulled out through simple convection shafts placed at the core of the structure. A mechanical ventilation system runs at extreme temperatures of winter and midsummer, but natural ven­ tilation is offered as an alternative, depending on the users understandin­g of comfort and their ecological awareness.

Cooling Natural cooling has proven to work as well as natural ventilation. Passive measures, such as the exposure of thermal mass in office interiors to benefit from night cooling, have become a stand­ ard practice for us and have been applied in projects like the GSW Tower and the Environment Agency. In subsequent projects we were able to activate the slabs thermally with groundwater. In an office building in Cologne we covered the concrete soffits with a system of pipes carrying water tempered by the nearby Rhine River. This system is able to provide all thermal conditioning for the entire complex using a single heat pump. A special type of suspended ceiling element allows for free cir­ culation of air, optimising the effects of the radiating surface inside and at the same time accommodating all necessary technical equipment. In the Brandhorst Museum in Munich we activated both walls and floors to create nearly ideal conditions for the exhibited art as well as for visitors.

Sauerbruch Hutton, KfW Westarkade, exterior view (top), axonometric. The new tower maintains the sightlines of the existing buildings (bottom left).

Sauerbruch Hutton, KfW Westarkade, axonometric showing the building in its urban context (bottom middle), facade detail (bottom right).

offices for the kfw banking group, frankfurt KFW 40 isometric with context

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Solar Protection and Thermal Insulation Efficient solar shading on the outside of buildings is an obvious requirement to protect interiors from overheating. Shutters, blinds, or louvers, such as in the Cologne office building, need to be reversible to make sure that facades can adapt to the differing seasonal light intensities. Given the cold winters and hot summers in central Europe, the insulation of external walls is obviously another key element, together with a good balance between solid and transparent parts of external walls. The fact that oversized windows cause heat loss in the winter and overheating in the summer typically leads to thick external skins and facades, with a maximum of 50 % glazing. From our experiments with numerous variations of deep facades, layered facades, and building skins with real and visual relief emerges a new architectural expression that is modern but also clearly transcends the modernist idiom.

Architecture as User Interface For the Federal Environment Agency our engineers calculated an annual primary energy consumption of 73 kWh / sqm. Thanks to the public nature of this project, its actual consumption is monitored meticulously and made public online. The results of the first year were shocking: the building had consumed nearly twice the anticipated amount of energy. In our analysis, the reasons for this result were twofold: firstly the technology (which at the time was partially prototypical) did not work properly; but

secondly the users in the offices did not behave in the way that had been predicted. They did not know, for example, how to cope with a heating system that does not offer excess capacity. As users have come to understand the building better and to learn how it functions, the performance has steadily improved over the years and has arrived at approximately 90 kWh / sqm. This experience triggered an important insight for us: no sustainable architecture will be successful without the people that run and inhabit it. Consequently we have to create an architecture that motivates its users and makes them complicit with the plan for a more sustainable future. It becomes clear how important the core discipline of architectural design is for a more sustainable environment, as a building designed today will only be sustained for 10 or 20 years time if its physical presence convinces its users. Having to reduce consumption, having to save energy, having to obey to some operational protocol – all of these requirements will be perceived as a loss of comfort, ultimately even a loss of freedom and choice. It is our job as architects to integrate these changes as graciously as possible. Our buildings should convince people that this new mentality actually comes with gains beyond the mere relief of a bad conscience. Well-working, generous spaces, unobtrusive and elegant detailing, the use of durabl­e, visually and haptically attractive materials, in short a graceful physical environment, these elements are able to embody a different idea of efficiency and economy. We are ultimately dependent on the sensual instrumentarium of our bodies to judge whether an environment is healthy and provides well-being. Even though some aspects of well-being can be quantified by measuring temperature, airflow, acoustics and the like, we cannot calculate people’s instinctive reaction

Sauerbruch Hutton, Cologne Oval Offices, Cologne, Germany, 2010, interior view.

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to their environment. Sustainable architecture, therefore, has to address and stimulate this sensual dimension, creating an awareness of both the qualities of the environment and our own bodily being. Most importantly, we are called to use the limited means at our disposal to create architectural situations that are memorable, that speak to people on an instinctive as well as an intellectual level, and provide a desirable environmental quality.

Toward a Sustainable Architecture It is probably too early to conceive a theory of sustainable architecture, as we are in the middle of its emergence. There is no doubt, however, that the ecological paradigms will lead to an idiosyncratic architectural language, rather like the economical paradigm of industrialisation, the emergence of new building materials or the cultural conditions of speed and mobility have led to radical innovations in architecture since the beginning of the 20 th Century. The shifts at the beginning of the 21 st Century will be evolutionary rather than revolutionary, as the ecological movement is conservative at its core. How­ ever, while sustainability aims at the continuity of the natural environment and the continuity of the achievements of civilisation, as well as at the protection of the numerous liberties we have grown used to, it is clear that this continuity cannot be achieved without a marked departure from existing habits. To visualize, exemplify, and make this departure perceivable as a positive experience is the biggest task for designers today.

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MATERIALIZE Materially Informed Computational Design in Ecological Architecture by Achim Menges

Architecture is experiencing an unprecedented era of technological innovation. Over the last two decades, digital processes have begun to make an ever accelerating impact on almost all aspects of the discipline, ranging from design to construction and beyond. Never before in architectural history has an increase in technological possibilities of this magnitude occurred in such a short period. At the same time, the built environment is facing equally unprecedented ecological challenges. As a consequence of this situation, there are various efforts of reconciling the ecological challenges of architecture with the new possibilities offered by technology. Digital processes are employed in multifaceted ways to develop more ecologically sound architecture. In most general terms, these attempts can be described as post-design control strategies, post-design optimization strategies or pre-design information strategies. Digital post-design control refers, for example, to building management systems that monitor and regulate an increasing amount of mechanical and electrical equipment, including heating, ventilation, and lighting, in order to reduce a building’s consumption of energy.1 Post-design optimization seeks to improve a design scheme using digital simulation and related environmental engineering strategies.2

Institute for Computational Design (Achim Menges) and Institute of Building Structures and Structural Design (Jan Knippers), ICD/ITKE Research Pavilion, Stuttgart, Germany, 2010, exterior view. 61

These two strategies usually only have a marginal effect on the actual architectural design, mainly because they are only employed once the decisive earlier design stages are completed. By contrast, computation is increasingly used as a means of pre-design information to develop algorithmic processes, which synchronously generate a design and monitor its performance. In this way, computational design opens up novel possibilities of deriving design from feedback-based processes through algorithmic procedures. In most cases, this feedback is limited to what one may call system-external aspects, as for example the evolving design scheme’s interaction with environmental influences such as solar gains, thermal loads, and other climatic factors. There is, however, an alternative, materially informed design approach for ecological architecture that, from the very start, also considers system-internal aspects, such as physical properties, material behavior, fabrication constraints, and construction logics and thus unfolds a design from the reciprocal effects of material, form, structure, environment, and performance. This convergence of virtual and material processes is enabled by computational design.

Computational Design Computational design first needs to be understood as fundamentally different from computer-aided design. Today, computer-aided design (CAD) in the form of numerous software application­s constitutes an integral part of almost any architectural practice. With very few exceptions, these software applications are characterized by a transfer of analogue design techniques into the digital realm. Drawing and modelling techniques previously executed manually are mimicked in the com-

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puter without any change to their underlying conception. For example, using mouse and screen as the digital equivalent of pen and drawing board may undoubtedly lead to an increase in precision, efficiency, and speed of workflow. But it surely does not entail a fundamental change to a well-established way of design; it merely computerizes it.3 In this way CAD is still deeply rooted in a design paradigm based on the representational character of architectural drawings and models. This paradigm originated in the increasing division of processes of design and making during the second half of the last millennium. Similar to design techniques employed earlier, the omnipresence of CAD has also preconditioned our design thinking about the possible transfer of explicitly defined geometric information into the physical realm of construction. As a consequence – and this is the case especially in so-called digital design – architecture as a material practice is still predominantly based on design approaches characterized by a hierarchical relationship that prioritize­s the generation of form over the subsequent materialization. Due to the underlying characteristics of CAD, materiality is conceived as a mere passive attribute of geometrically defined elements rather than an active driver of the design process. Equipped with representational CAD tools intended for explicit, scalar geometric descriptions, architects create design schemes through a range of criteria that leave the inherent morphological and performative capacities of the employed material systems largely unconsidered. Hence, ways of materialization, production, and construction are conceived and devised as top-down engineered solutions, implemented only after the shape of the building and the arrangement of its elements have been fully defined.4 Unlike the computerized procedures of CAD, computational design can be employed to achieve a much higher level of integration between form generation and materialization in archi-

tecture. The term computation refers to the processing of infor­ mation. This process-based and information-based character is critical for computation. With this approach, the focus of design shifts from working on an anticipated outcome toward the development of processes that generate a range of possible solutions. Here, the designer operates on the level of the process, devising algorithmic procedures together with the declaration and prioritization of relevant parameters and their variables. In computational design, form is not defined through a sequence of drawing or modelling steps, but rather generated through the reciprocal effects and interaction of multiple inputs. In contrast to CAD, where form and information are inseparably fused in the static description of explicit geometry, computational design enables the architect to both design and intervene on the level of driving information, generative formation, resultant form, and ensuing performance.5 Consequently, the designer can also embed the characteristics and constraints of materialization in the generative computational framework. Our research has focused on the development of such materially informed design processes that allow for unfolding morphological complexity and performative capacity through a synthesis of computation and materialization processes. This requires an understanding of material systems not as derivatives of standardized building systems and elements, intended to facilitate the construction of pre-established design schemes, but rather as generative drivers in the design process. Based on a solution space defined by the material itself, this shift enables novel ways of computationally deriving both materialspecific gestalt and performative capacity.6

Institute for Computational Design (Achim Menges) and Institute of Building Structures and Structural Design (Jan Knippers), ICD / ITKE Research Pavilion, detail.

The combination of the pre-stress resulting from the elastic bending during the assembly process and the morphological differentiation of the joint locations enables a very lightweight and materially efficient system. The entire pavilion was contructed using very thin 6.5mm birch plywood sheets (left).

Design Computation and Materialization: Wood The integration of material information in computational design processes may provide a critical facet in facing the ecological challenges of the built environment. In contrast to post-design optimization strategies, computational design anticipates the performative capacities latent in the material systems that constitute the very physicality of architecture from the beginning of the design process. Materially informed computational design is not only interesting for the development of new materials and production processes in architecture, but is especially relevant for exploring the potentials for an ecological architecture inherent in already available construction materials. As an example for the surprising opportunities yielded by the latter approach, we will focus on a synthesis of design computation and materialization for one of the oldest and most common construction materials: wood. The reasons for our research on reconciling what initially seems to be a fairly ordinary material with the innovative technology of design computation are twofold, and both are directly related to the origin of wood grown as the biological substance of trees. The organic nature of wood offers significant ecological benefits. In comparison to other industrially produced construction materials, wood has been considered as an inferior and outdated material for a long time. In the context of today’s environmental challenges for the building sector, wood is rapidly being rediscovered as an important construction material for the future. In fact, very few other materials can rival the eco­ logical advantages of wood. Trees produce wood as functional tissue. As the growth of trees is sustained by photosynthesis, a

Institute for Computational Design (Achim Menges) and Institute of Building Structures and Structural Design (Jan Knippers), ICD / ITKE Research Pavilion, drawings, material testing, connection detail.

Through integrative computational design processes, the basic system behavior is developed toward a constructional material system that is based on the characteristics of the employed robotic manufacturing processes (middle and right).

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process that converts carbon dioxide into oxygen powered solely by solar energy, the environmental impact of wood as a building material is remarkably low. Even if today’s heavily industrial wood processing is taken into account,7 wood combines a very low level of embodied energy with high structural capacity and low self weight, leading to an astonishing energy balance when compared to other construction materials.8 For example, it has been calculated that producing a panel of a given strength in wood consumes 500 times less energy than in steel.9 Moreover, wood even has a positive carbon footprint10 due to its photosynthesis-driven growth. One can summarize that wood, if grown in sustainable silviculture, constitutes one of the very few natu­rally renewable, highly energy-efficient and fully recyclable building materials we currently have at our disposal. The organic nature of wood also accounts for other characteristics that are traditionally understood as less advantageous. Different from most construction materials, wood is not industrially made but grown as the tissue of trees, functioning as their load-bearing structure and metabolic infrastructure. In response to these biological demands, wood has evolved a differentiated cellular structure that has a very marked influence on its properties and behavior. In spite of a huge diversity of species,11 the anatomy of any wood shares certain characteristics.12 The dominant structure of wood tissues is formed by the cell walls, composed of a cellulosic structure of fibrous-like strands called microfibrils that are reinforced by a matrix of hemicelluloses and lignin, the constituent that defines woody plants. Three-quarters of all microfibrils composing the entire cell wall are densely packed and aligned in the thick middle layer of the secondary cell wall, accounting for most of the behavioral characteristics of wood. As the microfibrils in this layer are oriented at an angle of approximately 10 to 30 degrees13 to the cell’s long axis, and as in both hardwood and softwood the Institute for Computational Design (Achim Menges) and Institute of Building Structures and Structural Design (Jan Knippers), ICD / ITKE Research Pavilion, structural analysis (right).

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The irregularly oscillating distribution of strip connection points prevents the local weak spots of reduced effective depth at the joints from impacting on the global system. The computationally derived distribution pattern results in a stable equilibrium state and a distinctive articulation of the structural envelope.

majority of cells are aligned with the stems axis, wood features significantly different properties parallel to the grain direction as compared to perpendicular to the grain.14 Consequently, wood is referred to as heterogeneous and anisotropic, that is being non-uniform in composition and having direction-dependent properties.15 In comparison, most other construction materials, as for example steel and glass, that are designed and industrially produced to satisfy the demands of the building sector, are homogenous and isotropic. In contrast to the ecological qualities of wood, which are becoming widely acknowledged in architecture, the differentiated material make-up originating from the biological nature of wood is still often understood as problematic by architects and designers alike. Obviously, the natural variability and biological consistency of wood is difficult to reconcile with the aim for standardization in an ever more industrialized building sector. Another reason is that the related more complex characteristics of wood lie outside of what can be captured and expressed in conventional computer-aided design tools. Therefore, the other goal of our research on materially informed design computation is the development of computational tools that can integrate the physical properties and material behavior of wood. Two exemplary research projects demonstrate how a materially informed approach to computational design allows the innate characteristics, behavior, and capacities of wood to play a more active role in the design process of ecological architecture. Employing computation to tap into the intricate and multifaceted design potential latent in the material itself enables the development of material systems that are no longer conceived as derivatives of standardized building systems and elements.16 In the first case, a novel bending-active structure unfolds a unique architectural space while being extremely efficient in

terms of the employed material resources; in the second case, a surface structure responds to environmental changes with no need for additional technical equipment or external energy supply. Wood is a natural fiber composite material,17 with the cellulosic microfibrils taking the role of the fibers that are imbedded in a matrix of hemicelluloses and lignin. Wood not only resembles the material make-up of synthetic fiber composites, as for example glass-fiber-reinforced plastics, it also shares their elastic properties. Similar to these materials, wood is characterized by relatively high strain at failure, which means relatively low stiffness combined with relatively high structural capacity. The ICD / ITKE Research Pavilion 2010,18 a collaborative research undertaking by the Institute for Computational Design and the Institute of Building Structures and Structural Design at Stuttgart University, investigated ways of letting the elastic bending behavior of wood play an active role in both the computational design process and the actual construction process on site. In spite of the structural advantages potentially offered by such an approach, the technical difficulties as well as those in the field of design methodology, posed by the related synchronous considerations of force, form, and performance, have limited the exploration of elastically bent architecture to very few cases in architectural history, as for example the elastically formed wooden lattice shells by Frei Otto in Germany.19 The ICD / ITKE Research Pavilion aimed at further developing these bendingactive structures20 through the combination of materially informed design computation, advanced engineering simulation and robotic manufacturing. The material investigation commenced with physically testing the elastic behavior of thin plywood lamellas and calibrating the results with finite element method simulations. Based on Institute for Computational Design (Achim Menges) and Institute of Building Structures and Structural Design (Jan Knippers), ICD / ITKE Research Pavilion, interior view and on-site assembly (top left, bottom right).

Robotic fabrication allows the fabrication of 500 geometrically unique parts with only three types of connection details and about 1,500 different angle set-ups. On site, the material behavior computes the shape of the pavilion. The planar strips automatically find their specific shape once connected.

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material tests and computational experiments, the physical behavio­r of the plywood strips was encoded in a generative computational design tool. Various computational studies on possible arrangements of the behavioral elements led to the exploration of a larger structural system that spatially mediates the local elastic deformations of the plywood lamellas in order to find a stable equilibrium state. In the resultant structure, the initially planar plywood strips are fabricated with a 6-axis industrial robot so that they form alternating elastically bent and tensioned regions. The force that is locally stored in each bent region of a strip, and maintained by the corresponding tensioned region of the neighboring strip, greatly enhances the structural capacity of the system. In order to prevent local weak spots of reduced effective depth at the joints, the locations of the joint points need to oscillate along the structure, resulting in the need for more than 500 geometrically unique parts for the construction of the structural envelope. The morphological differentiation of the joint locations afforded by robotic fabrication, together with the pre-stress resulting from the elastic bending during the assembly process, enables a very lightweight and materially efficient structure. The entire pavilion could be constructed using only extremely thin (6.5 mm) birch plywood lamellas that form at the same time the spatial envelope and the load-bearing structure. In order to verify the results, the entire structure was repetitively scanned with the help of geodesic engineers. Comparing the exact measurements of the geometry “computed” by the material behavior on site with the computational design model and the FEM simulations, we found that the suggested integration of design computation and materialization is no longer an idealized goal but a feasible proposition21. The computational synthesis of material, form, and performance enables a complex structure to be unfolded from an uncomplicated system, Achim Menges, Steffen Reichert and Scheffler + Partner, FAZ Pavilion, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, 2010, renderings. The envelope of the pavilion is designed as an integral structural and climate-responsive material system, providing for a novel convergence of environmental and spatial experiences. As the respon-

Steffen Reichert and Achim Menges, Responsive Surface Structure II. Through an evolutionary computational design process, a relatively simple system consisting only of four, five, six and seven-sided

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polygonal elements can specifically adapt its morphological features (for example, local element density and overall curvature) to structural requirements.

sive capacity is embedded in the material itself, no additional technical equipment or supply of energy is required. When the weather changes from sun (bottom) to rainfall (top), the related increase in relative hu­midity automatically triggers an autonomous response and the structure closes to form a weatherproof skin.

which creates a unique architectural space while at the same time being extremely efficient with respect to the employed material resources. The Responsive Surface Structure22 research project is based on another material characteristic of wood: hygroscopicity, which refers to the capacity of wood to take in moisture from the atmosphere when dry and to yield moisture to the atmos­ phere when wet. As changes in moisture content result in the typical shrinking and swelling of wood, this property is commonly understood as problematic by designers, engineers, and craftsman alike.23 This project is based on the opposite understanding of hygroscopicity as a material capacity rather than a deficiency of wood. This allows the design of environmentally responsive architectural systems based on hygroscopic actuation. In contrast to most other modes of actuating responsive architectural systems, hygroscopic material behavior is of particular interest, as it requires no additional supply of external energy or any kind of mechanical or electronic control. All the responsive capacity is embedded in the structure of the material itself. This research project investigated ways of employing wood to develop a humidity-responsive veneer composite element. Wood substance can be described as a water-reactive fiberreinforce­d composite.24 Wood is hygroscopic because water can be adsorbed and chemically bonded to the cellulose and hemicelluloses on a molecular level. Water adsorped within the cell walls is called bound water. Desorption (removal) of bound water causes the distance between the microfibrils in the cell tissue to be reduced, resulting in both a substantial increase in strength due to interfibrillar bonding and a significant decrease in overall dimension. These changes are fully reversible.25 The veneer composite element functions by translating the dimen-

Steffen Reichert and Achim Menges, Responsive Surface Structure II, Department for Form Generation and Materialization, HfG Offenbach, Offenbach am Main, Germany, 2008, model. The hygroscopic behavior of wood is the basis for simple, moisture-responsive parts that are

sional changes of wood, caused by climatic variations of relative humidity, into shape changes. By altering material and manufacturing parameters, the veneer composite elements can be physically programmed to perform different response figures in various humidity ranges. Two kinds of material systems have been developed on that basis as of today. One type are systems that open when the relative humidity level increases. By responding to changes to their surface porosity, these systems have the ability to autono­ mously ventilate a space once a defined level of relative humidity is reached26. The second category of systems operates in an inverse manner. They react to a rise of relative humidity, for example through approaching rainfall, by closing the structure, thus providing weather-sensitive convertible surfaces.27 In both cases, the veneer composite element instrumentalizes the material’s responsive capacity in one surprisingly simple component that combines the functions of an embedded sensor, a no-energy motor, and a regulating element. In architecture, this provides an interesting alternative for thinking about responsiveness as something that is superimposed on inert material constructs by means of high-tech equipment. These research projects are based on a no-tech capacity already fully embedded in the material itself. In this way, materially based computational design opens up the possibility for a strikingly simple, ecologically embedded architecture in constant feedback and interaction with its surrounding environment. Design computation provides the possibility of tapping into the latent ecological potential of even relatively common and widespread construction materials. Materially informed computational design, as an intellectual concept, an active design generator, and a practical approach toward material resourcefulness and performative capacity, provides a critical

at the same time embedded sensor, no-energy motor, and regulating element. The responsive parts enabled the development of a system that responds to changes of relative humidity by opening or closing a surface.

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facet in developing a more sensitive and sensible way of utilizing advanced design and fabrication technologies across multiple scales, ranging from building systems to urban interventions, within a material practice of ecological architecture.

NOTES 1 2 3 4 5 6

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8 9 10 11

12 13 14 15 16 17 18

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Steffen Reichert and Achim Menges, Responsive Surface Structure I, Department for Form Generation and Materialization, HfG Offenbach, Offenbach am Main, Germany, 2007, detail (top left).

Wang, Shengwei. Intelligent Buildings and Building Automation. New York: Spon Press, 2010. Malkawi, Ali, and Godfried Augenbroe. Advanced building simulation. New York: Taylor & Francis, 2003. Terzidis, Kostas. Algorithmic Architecture. Oxford: Architectural Press, 2006. Menges, Achim. “Polymorphism” in Architectural Design 76, n. 2 (2006). pp. 78-87. Menges, Achim. “Form Generation and Materialization at the Transition from Computer-aided to Computational Design” in Detail n. 4 (2010). pp. 330-335. Menges, Achim. “Integral Formation and Materialisation: Computational Form and Material Gestalt” in B. Kolarevic and K. Klinger (ed.). Manufacturing Material Effects: Rethinking Design and Making in Architecture. New York: Routledge, 2008. pp. 195 – 210. S cheer, Dirk, Andreas Feil, and Carolin Zerwer. Nachhaltigkeit im Bereich Bauen und Wohnen – ökologische Bewertung der Bauholz-Kette. Heidelberg: Institut für ökologische Wirtschaftsforschung, 2006. Alcorn, A. Embodied Energy Coefficients of Building Materials. Wellington: Centre for Building Performance Research, 1996. p. 92. Gordon, J. E. Structures, Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo Press, 2003. p. 322. Kolb, Josef. Systems in Timber Engineering: Loadbearing Structures and Component Layers, Basel: Birkhäuser, 2008. p. 19. Mongillo, John F., and Linda Zierdt-Warshaw. Encyclopedia of environmental science. Rochester: University of Rochester Press. p. 157. It has been estimated that there are up to 100,000 tree species worldwide, which would total 25% of all living plant species. Wagenführ, Rudi. Anatomie des Holzes. Leinfelden-Echterdingen: Drw Verlag, 1999. Dinwoodie, John M. Timber: Its Nature and Behaviour, London: E  &  FN Spon Press, 2000. p. 26. Barnett, John R., and George Jeronimidis (eds.). Wood Quality and its Biological Basi­s, Oxford: Blackwell, 2003. Hoadley, R. B. Understanding Wood. Newton, Conn.: Taunton Press, 2000. Hensel, Michael, and Achim Menges. “Form- und Material­werdung: Das Konzept der Materialsysteme“ in Arch+ n. 188 (2008). pp. 18-25. Barnett, John R., and George Jeronimidis (eds.). Wood Quality and its Biological Basi­s, Oxford: Blackwell CRC Press, 2003. ICD / ITKE Research Pavilion 2010: Institute for Computational Design, University of Stuttgart, Prof. A. Menges; Institute of Building Structures and Structural Design, University of Stuttgart, Prof. J. Knippers. Burkhardt, Berthold. IL 13 Multihalle Mannheim, Stuttgart: Karl Krämer Verlag, 1978. K nippers, Jan, J. Cremers, Markus Gabler, and Julian Lienhar­d. Plastics and Membranes Construction Manual: Materials and Semi-finished Products, Form Finding and Construction Edition Detail (Munich), 2011, p. 134. Understoo­d as a sub-category

A full-scale, functional responsiveskin prototype shows how the material’s responsive capacity can be explored through a field of simple components, which are at the same time embedded sensor, no-energy motor and regulating element.

Steffen Reichert and Achim Menges, Responsive Surface Structure I, Department for Form Generation and Materialization, HfG Offenbach, Offenbach am Main, Germany, 2007 (bottom right).

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The verneer-composite element can be used as the basic constituent of a larger humidity-responsive system. As elaborate testing has shown, the material system can be physically programmed to either open or close in response to an increase in relative humidity.

21

22

23

24

25 26

27

Steffen Reichert and Achim Menges, Responsive Surface Structure I, detail and rendering. The humidityresponsive veneer-composite element functions by translating the dimensional changes of the wood, caused by varying moisture content, into shape changes.

of section-active structures according to the definition of structural systems given by Heino Engel, the term “bendingactive” was introduced by the authors to describe curved beam or surface structures that base their geometry on the elastic deformation of initially straight or planar elements. Menges, Achim, Moritz Fleischmann, and Simon Schleicher. “ICD / ITKE Research Pavilion” in Ruairi Glynn and Bob Sheil (eds.). Fabricate: Making Digital Architecture. Waterloo, Canad­a: Riverside Architectural Press, 2011. pp. 22-27. Responsive Surface Structure: Institute for Computational Design, University of Stuttgart, S. Reichert, Prof. A. Menges; Department of Form Generation and Materialisation, HfG Offenbach, S. Reichert, Prof. A. Menges. T iemann, Harry Donald. Wood Technology: Constitution, Properties, and Uses. New York: Pitman Publishing Company, 1942. p. 147. “Wood has one great inherent fault for almost every purpose for which it is used – it is hygroscopic. That means it will shrink and swell. Unfortunately this property is inherent in the very substance from which the wood is made, the cellulose itself.” C ave, I.D. “Wood substance as a water-reactive fibre reinforced composite” In Journal of Microscopy 104 (1) (1975). pp. 57-52. Skaar, Christen. Wood-water relations. Berlin: Springer, 1988. Menges, Achim. “Performative Wood: Integral Computational Design for a Climate-Responsive Timber Surface Structure” in Mohsen Mostafavi and Gareth Doherty (eds.). Ecological Urbanism. Baden: Lars Müller Publishers, 2010. pp. 522-527. Menges, Achim, and Steffen Reichert. “Material Capacity: Embedded Responsiveness”, in Architectural Design 82, n. 1 (2012). pp. 52-59.

By altering material and manufacturing parameters, the veneer-composite elements can be physically programmed to perform different response figures in various humidity ranges (top, bottom).

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MATERIALIZE Biotic Rooftops for Ecological Urban Architecture by Christian Werthmann

In the last Century, the frontier between architecture and landscape architecture has shifted from its vertical boundary, the facade, to a horizontal one, the roof. The emergence of intensive roof gardens on the flat roofs of modernism in the first half of the 20 th Century and the proliferation of extensive green roofs since then has not only brought architecture and landscape architecture into closer proximity in the vertical dimension, but has also contributed to the progressive erosion of classical antonyms such as inside and outside or landscape and building. The further ascent of enhanced biotic systems, such as rooftop farms, living machines, and green facades, as integral elements in conventionally abiotic building structures is indicative of a new hybrid dimension of an architectural scape that transcends the traditional role assignments of architecture and landscape in the urban terrain. This hybridization cannot be singularly viewed as the superficial sprinkling of some additional, biotic life onto a highly artificial structure, nor can it be reduced to be one of architecture’s further contributions to the progressively indistinct field of green building initiatives. It rather should be read as a new opportunity for urbanism, a phenomenon that connects the individual building to the larger metabolism of the city through material, energy, water, food, and pedestrian as well as animal flows, while responding to a newly evolved cultural and aesthetic understanding.

Harvard University Graduate School of Design, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, modern green roof test. 71

One of the most iconic drawings of the green roof movement in the 1980s was a diagram that showed a square green carpet on top of a building, reconstructing in its shape and size the lost ground occupied by the building’s footprint. The diagram was often reproduced in the following years as an image of the ultimate mitigation measure for lost natural biotic life, thereby serving as the most basic argument for the desired proliferation of green roofs on potentially every new roof of the city. Subsequently, detailed research into the many benefits of green roofs for the building as well as the larger system of green spaces in the city backed this diagram. While initially the image of vegetative material cultivated high above the city served as an icon for a new era of city-making, research added factual data about the numerous benefits of the thin layers of substrate with drought-­tolerant vegetation that characterize modern green roofs, in contrast to the then customary heavyweight roof gardens: benefits in regard to rain water management, climate mitigation, habitat creation, and aesthetic improvement that were in their unique combination not to be achieved with other roof designs. These early years of campaigning and research were followed by an implementation phase that increased the rate of green roofs dramatically. In northwestern Europe, green roofs have become a standard application, with reliable technologies available on an industrial scale. Today, in Germany roughly 14 % of all new flat roofs are green. In the late 1990s, with a 20-year delay, the green roof movement reached North America, where a passionate group of industry and academia was quick in adapting green roof technology to the manifold climates of the region as well as to its differing construction practices. This industry is growing fast, propelled by the popular LEED rating system that awards green roofs with several credits.

Roof = Refugium While the modern green roof movement has expanded to all five continents, its basic iconography of emerald landscapes hovering high above the hard city surface has been maintained. Indeed, the majority of rooftops and green roofs are disconnected from public space. Most of them are inaccessible for the public and can only be entered via narrow ladders and hatches. This is part of their charm; they offer a solitary experience. Once one is up there, there is nobody else; the sky is wide open, offering a refugium for people with special interests. Whether it is the solitude-seeking urban dweller who wants to get out of his / her apartment, the pidgeon-breeder who takes practical advantage of the altitude, or the well-to-do in a penthouse – rooftops serve as a special human habitat. With green roofs on the rise, this habitat is expanded to animals and plants. In the beginnings of the green roof movement, the relative isolation of roofs was seen as a chance to create undisturbed biological habitat. Over time, the rise of industrially manufactured green roofs left this promise barren. Today, the overwhelming majority of green roofs are thin-layered, lightweight, highly artificial constructions. Roofs planted with drought-tolerant succulent plants, such as sedum species, have become the norm. When installed correctly, these roof systems are very reliable in temperate climates and require only very little maintenance. Under restricted load limits and with smaller budgets, they often pose the only viable option for greening a roof that cannot hold much more weight than its own. However, these shallow roof solutions have proven to contribute very little in terms of animal habitat and biodiversity. When ecologists look for alternatives, they like to point to historic examples such as the 3.5 ha green roof of the Moos Water Filtration Plant in Zurich. The

Modern green roofs are highly engineered constructs that enable plant growth on roofs with very low weight limits, as shown here in the case of the Harvard University Graduate School of Design (tests by author and Jörg Breuning).

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100-year old roof has proven that biodiversity can be achieved with little means. The engineers at the time probably had not anticipated that the soil they placed on the filtration plant for cooling purposes would support one day a colony of 6,000 rare orchids and a stable grass community of over 175 species. Today, on 15 to 20 cm of topsoil, the roof “reflects the species richness of an agricultural region at the beginning of the 20th Century.” 1 Urban ecologists seek to propel these historic examples into the 21st Century. For example, in the last decade, green roofs have been built that house invertebrates, to serve as feeding grounds for birds or support hundreds of plant species. The urban ecologist Stephan Brenneisen has designed a green roof on a new hospital pharmacy designed by Herzog & de Meuron in Basel, Switzerland. Its roof substrate varies in thickness from 8 to 40 cm and supports numerous rare spider and over 50 beetle species. In the densely built city of Basel, these species can no longer be found on the riverbanks of the Rhine. In Switzerland, Germany, the UK, and North America, more and more ecologists follow Brenneisen’s example and build green roofs for the predominant purposes of biodiversity. These roofs may require more structural stability than the lightweight sedum roof systems, but in return they offer much richer biological environments that strike valuable connections to the urban ecology of whole cities and regions.

Ecologists provide alternatives to standard green roof applications characterized by low species diversity. This roof in Basel, Switzerland was specifically designed for rare spiders.

The green roof of the century-old Moos Water Filtration Plant near Zurich, Switzerland was devised for temperature moderation. Today it hosts a diverse meadow community.

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Roof = Ground While ecologists are challenging the dominance of sedum roofs, a new direction of architecture is challenging the conventional disconnection of the roof from the building’s ground. The trend was formally recognized in 2002 in Aaron Betsky’s book Landscrapers: Building with the Land. Based on over fifty projects of recent decades, Betsky describes buildings where ground and roof become interchangeable.2 In the meantime, many new projects have sprung up which supersede the examples in that book in size and aspiration. These are large horizontal structures characterized by folding planes, bifurcation, as well as circulation above, through, and below spaces, creating fluid connectivities. Roof is ground and ground is roof, no matter whether it is implemented on soil or on structure of a wide variety of building types. Public space, delegated in the traditional urban environment to streets, plazas, and parks, is here sloping over private and public structures alike, creating a mountainous terrain of a third order, semi-public space, in the city. The topographically diverse roofs draw people up into the sky through a landscape of constructed slopes, taking on new social responsibilities by populating the once solitary urban roofscapes. Their building programs typically favor long horizontal expanses of space; they range from transportation structures, sports stadiums, museums, parking structures, convention centers to shopping malls. The Yokohama Ferry Terminal (2002), the Munich Allianz Arena (2005), the Seattle Art Museum Olympic Sculpture Park (2006), the Meydan Shopping Center in Istanbul (2007), or the Vancouver Convention Center (2009) are prominent examples of this new type of breed, whose green roofs measure several hectares.

The Yokohama Ferry Terminal in Japan could be described as much as a landscape as a building (top).

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The Meydan Shopping Center in Istanbul, Turkey offers a park on its roof that is accessible from the ground (bottom).

Foreign Office Architects’ Yokohama Ferry Terminal weaves its circulation from interior to exterior spaces over 400 m of folded and bifurcated planes planted with wood and grass. Even by its sheer size the building begins to operate on the scale of a landscape. Instead of the facade, it is the roof which is responsible for the iconic appearance of the building. In a later project, FOA applies this approach to a program traditionally governed by strict economic constraints and formulaic layouts. In contrast to conventional shopping malls, the Meydan Shopping Center in Istanbul has more than 5 ha of green roof spaces, the largest extent of its kind for a shopping mall at the time of writing. Some of the roofs are accessible and some are not. Meadow or grass is used as planting, depending on accessibility. Parking is underground and the surface used as a large plaza, seamlessly connected to the roofscape. Its circulation scheme anticipates the shopping mall to become the central node of an up-andcoming, densely built urban development, situated in one of the fastest-growing areas of Istanbul. Similar in effect, the Seattle Art Museum Olympic Sculpture Park by Weiss / Manfredi can be considered as one of the most masterful designs about how to elegantly zigzag a park over train tracks, a parking garage, entrance ramps, and a museum. It celebrates steep ascents, whereas the green roof by Vogt Landschaftsarchitekten leading to the Munich Allianz Arena (Herzog & de Meuron) plays out over a long shallow slope. The 7 ha esplanade covers a large parking garage and terminates at the sports aren­a. A system of meandering pathways weaves through a dry meadow growing on a thin 20 cm lava substrate, effectively leading 70,000 soccer fans through its fields. The most recent example in this series of landscape-buildings is the Vancouver Convention Center (LMN Architects) with a green roof that zigzags in a broad swath from street level to the The Seattle Art Museum Olympic Sculpture Park, Washington, USA spans a multitude of programmati­c functions on its descent to the ground.

The Munich Allianz Arena in German­y with a 7 ha meadow esplanade over a parking garage.

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top of the building. The 2.5 ha roof is designed to provide habitat for birds, insect­s, and small mammals. Located right at the ocean, it is planted with a seed mix mimicking British Columbia’s coastal grassland. The growing substrate uses recycled ingredients such as river dredge and organic compost. Four beehives are placed on the roof, housing 240,000 bees. The biotic landscape continues underwater with an artificial concrete reef that provides habitat for a variety of marine species. With its clear orientation toward biodiversity and habitat creation, the Vancouver Convention Center stands typologically between roofs dedicated to flora and fauna and roofs that touch the ground. Despite the blending of the genres, the customary separation of habitat from humans continues also with the Convention Center; from street level, only the lower part of the grass roof is accessible to the public, the larger upper portion of the roof remaining visible but otherwise protected from pedestrian disturbance. This disconnect is understandable from a preservation standpoint, but stands in contrast to the massive gesture of the building as a mountain that promises an ascent to its top.

Roof = Farm The beehives at the Vancouver Convention Center point to an ongoing endeavor to treat roofs as farms; in this case, produce honey in the city. The current fascination with bees on rooftops has tragic roots. Bees pollinate about one third of the vegetable, fruit, and nut crops in the USA. Currently there is great concern in the industry about the global decline of bee populations, with keepers losing 30 to 90 % of their hives in recent years.3 In a reversal of the traditional roles of city and country, urban areas could play an important role in sustaining bee populations in the future. Already 25 years ago, urban apiarists installed beehives on various buildings throughout Paris. Their bees use the public gardens, rooftop terraces, and community gardens in

the city as well street trees for pollination. Apiaries in the city are cited as being more successful than in the countryside, because of a more limited use of pesticides and a higher degree of diversity created by urban plantings, which often comprise nonnative species in order to extend the flowering season.4 Citie­s such as Tokyo, Berlin, Washington, D.C., New York, and London have active beekeeping communities. In many other cities activists are trying to lift ordinances against beekeeping. One of the most established niches for rooftop bee colonies is atop hotels whose head chefs have an interest in food supply and also the promotional effect for the restaurants. One example is the Fairmont Hotel chain, which has established bee colonies on the roofs of a number of hotels in Toronto, Washington, D.C., Vancouver, New Brunswick, and most recently San Francisco. As in the beekeeping efforts, the trend toward organic and local food has moved from the ground to the rooftops of the city. Interestingly, rooftop farming did not originate from landscape or architectural designers, but from urban farmers, chefs, and local food enthusiasts. Many urban roofs that have excess capacity in their load limits have been converted to support the growth of vegetables and livestock such as chicken coops or, in extreme cases, goats. Two types of rooftop farming seem common now: non-soilbased farming versus soilbased applications. The soilbased applications with lower up-front costs have their origins in urban farming grassroots movements, which discovered rooftops in their search for more arable urban land. These movements have grown into sizable enterprises, well connected to surrounding city dwellers through community-supported agriculture shares or public harvest days. Especially in New York, the rooftop farming movement has been strong with companies such as Brooklyn Grange. This enterprise constructed a commercial farm on a 90-year-old, 40,000 sqft concrete roof, growing primarily tomatoes in 7.5 in of soil.

The Vancouver Convention Center, British Columbia, Canada.

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By contrast, non-soilbased rooftop farms are capital-intensive enterprises, requiring considerable upfront investments and displaying a very different appearance. Hydroponic greenhouses use nutrient-rich water to grow plants; they have bigger yields per square foot and can grow vegetables year-round; on the other hand they require more sophisticated hardware and monitoring than soilbased rooftop farms. For example, Gotham Greens is a 16,000 sqft hydroponic greenhouse on the rooftop of a two-story former bowling alley and light-manufacturing space in Brooklyn, New York. It is monitored by a sophisticated computer system. The company plans to produce 100 t of food every year, primarily in the form of lettuce and leafy greens such as arugula as well as herbs. Gotham Greens claims to use 5 % of the land and 10 % of the water of a conventional farm. They sell their produce to local chefs and to organic retailers such as Whole Foods.5 Other startup companies are already going one step further and propagate the introduction of aquaponic greenhouses onto rooftops.6 Aquaponic greenhouses utilize a closed-loop water cycle that results in the production of vegetable and fish. The water of the fish tanks is filtered and pumped into the vegetable growing trays. The nutrients from the fish tanks fertilize the vegetables and the water cleansed by the vegetables returns to the fish tanks. Aquaponics require roofs with a sufficient load capacity to not only carry the additional weight of the greenhouses and hydroponics but also the tanks. In temperate climates, they have to be heated in winter in order to stay productive. Although fascinating from a food production standpoint, aquaponics have been mostly used on the ground and there are still few examples where this high-tech application has ventured onto roofs.

The Brooklyn Grange Farm in New York City, New York, USA is an example for soil-based rooftop farming (top).

By contrast, this rooftop by Gotham Greens in New York City, New York, USA produces leafy vegetables using hydroponic technology (bottom left and right).

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Numerous calculations have shown that urban farming on the ground alone will not satisfy, but only modestly contribute to the nutritional demands of metropolitan regions. Rooftop farm­ ing could indeed increase food production efficiency in the city, but is dependent on certain budget parameters and available building stock. After culinary advantages and reduced food miles, the benefits of urban farming lies heavily in its positive social impact on neighborhood life and its educational value for children, – important effects that rooftop farming could extend. Because of high costs and maintenance requirements, the construction of hydroponic and aquaponic greenhouses on rooftops may remain confined to metropolitan areas of highly industrialized societies, such as New York, London, or Tokyo, or to metropolitan regions that experience water scarcity and spiking food prices, such as the wealthy countries of the Middle East. By contrast, soilbased rooftop farming might be more attractive for metropolitan regions in less affluent states, especially in the retooling of the vast non-formal cities of the global South. In one way or another, urban rooftop farming might become more widespread in the future; for the next four decades, it is predicted that a growing world population, the dietary demands of a rising middle class, and limited availability of arable land will lead to food shortages and cost increases, making the higher effort of colonizing the hostile surfaces of roofs more feasible.

Biotic Rooftops for Ecological Urban Architecture By comparing the current trends of various roof uses, one could now try to define the best programs for the future for our cities. Should roofs be primarily designed for energy or for food pro-

Green Sky Growers runs an aquaponic rooftop greenhouse in Winter Garden, Florida, USA, producing fish and vegetables, interior view (this page), exterior view (opposite page).

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duction? Should they be designed for biodiversity or for recreation, or mainly for stormwater retention? There is no simple answer, since one single program rarely satisfies the multiple and interwoven demands of an urban environment. Moreover, many of the listed programs are not mutually exclusive: waterretaining sedum roofs combined with solar panels are a common practice in Germany; rooftop farms offer recreational value­s and have an effect on stormwater retention; and even Sedum roofs can offer mental benefits. There is clearly room for more complex roof programs tailored to the differing needs and budgets of cities. Can roofs clean sewage and yield food? Can roofs produce energy and offer recreational space? Can roofs increase biodiversity and offer humans respite? Can the separation of roof structure and biotic life be overcome? Mixing the three described trends of roofs as refugium, as ground, and as farm can yield valuable new prototypes in the future. Once it is accepted that many more hybridal functions are conceivable and constructible and that the proper mix of programs can only be found by considering the urban context beyond the individual building, ideological preferences can be put aside. A neighborhood that sits on top of a sensitive drinking water aquifer has to ensure the stormwater retaining and cleansing value of its roofs. A dense neighborhood with a large amount of impoverished residents has to develop simple and inexpensive ways to grow food on its (most likely) dilapidated roofs. A coastal metropolis along a major bird migration route has to turn the roofs of its shopping malls into feeding lay-overs. The proper program of roofs is dependent on many factors: urba­n density, climate, regional production, building program, size, and height; social composition, cultural customs, income levels and budgets, and ownership; ecological and biophysical conditions, urban hydrology and pollution levels, food, water,

and sewershed conditions, and more. With the prospect of seven out of nine billion humans living in cities by 2050, humankind can no longer afford to treat the fifth facade of a building as an isolated entity; it needs to be understood as a landscape that is connected to the flows of the urban metabolism. It is actually up to the designers and planners to acknowledge and prioritize these flows, register the responsibility of the individual roof to the city as well as to the inhabitants of the individual building. The quest for a deeper integration of rooftops into the urban and ecological metabolism does not have to turn into an overly complicated science, but it should lead to more than the construction of desolate tar roofs with humming boxes.

NOTES 1

2 3

4

5 6

 andolt, Elias. “Orchideen-Wiesen in Wollishofen (Zürich): ein erstaunliches Relikt L aus dem Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts” in Vierteljahresschrift der Naturforschenden Gesellschaft in Zürich, 146 / 2-3 (2001). pp. 41-51. Betsky, Aaron. Landscrapers: Building With The Land. New York: Thames and Hudson, 2002. Kaplan, Kim. “Colony Collapse Disorder: A Complex Buzz” in Agricultural Research Magazine (May-June 2008). pp. 8-11 (source: http://www.ars.usda.gov/News/docs. htm?docid=15572). “French Bees Find A Haven In Paris” in New York Times, October 1, 2008, “Healthscience” (source: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/01/health/01iht-parisbees.16613547.html). Also: “Paris Rooftops Abuzz With Beekeeping” in msnbc.com, September 20, 2009 (source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32925739/ns/ world_news-europe/t/paris-rooftops-abuzz-beekeeping/#.TxM3tGPLzDM). http://gothamgreens.com/news. Also: Garry, Michael. “Brooklyn Greenhouse Offers Ultra-Local Lettuce” in Supermarket News, September 12, 2011. http://urbanfarmers.ch/about/aquaponic/.

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Mobilize Mobilizing Connectivity: Mobility, Infrastructure, Society by thomas Schröpfer

Connectivity afforded by transport systems catalyzes urbanization, but not without certain consequences. The next major consumer of energy, after buildings, is transport, which in the USA accounts for almost a third of total energy consumption.1 Mobility is inextricably linked to the built environment in that location affects car use, and movement between buildings consumes the largest proportion of transport energy. The trend for urban dispersal has exacerbated the problem.2 Through a complex co-evolutionary process – involving interdependencies among vehicle engineering and design solutions, energy supply systems, street and road infrastructures, urban land use patterns, economic incentives, and government policies – personal transport systems, such as the automobile, have become part of the urgent problem that cities now face.3 Most transport systems today use a public approach of light rail or high-capacity bus versus a personal approach (taxicabs and automobiles) as a means of achieving the efficiencies needed for capital costs and use of space. Yet many of the world’s most

William Lark, Jr. Smart Cities, MIT Media Lab, CityCar, rendering with energy diagram. 80

dense urban environments exhibit a very high and unrelenting demand for personal mobility. This specific mobility dilemma has led to a number of interesting developments including urban Personal Rapid Transit (PRT), a public transportation mode that features small automated vehicles operating on a network of specially built guideways. Such developments are an important next step in the evolution of transportation systems for dense urban environments, helping to minimize the impact on the environment while providing a highly reliable and safe standard of personal mobility. Sustainability through compact and integrated urban agglomerations increases the potential for human collaboration and sociability. In such compact settings, the enabling device of the automobile must be matched by larger-scale and ubiquitous transport systems that have the structure and organization necessary to move around the city in an energy-efficient and carbon-economical way. Mobility needs must be addressed simultaneously on both the public and personal scales. While this need to improve personal mobility modes has resulted in the emergence of building typologies such as multistory bicycle garages in cities like Amsterdam, larger-scaled interventions and ambitions are currently in progress. Rather than looking to each of the transport sectors within their traditional parameters, a new approach extracting positive aspects of existing mobility modes can allow the blending of public and personal on-demand mobility and add sustainable mobility solutions.

Integrated Mobility Systems The transportation of people and objects and the creation of systems for moving freely from one place to another have been a part of the human story from prehistory. Richard Sommer framed issues of mobility in the context of social justice and economic opportunity; increasing mobility in both geographic and socioeconomic terms is as critical to human emancipation as traditional notions of civil liberty and equal representation.4 One example of improving mobility systems is to modify existing infrastructure from an operational standpoint rather than abandoning it. While underground systems of transportation are seen as the bastion of efficiency, a subway system is often cost-prohibitive to construct. Less costly alternatives were explored in the bus system in Curitiba, Brazil. Plexiglass tubes function as an intermediary boarding platform between the passenger and the vehicles. The tubes allow the buses of Curitiba the same performance as a subway in terms of fast speed, reliability, comfort, and frequency. The implementation of the tubes meant that buses were not only allotted exclusive lanes, but also created a space in which passengers were able to board on the same level and pay before getting on the bus. In 1974, 25,000 passengers per day traveled in buses running in exclusive lanes.

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The system was improved regularly and currently transports more than 2 m passengers per day. Surface transit allows for better frequency and faster connections: while underground systems allow for faster travel, they cannot have a frequency of under two minutes and the connections take longer – as much as 15 minutes or more to walk underground. The case of Curitiba shows that every modal component of the transportation system must be utilized to its full potential. The future of mobility has to be considered in terms of integrated systems, where bikes, cars, taxis, subways, and buses do not compete in the space of another. Revamping urban transportation systems can play a major role in determining new urban infrastructure. With the Smart Cities Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), William J. Mitchell pioneered new approaches to integrating design and technology to make cities more responsive to their citizens and more efficient in their use of resources, likening tomorrow’s cities to living organisms with nervous systems that enable them to sense changes in the needs of their inhabitants and external conditions, and respond to these needs. Mitchell’s research includes the development of the CityCar, a lightweight, electric, shared vehicle that folds and stacks like supermarket shopping carts at convenient locations and has all essential mechanical systems housed in the car’s wheels. Other Smart City innovations include the folding electric Robo­ Scooter and GreenWheel, which turns an ordinary bicycle into one that is electrically assisted. William Lark, Jr., Smart Cities, MIT Media Lab, CityCar, project shown in different urban contexts, renderings.

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In the development of the CityCar, Mitchell re-imagined the automobile for the 21st Century. He asserted that today’s cars follow the same basic design principles as the Ford Model T: they are well suited for conveying multiple passengers over long distances at high speeds, but inefficient for providing personal

mobility within cities. As the system currently stands, cars are massively overdesigned for the needs of safe, effective, and convenient mobility in cities. The automotive industry requires as much as 30 % of the urban land surface for a supporting network of roadways and parking. Being parked over 80 % of the time, vehicles are overscaled relative to their amount of use and the space they consume. Their capacity to reach speeds of up to 100 mph is also inappropriately scaled to the temporal landscape of the city. In terms of space and embodied resources, vehicles are inefficient for personal mobility within cities. To create a new automotive DNA, Mitchell proposed a marriage of electric-drive and “connected” vehicle technologies, by utilizing an electric drive and wireless communications, rather than the internal combustion engine and stand-alone operation, to reclaim valuable real estate and capitalize on the critical mass of a city network. The vehicles are integrated with smart electric grids that use renewable energy sources. They are based purely on electric drive, using electric motors for power, electricity (and its close cousin, hydrogen) for fuel, and electronics for controls. Electric-drive vehicles include battery electrics, extended-range electrics, and fuel-cell electrics. One problem of energy generation was the issue of storing excess energy. Mitchell proposed that the redesigned vehicles would not only consume less space when parked (folding up to consume the smallest footprint) but also would act as repositories of any excess energy on the electric grid. Principles of dynamic pricing allow the vehicles to purchase excess energy inexpensively so that they can charge while parked – with minimum occupancy of space while maximizing operational impact.

Senseable city lab at MIT, Copenhagen Wheel, 2009, bicycle and information visualizations (top).

The new automotive DNA would allow vehicles to communicate wirelessly with each other and with roadway infrastructure and roadside activities. When combined with GPS technology and

Plexiglass tube in Curitiba, Brazil, with platforms for bus boarding (bottom left and right).

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information-rich digital maps, “smart” cars would be equipped to locate where they are relative to everything around them. Current technology allows vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication and GPS makes it possible to determine the proximity of two vehicles to within a meter and to predict where they will be during the next 20 milliseconds. Taking advantage of such capabilities, connected vehicle technology would enable cars that can drive themselves and avoid crashes. The resulting reduction in crash protection requirements would allow cars to become lighter, making them more conducive to electric drive, and thereby encouraging the use of renewable sources of energy for personal transportation. The network would extend beyond vehicle-to-vehicle communication to develop into a “Mobility Internet” for sharing traffic and travel data. The Mobility Internet proposal enables vehicles to share real-time, location-specific data, so that traffic can be managed optimally and travel times can be reduced and made more predictable. Mobility Internet servers are planned to manage vast amounts of vehicle traffic, integrating vehicles into the emerging “internet of things.” When automobiles begin to drive autonomously, those in charge will be able to safely use their travel time as they please, without the “distraction of driving.” Mitchell’s proposal also includes the notion of door-to-door services via “mobility on demand:” stacks of shared-use vehicles scattered around the city in access-based locations. This integrated systems thinking utilizes the networked nature of the city to create a dynamic equilibrium of energy generation and storage along with safety and freedom of movement. The mechanical redesign of a smaller, lighter car allows for increases in parking densities from a ratio of 4 : 1 and a smaller footprint that requires little side clearance. The project calls for a synergistic urban mobility and energy system of smart electricity grids related to smart street grids.

Foster + Partners in collaboration with Systematica SpA, Masdar City, Abu Dhabi, UAE, Personal Rapid Transit, section perspective, rendering.

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The automation of vehicles has been proposed as a way to capitaliz­e on the elasticity and redundancy of the urban environment. Mitchell’s CityCar proposal suggests to establish dynamic pricing for electricity, road space, parking space, and shared-use vehicles. Computational models allow the establishment of parameters for trips in order to take the fastest or cheapest way to destination through “congestion pricing.” With a system that allows load-leveling in electric grids from dynamic pricing, the system achieves a balance of markets in electricity, road space, and parking. The new automotive DNA is expected to create an economy of road space and to sustain itself through a real-time feedback loop which would help to spread demand over road resources.

Interdependent Mobility: the Masdar Concept Electric driverless Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) planning for Masdar City, undertaken by Foster + Partners in collaboration with Systematica SpA, is an example of how new forms of interdependent mobility can be planned. In the Personal Rapid Transit system, a fleet of small, electric, driverless “pods” would take passengers on individual trips anywhere within its extensive network. The Masdar PRT vision began with a carefully developed structure of goals, a system concept and guiding principles. The overarching sustainable mobility goal is to create a prototypical and sustainable “built environment” where residents and commuters can live, work, and recreate without the need for a personal fossil-fueled vehicle, in an essentially zero-carbon environment. Without the daily need for personal vehicles, the city has opportunity to operate on a model that avoids emissions

of carbon dioxide and noxious gases and provides a safer and human-friendly environment. The Masdar mobility and competency integration concept took the shape of a vertical diagram instead of the typical two-dimensional system map, representing the system as interwoven overlaid processes rather than one singular layer in which modes compete with each other for space. In a typical cross section of Masdar, ease of access to each component of the overall mobility system is accomplished in a vertical plane. Underground, the regional train line is the principal access mode for residents and commuters traveling within the region; above, the next components are the Personal Rapid Transit, the material rapid transit, and the waste transit, which operate as one system and replace the cars and trucks of typical cities for internal citywide access. This system is a key component of the city planning, as a tradeoff decision was made early in the master planning to construct an “undercroft” to house the system, thus ensuring physical separation from pedestrians and bicycles on the “podium” level above it. Additional external access from more local origins will be by way of an elevated Light Rail Train (LRT). Operating above the pedestrians and bicycles, this system will connect Masdar City, the adjoining communities, and the Abu Dhabi International Airport and also serve as the principal means of local commuter access. Stated as a sustainable mobility concept, the Masdar sustainable transportation system concept integrates pedestrian, public modes, and a revolutionary automated private method that uses multiple levels to safely move people, goods and provide services in an efficient and barrier-free environment.

Foster + Partners in collaboration with Systematica SpA, Masdar City, Abu Dhabi, UAE, aerial view, rendering. 85

Holistic Outlook: Mobility of Energy As discussed by Sven Stremke in his essay “Sustainable Energy Landscapes: The Power of Imagination,” resource depletion and climate change motivate designers to rethink mobility also in terms of sustainable energy systems to make effective use of renewable sources. For example, the concept of sustainable energy landscapes, environments that are well adapted to renewable energy sources without compromising other landscape services, landscape quality or biodiversity, can help to redefine the relations between cities and their surrounding environment. The study of nature and thermodynamics can inform the design of sustainable cities and landscapes on the basis of locally available renewable energy sources. “It is not only the daily consumption of fossil-fuel-derived energy in buildings, and the transportation of people and goods between buildings and settlements, which generate energy use. It is also the combustion of fossil-based fuels for the extraction and production of building materials, and the transportation of these materials to their construction sites. A completed building will have acquired a

positive balance of ‘embodied energy’ before it is occupied and joins the ranks of energy consumers, and this will usually increase throughout the occupied operation and maintenance cycle of its lifetime … and further during its demolition.”5 Sustainable mobility systems must minimize the amount of energies embodied within themselves by consuming precious space, and fossil fuels; instead, they must become instrumentalized in the process of energy production, storage, and distribution. They must also become part of sustainable energy landscapes. The mobility system is not only a system of transport; it is the whole understanding of a city and its surroundings. The more we create an integration of functions, the better a city will become. In order to provide mobility without compromising the quality of the urban environment, roads that are considered micro-environments incorporate pedestrians and bicycles in the streetscape. This approach should not be restricted to the denser city center. Whether through simple infrastructural adjustments, radical changes in vehicular design, or a systematic master plan, adjustments to personal urban mobility can envisage the progressive and incremental generation of a new urba­n environment.

Notes 1

2 3 4

5

86

 .S. Energy Consumption by the Transportation Sector: U http://www.bts.gov/publications/national_transportation_statistics/html/ table­_04_04.html, quoted 11 August 2011. Wigginton, Michael et al. Intelligent Skins. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2006. p. 10. Mitchell, William J. et al. Reinventing the Automobile: Personal Urban Mobility for the 21st Century, Cambridge: MIT Press, 2010. Mobility, Infrastructure and Society (panel discussion), Ecological Urbanism Conference at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, 3-5 April 2009. http://ecologicalurbanism.gsd.harvard.edu/ conference.php, podcast quoted 24 October 2011. Wigginton, p. 13.

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MobiLIZE De-Infrastructuring Cities – Toward a New Urban Framework by Federico Parolotto

In spite of more than 30 years of discussion about the impact of private vehicles on the city’s environment, we have experienced a constant increase in car use throughout the world. This also applies to very proactive cities, such as Copenhagen, which is striving to reach a modal split where 1/ 3 of trips are by car, 1/ 3 by bicycle, and 1/ 3 by public transport in the metropolitan area. Yet as pointed out in a report published by the municipal traffic department, there has been a 20 % growth in volumes of passenger car traffic in the Copenhagen area between 1998 and 2008.1 Therefore, it seems clear that even in urban conditions where much has been done in terms of sustainable mobility, the car is still a fundamental part of transport and mobility, at least outside of the dense city center. This mobility pattern, characterized by a constant increase in passenger cars despite intellectual and planning efforts to reduce reliance on private transport, has defined European cities, and even more so other cities in the developed world. The love story between man and the car is continuing, in spite of an extensive series of publications since the 1970s, when it became apparent to a more environmentally sensitive audience that the car’s externalities were taking their toll on cities. Starting from Jane Jacobs’ seminal book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities,2 a vast literature on transportation and the impact of the car on the urban context has been published. Ranging from radical views to more balanced outlooks, these critiques of the ubiquity of the motor vehicle have focused on finding ways to lower their number through a reduction in car ownership and usage.

Foster + Partners, Trafalgar Square, London, UK, 2003. A significant example of urban requalification.

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However, car ownership, vehicle fleets, and car production trends have all inexorably continued upwards. This is mostly due to the fact that in the less developed part of the world, car ownership is still low, and it is these areas that are being targeted by the motor industry in the immediate future. Car production is therefore set for growth, focusing on making vehicles lighter and engines more efficient, also in order to respond to the probable steep rise in petrol costs. Electric vehicles will most likely play a role in this scenario, although sales projections do not seem to envisage them as a key constituent of the automotive market in the near future. Despite a growing consensus among the general public regarding the need to reduce car ownership and usage, the automotive industry is envisaging an increase in car sales in emerging markets, with sales forecast to grow slightly even in the Western world after the contraction due to the economic crises of 2008 (ANFIA 2010). Cars are also evolving to become more than vehicles for movement: they are increasingly being conceived as a system that is interconnected with the surrounding environment. Aside from enhancing the comfort and ease of the trip, this constitutes their evolution from an object of desire to a means of interaction with data and the environment. In this context, rather than focusing on improbable immediate radical changes, the task of urban planning is to control and mould the flow of vehicles and people in order to minimize the negative impact of the car on the liveability of the city. It is, therefore, essential to reconsider the way in which the car influences urban spaces and to seek a new equilibrium.

Worldwide car registrations. The graph highlights the linear growth in number of cars registered worldwide between 1960 and 2008. Quantities are in millions (Source: http://data. un.org, accessed August 2011).

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Mixed-Use Densification and Alternatives to Car-Based Mobility During the dramatic expansion of European and American cities in the second half of the 20th Century, historic city-centers have progressively been retrofitted to cater to the needs of motor vehicles, trying to counter the constraints imposed by the limited availability of space. Simultaneously, cities witnessed a progressive decrease in density, alongside a concentration of developments around axes of vehicular access, determining a new road system based on wider rights of way in order to allow higher traffic volumes. In the Western world, this suburbanization has compounded a radical redistribution of the urban frame­ work, as periods of city expansion were accompanied by a progressive shift of residents from the center to the outskirts. More recently, there has been a tendency for people to move back into the denser city environment, possibly searching for the better quality of life offered by the higher concentration of activity in the urban framework. It is clear, however, that this more recent centripetal movement will not reverse the centrifugal force of the last 50 years, which was also based on a considerable increase in population and diffuse land use within the metropolitan areas.3 The sprawl has produced a massive expansion of the commuter shed, devel­ oping a need for major road infrastructure and generating poor urban environments, as well as high energy consumption patterns.4

Motorization. 1998 and 2008 car ownership data. Vehicles per 1,000 people (Source: http://data.un.org, accessed August 2011).

Equivalent land occupancy I: consumption of space by different modes of transport, occupancy and speed (top).

Equivalent land occupancy II: scale comparison of the impact of road infrastructure on space (right).

Equivalent land occupancy I: consumption of space by different modes of transport, occupancy and speed (middle and bottom).

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The main task in the near future will be to generate new densities in mixed-use areas, centred around public transport hubs. This would both shift mobility onto public transport and reduce the need to travel – two key priorities advocated by Richard Burdett.5 What emerges from discussions related to the future of transport in cities is that it is essential to ensure mobility: residents must be able to move easily, comfortably, and efficiently. Despite the ever-increasing potential for communication provided by technology, particularly with regard to real-time interaction and conferencing, there has not been a decrease in the demand for mobility. Paradoxically, the possibility of remote interaction has not reduced the need to move but instead has increased it. In order to ensure that personal mobility is maintained and improved, it is important to develop a mobility strategy that will reduce the presence of the car, which has proven to generate a loss in urban quality mostly due to the sheer bulk of the private vehicle as well as the various related pollutions, from noise to C02 emissions.6 The challenge is to create what Peter Newman defines as a “resilient city,” 7 capable of providing its residents with viable alternatives to car-based mobility.This process, which aims at generating a new typology of cities that revolves around public transport and higher densities, is unlikely to happen soon, especially given the current real estate value distribution, where the city center is generally extremely more expensive than the suburbs. Yet the call for alternative mobility is not just founded in the desire to improve the quality of the urban environment, but also on optimizing the use of energy and providing a long-term solution to ensuring mobility in the case of a possible dramatic increase in the cost of fuel. Without giving up on radical visions of a new form of mobility – such as the fascinating scenario described by William Mitchell,8 which may not come true within the near future – or wait for a substantial shift in land use and densities that may take decades, it is advisable to consider incremental strategies.

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The connection between space and networks.

Mobile connectivity. The steep growth in machine-to-machine communicatio­n.

SFpark, San Francisco, California, USA, example from the demandresponsive meter rate adjustments brochure, July 2011.

SFpark, meter rate changes in the Fisherman’s Wharf Pilot area in July 2011. 93

Reconsidering Road Infrastructure in the Urban Environment Historically, cities revolved around pedestrian connectivity, which defined their size as being within a diameter of 3-4 km. The combination of the desire to express movement and the need to store cars has disassembled cities, generating a cardominated environment to the detriment of pedestrians and ultimately of urban social life. Today, it is commonly accepted that solutions to reducing traffic congestion and car use in cities must be found. It is less acknowledged, however, that suburban road networks should be reconsidered in an effort to reduce the pervasiveness of the automobile. Speed may also have to be compromised in suburban environments, in order to enhance connectivity between the different parts of a city by supporting a more urban road fabric. The traditional focus on private mobility must be overturned with a new outlook that aims to re-retrofit the road network of the city center, and retrofit that of the suburbs.9 The dawn of digital and wireless communication over the last 15 years has spawned a number of radically different scenarios for the future, some of which led some experts to predict a decrease in personal mobility.10 As aforementioned, the opposite has happened: rather than decreasing our need to move, digital communications have increased our desire for face-to-face interaction.11 In the near future, after a staggering growth in people-to-people communication, a further growth is envisaged in machine-to-machine communication. This new breed of interaction will possibly open up new scenarios of more integrated and efficient ways of managing our cities and transport.12 The potential application for these technologies centers on real-time

interaction between the city and its user through the dynamic management of services offered to residents. San Francisco’s recently activated SFpark scheme is a prime example of how cities’ transport infrastructure, in this case onstreet parking, can be addressed through technology, allowing optimization through real-time information management. The system allows the charging of different rates based on time of day and location in the city, as well as using real-time information regarding supply to direct drivers to available parking spaces. This dramatically lowers the time spent searching for a car park, increasing the comfort of the user and reducing congestion on the road network. SFpark constitutes a different way of using existing infrastructure, in this case the city’s roads, to reduce volume of traffic and provide better service to residents through the use of technology. This new approach to the management of supply and demand will have to be developed in parallel with an improved approach to road design, so that dynamic assessment feeds a process of retrofitting of existing infrastructures. Once infrastructure is managed more efficiently through interconnectivity, it becomes possible to act on the existing road network. In many cases, the latter is the result of a design process that emphasized the car to the detriment of soft mobility. These geometries, usually dating to the 1960s and 1970s, have often persevered through time and are still characteristic of today’s cities. If pedestrians and non-motorized vehicles (NMVs) are to have a central role in the future of the city, space must be recognized as a very precious resource and the flows that move along the spaces between buildings must be rearranged. In this process, cities need to critically assess the street environment, and begin to understand how to move away from

Foster + Partners, Trafalgar Square, London, UK, 2003. Trafalgar Square after the revision of the pedestrian and vehicular space (left and right).

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curren­t car-based design criteria. This transformation has already taken place in several cities: an emblematic example of the comprehensive revision of public space is the Foster + Partners project for Trafalgar Square in London. The proposal stitched the public space back together with the rest of the city, transforming a central but neglected site into one of the liveliest spaces of central London. It is very significant that the Trafalgar Square project fundamentally consists of the assessment and revision of movement flows crossing public space. The night bus terminal was moved away from the square, and traffic light location and phasing was focused around pedestrian access. This contributed to the definition of a completely different space, via a process where the architectural component was limited to the design of the hard landscape in front of the National Gallery. This type of approach has become systemic in other cities, such as New York, were Department of Transport Commissioner Janette SadikKhan has implemented a number of significant projects. The pedestrianization of Broadway at Times Square, for example, highlights the fact that municipalities at the forefront of urban planning are looking into alternative ways of structuring mobility which seek to redress the prevalence of the private car.

Urban reconfiguration I. Piazzale Loreto, Milan, Italy. A reconfiguration study of one of the city’s most car-centered urban junctions (top and middle).

The development of vehicular and pedestrian simulation models has enabled a new understanding of urban flows that addresses streets in a radically different way. It is possible to predict and mould flows, and consequently size geometries, in a more confident and precise manner, allowing the coordination of different types of movement while prioritizing pedestrians. However, many of these tools have extensively focused on buildings rather than the space between them, perhaps in part due to the direct profitability of energy savings and efficiency

Urban reconfiguration II. Analysis of existing main vehicular flows.

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as applied to a building. In this respect, open spaces have been neglected: the push to use these software tools to evaluate the quality of exterior space must come from public authorities and municipalities, who must become an active part of the redesign process. There is a need to address the road holistically and introduce performance-based design to open spaces. In all modes of sustainable mobility, including walking, cycling, mobility on demand, and public transport, the user is exposed to weather conditions for a significant part of the trip. This means that the quality of the street micro-environment, including lighting levels, emission concentrations, and acoustic quality, inevitably becomes a key part of planning. In this framework, the road network can be adjusted through the introduction of a more sophisticated understanding of movement as well as the natural and artificial light levels, the noise patterns and the street micro-environment in general: a holistic evaluation of a street or junction can reconfigure the flows that cross the city, leading to better urban quality. Flow(n) (Mobility in Chain’s research group) project for Piazzale Loreto in Milan addresses an urban space that is presently entirely impermeable to pedestrians and overpowered by the presence of the car. The square is located in a very dense urban framework, at a point of crossing of major traffic flows (and, somewhat paradoxically, at the crossing point of two subway lines). It essentially severs the connection between two historic urban axes: Viale Padova to the North, and Corso Buenos Aires on the South. This space has become a no-man’s land that negates the possibility of pedestrian activity at grade.

focuses on the analysis of movement flows and their rearrange­ ment, without reducing the capacity of the intersection or affecting the volume of flows in the surrounding road network. Through the deployment of micro-simulation models, movement in the square was redefined so as to restore pedestrian connectivity along desired lines, without compromising the vehicular functionality of the node. Through this reconfiguration, a large part of the no-man’s land at the center of the intersection was restored as a viable pedestrian space, so that a part of the city was regained to become a substrate for a new urban intervention. This new urban strategy can be implemented without restricting traffic volumes, by orchestrating and rearranging them. This optimization of movement channels could also be applied to the public transport network using similar principles. Instead of implementing an expensive and rigid system at odds with the city fabric, an integrated transport system can be superimposed on the existing road infrastructure. In Transport for Suburbia: Beyond the Automobile Age,13 Paul Mees clearly outlines a strategy for how public transport could be expanded to reach the suburbs. Connected at various hubs, this could become a part of a consistent and new way to look at infrastructure, which starts from the optimization of the available network rather than going through a continuous process of expansion. As is already happening in some areas of central Europe, an integrated public transport service can be delivered without the need for major infrastructure works.

Given the sensitivity to traffic in Milan, where many are reluctant to explore potential reductions in traffic volumes, the proposal Urban reconfiguration III. Reshaping of main vehicular and pedestrian flows.

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Removing Infrastructure in the City

Notes 1

2

The city framework needs to be considered in its totality, from historic center to outskirts, through a new approach: the composition of strategies that are superimposed onto existing networks.

3

In this context, works such as Donald Shoup’s14 can be looked at in a light of removing rather than adding infrastructure. Car park pricing and management are significant here in that his approach to these issues suggests a reorganization of the city based on subtraction rather than addition. A similar concept of infrastructure removal is embodied in the "road diet" – a term coined in 1996 by Dan Burden and Peter Lagerwey.15 This concept, now implemented in numerous cities in North America, envisages the removal of excess road lanes to allow more space for walking and cycling. As the issue of road capacity is most acutely manifest at intersections, there is the possibility to regain space between intersections without compromising existing traffic volumes (a sensitive issue in public administration).

6

As tarmac is removed from the city center and suburban areas to make way for new urban strategies, there is an opportunity to introduce new visions of how the whole city works. Such a new vision should readdress the road network in its entirety, with not only the removal of redundant lanes, but also the demolition of split-level junctions where possible. Vehicle speeds will be moderated in a denser road network that is controlled by traffic lights, with optimized phasing to allow green waves for motorists and safe and convenient pedestrian crossings at grade.Cities could be able to gain the “invisible spaces” that are ignored and remain unseen within the urban landscape, spaces analogous to those described in Gilles Clément’s Manifeste du Tiers-paysage, which are “de rejet, de déchets, de marge … non revendicable” 16 (“rejected, cast-off, marginal … and cannot be reclaimed”). These spaces that are now given to vehicular movement could be given back to the city. The creation of a completely different streetscape required only very limited impact on traffic flows.

4

5

7

8

9

10 11

12 13 14 15 16

 ity of Copenhagen Technical and Environmental C Administratio­n Copenhagen Traffic Department, http:// kk.sites.itera.dk/apps/kk_publikationer/pdf/675_ UYAKJZFXZF.pdf (accessed August 2011). Jacobs, Jane. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York: Random House, 1961. Boeri, Stefano, Arturo Lanzan, and Edoardo Marini. Il territorio che cambia. Ambienti, paesaggi e immagini della regione milanese. Milan: Abitare Segesta, 1993. Newman, Peter, and Jeffrey R. Kenworthy. Sustainability and Cities: Overcoming Automobile Dependence. Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1999. Burdett, Richard. "Rottamare le città" in L’Europeo n. 12 (November 2009). Whitelegg, John. Transport for a Sustainable Future: the case for Europe. London: Belhaven, 1993. Newman, Peter, Tim Beatley, and Heather Boyer. Resilient Cities: Responding to Peak Oil and Climate Change. Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2009. Mitchell, William J., Christopher Borroni-Bird, and Lawrence Burns. Reinventing the Automobile: Personal Urban Mobility for the 21st Century. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2010. C f. Duany, Andres, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, and Jeff Speck. Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream. North Point Press, 2001.New York: North Point Press, 2001. Negroponte, Nicholas. Being digital. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995. C f. Vicari Haddock, Serena, interview of 2011 on (accessed August 2011). C f. Ratti, Carlo. Forum on Future Cities, available at (accessed August 2011). Mees, Paul. Transport for Suburbia: Beyond the Automobile Age. London and Sterling, VA: Earthscan, 2009. Shoup, Donald. The High Cost of Free Parking. APA Planners Press, 2005. http://www.streetfilms.org moving-beyond-the-automobile/ Clément, Gilles. Manifeste du Tiers-paysage. Vincennes: Sujet Objet, 2004.

It is this process of removal rather than addition of infrastructure that should constitute the future of our cities. This incremental, enzymatic logic to the revision of the road network, applie­d to both the historic city center and the wider suburbs, can open up a myriad of possibilities for new uses.

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MobiLIZE Relational Urbanism: a Systemic Approach to Urban Design by Eduardo Rico

“We could think of cities as the territorialization of processes, interdependencies and relations within the territory, which are critically addressed and controlled at various scales by different decision-making bodies, design teams and other agents in a constant process of defining the spaces we live in. These relations have to be understood as emergent from the historical and material dialectics present in the territory, linking human activities with their environment in a time-based evolving process, connecting courses of action which may happen simultaneously both locally and at global scales. For such a definition to effectively incorporate concepts of spatial design and critical assessment, it is necessary to start from working methodologies which engage with the processual quality of the metropolis. The turf which relational urbanism claims as its own is that of envisaging new regimes of urbanism which derive their raison d’être from a spatial design deeply rooted in the material and temporal specificities of the territory and where the metabolic nature of the environment is critically balanced with concepts of social and environmental justice; in short, a laboratory for a new critical territorialism.” 1 This chapter introduces the approach of relational urbanism by showcasing a project developed within the research produced for the Territorialism Studio at the Berlage Institute in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, of 2010 – 2011.2 The project is part of a group work focusing on the development of the urban district of Arnavutköy in the west of Istanbul, Turkey. Arnavutköy is a newly formed municipality which experiences an explosive urban growth, linked to the buoyant Turkish manufacturing sector.

Territorialism Studio, Berlage Institute, Rotterdam, The Netherlands, 2010-2011, aerial view of Informal Redundancies project.

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The area also happens to be located within several of the main water catchments that serve Istanbul and which are today critically endangered due to eutrophication.3 These circumstances, combined with several waves of immigration from the east of the country, have fuelled urban disjunction, with scattered sprawl of industrial sectors, gentrified gated communities occupying water-sensitive zones, and, in some cases, displacements of entire communities in existing gecekondus (semi-formal settlements with a strong migrant population).4 The project addresses problems associated with distinct conditions in the geography of the entire municipality, ranging from agrarian landscapes in the north to heavy industrial clusters in the south, passing by the dense urban core of Arnavutköy city. The final purpose was to show the interdependencies of the problems and to put forward ways of conceiving these in a related manner, acknowledging that they cannot be tackled in isolation. The project showcased is located south of Arnavutköy, close to one of the largest industrial districts of western Istanbul. It addresses some of the problems related to cycles of industrialization and further tertiarization. These issues are likely to be a major cause of concern in Istanbul, as the growth of the industrial sector in the city contrasts with central plans to move industries to outer regions in the Marmara Sea.5 The approach focuses on the existing matrix of interconnected economies that link large-scale industrial sectors to semi-formal economies through subcontracting and secondary spillovers. The fundamental assumption is that the combination of these networks, together with other sources of income such as cash crops and agriculture within the urban tissue, can help those working in the industries to maintain their living conditions when manufacturing trends move out of the area.

Territorialism Studio, study area of around the Arnavutköy municipality, west of Istanbul, Turkey (five sites in total, marked in yellow). 100

The proposal aligns itself to an emergent trend of critical theory defining the urban problems within a processual perspective. The approach is based on the idea of process and relation, moving away from the finalized render or fixed spatial formation as the main outcome of planning and design. The following sections explain how these arguments are put forward through the use of relational modeling, linking quantitative aspects of the socioeconomic processes in the territory to specific spatial outcomes. In this particular case, the project works from the relations between agriculture, industrial production, and corridors of agro-industrial production linked to worker disctricts.

Emerging Global Regions and the Processual Paradigms The beginning of the Century roughly coincides with the moment when 50â•›% of the world population live in urban environments. This development has been accompanied by the move of the metropolitan region to the center of the political discourse. The world can be increasingly described as formed of networks of urbanized regions where economic power, innovation, and ultimately the creative class are agglomerated. More than ever, the problems of our relationships with the environment as well as their solutions seem to be dependent on the way in which we construct the artificial natures which ultimately compose the regions we live in.6 However, the current rhythm and pace of urbanization seems to have rendered traditional planning mechanisms useless when facing the challenges posed by fast-growing metropolises such as Istanbul. At the local scale, developers occupy environmentally sensitive areas through a relentless behind-the-scenes

deal-making, ignoring planning regulations and any sort of straÂ� tegic thinking. Coming from the central government in Ankara, large-scale infrastructure projects such as the third Bosporus Bridge contradict any carefully drawn plans by city officials, jeopardizing their legitimacy and further fuelling a race to development at the local scale. Planners and designers are left out of the territorial discussion, simply because their tools and modes of operation do not seem to incorporate the needs and practices of the inhabitants that ultimately give shape and meaning to the city. Scholars such as David Harvey criticize the current planning practices on the grounds of their excessive focus on fixed form versus a more dialectic reading of the territory. The ideals and utopias that may underpin these practices have been fossilized into a predetermined territorial image or a monolithic infrastrucÂ� tural proposal, rendering them an easy target for a businessas-usual development model based on exclusionary views or short-sighted speculation. It is perhaps this spatial determinism, which lies at the root of their failure as agents of promoting progressive agendas within the urban realm. If we look for an alternative form of praxis, we would need to place the concepts of process and relationship as the foundation of any further inquiry. Far from the dismissal of ideals or utopia, the aim would be to forge such a utopianism as derived from the fluid and mutable characteristics of territorial dialectics and material process. As Harvey would argue, “The antidote to such spatial determinism is not to abandon all talk of the city (or even of the possibility of Utopia) as a whole, as is the penchant of postmodernist critique, but to return to the level of urbanization processes as being fundamental to the construction of the things that contain them. A Utopianism of process looks very different from a Utopianism of fixed spatial

form.”↜7 Along these lines, relational urbanism pursues an underÂ� standing of the space of the metropolis as relational, that is, emergent from relations immanent in the territory, where human action becomes another agent which enters the dialectics of form, matter, and time that shape the environment as we understand it. The ultimate aim would be to operate critically within this framework, being able to design, construct and project these processual utopias when imagining the spaces, and natures, we want to inhabit. Research in relational urbanism commences with an analysis of the ground and the ways in which it organizes the different territorial ecologies. The selected project starts from an understanding of the topography and the physical structure of the region, studying the slopes and the water movement across the various valleys in an attempt to define the scales at which the proposal is likely to be relevant. An initial reading of the water catchments identifies the least sensitive areas, in this case the valley leading to the already heavily polluted Küçükçekmece Lake, which is used as the test bed to revert the traditional link between urbanization and environmental impact. The contour lines and the lines of water flow (drainage lines perpendicular to contour lines) are used as the basis of the parceling system, by further subdividing these two families of lines, followed by a more detailed study of the sizes of the resulting cells. In this process, parcels which are either too small or too large are discarded, with different criteria applying to low areas (valleys carrying water) or high ones (ridges). The final result shows the spatial structure which already includes topography and storm water considerations, helping to obtain a certain overall hierarchy and character and the same time leading the way to potentially efficient drainage mechanisms.

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The next step of the project shall be to understand what the current drivers of territorial change are, such as the large-scale industrial complexes linked to the southern port, the sprawling estates driven by a growing middle class searching for a ruralized setting, but also the growing problems linked to the accumulation of nutrients polluting existing reservoirs. The focus is on the archetypical format that shall accommodate solutions or answers to the contradictions emergent from the interplay of these phenomena.

Typological Research and the Environmental Question Relational urbanism assumes that the overall form or character of the city can be described from the relationship between a librarÂ�y of architectural types and a series of distribution principles bridging across scales. From this perspective, the task of the designer starts with the exploration of new urban archetypes, based on organizational principles which are borrowed from architecture, infrastructure, and other logics. The goal is to test how the characteristics of the type escalate across larger scales and give birth to new spatial properties linked to an emergent collective form. The Arnavutköy project, taken here as an example, studies how larger-scale industrial and office uses can be adapted in order to host smaller-scale developments linked to adjacent gecekondus. A catalog of options is generated by combining towers (predominantly office and housing) with different proportions of ramped areas (hosting smaller workshops linked to subcontracting activities), agricultural zones and small-scale developments. An initial test at the medium scale allows to evaluate to Territorialism Studio, location of the Informal Redundancies project within valley leading to Küçükçekmece Lake (top).

Site morphology study. Initial parcels have been drawn according to drainage lines and divided into three main zones: valley conditions (blue), ridge condition (red), and intermediate condition (green).

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Figure 3a checks for removal of all parcels smaller than 1,000 m2. Figure 3b checks for removal of all parcels smaller than 2,000 m2. Figure 3c checks for removal of all parcels smaller than 3,000 m2.

what extent a series of these typologies can generate the basis of long corridors with strips of agriculture between them. The central part of the corridor has a more urban character, with workshops, residential and commercial activities, while the backside (open areas of agriculture) is linked to production of food for local residents. The corridors are reduced in size, length, and thickness as they reach the bottom of the valley, opening up the possibility of having larger agriculturally productive areas toward the edges of the formed clusters. The aim of the typological study is to propose an urban fabric that allows inhabitants to be both responsible for and beneficiaries of the production of the economic systems and their subsequent spatial conditions. In the project showcased, it is the possibility of local population working in industrial estates nearby (predominately south) to manage and control both the development of cash crop and subcontracted atelier economy, while generating commercial corridors and cleaner reservoirs downstream. The spatial quality of the archetype becomes both the end and the means of spatial control by the citizens. It involves the qualities which construct the values and decision structures of the citizens and serve as a hinge for negotiating the citizens’ engagement with the territory. Here, the environmental question becomes intimately linked with social and spatial concerns. The basic critique of the existing modes of urbanism claims that it is precisely the ignorance of social differences which causes the environmental mess in Istanbul’s water supply. The trilogy formed by gated communities, isolated industrial fabric, and poorly built gecekondus is at the heart of an economic condition that leaves underpriviledged communities without adequate infrastructure to appropriately deal with water discharge into the existing reservoirs. The more than plausible scenario of de-industrialization

will further worsen economic division and will do little for the already sick environment. The Arnavutköy project sets the agenda of searching newly imagined natures, from which those suffering from pollution can derive the spatial conditions for improvement (recycling of nutrients in agriculture) in a way that sustains their living standards (housing provision, small-scale ateliers, and access to land). The study is, so far, isolated from larger-scale problems of how it fits within western Istanbul. Questions about limits of the proposal, the relationship between proposed built fabric and the capacity of local economies to support it need to be answered in conjunction with those already opened up by the initial research. The work of relational modeling described in the following sections is meant to cast some light on these aspects.

Relational Modeling and the Management of Flex� ibility in Urban Systems The issues previously discussed can only start to be tackled when considered as part of a larger context, which shall be the result of a long term evolving process. Due to the inherent mutability of urban environments, defined both in terms of the growth of city fabrics, but also in terms of the process of urban planning and design, the dilemma faced by the designer is how to marry spatial considerations, generally coming from fixed architectural concepts, with ideas of change, evolution, and openness. Coming back to the point made by Harvey, we have to find ways of moving beyond the problems posed by fixed form, without entirely giving up the hope of spatial definition and design.

Site morphology study. Figure 3d shows final result where small parcels are regrouped in order to obtain a regularized distribution.

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These problems, associated with working with indeterminacy and flux, are intimately linked both with the concept of flexibility as defined in system theory and with questions of control as well as new modes of spatial design. Along these lines, the research proposed by the relational urbanism agenda asks questions of how new design techniques, based on systemic thinking (in this case associative or parametric tools), can cast new light on the way we approach the design of cities. Associative design tools allow the generation of 3D models where the forms and volumes are derived from rules and para� meters. The graphic outcome is not generated from direct tracing or modeling of objects (i.e., drawing boxes or lines in the traditional sense), but through the indirect control of these rules or parameters (i.e., defining operations such as intersecting or offsetting). This mode of work results in a substantial time saving when undertaking laborious repetitive drawings tasks (e.g., paneling modules of variable size or recursive components forming branches) once the rules are defined; but more importantly, it opens up new ways of thinking about the control of form and spatial complexity. A relational model is a combination of an associative 3D model working at the urban fabric with a series of numerical models which allow control of variables linked to urban dynamics. These can, for example, be the location of nodes of urban density, relative weights of different patterns, or physical limitations in height. The model also produces readings of results linked to the urban fabric (like areas or consumption of resources), which eventually can be linked to the distribution variables and 3D model, ultimately simulating mechanisms of feedback and compensation within a time-based evolution. Beyond the capacity of these associative design tools to save drawing time or generate the basis of formal exploration, an

Territorialism Studio, ramped typology incorporating formal, informal, and industrial activities within the circulatory system.

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important question remains about the type of control established by these tools and the status that it confers to the overall layout at the urban scale. The capacity to manipulate the overall structures from variables, the generation of growing degrees of freedom for manipulation, and the subsequent flexibility of outcomes are aspects that have a fundamental implication for designers. It is, therefore, crucial to understand how this design and computational capability can lead to specific forms of spatially informed urbanism. What are the modalities of control, linked to associative techniques, which can be migrated into the field of urbanism and territorial disciplines? Or, putting it the other way, what urban questions are most amenable to the cross-contamination between systemic thinking, the critically informed project, and, ultimately, a spatially informed design practice? In order to understand the connection between concepts such as control, flexibility, and governance, we have to to look at basic definitions of these terms within the discipline of cybernetics. The idea of control and of managing variables to ensure further adaptation of overall structures refers directly to the concept of flexibility as described in the theory of cybernetics. Ross Ashby,8 in his introduction to cybernetics, links the concepts of variables and management to the idea of adaptation of a system, under the condition that the changes do not force the variables out of their tolerances. Gregory Bateson explores the socio-political aspects of the concept of flexibility in dealing with long-term management and governance of socio-ecological systems. He defines flexibility as an uncommitted potential for change.9 It is important to note here the link between “uncommitted” (i.e., not due to be spent or used in the moment) and “change” (i.e., relevant for evolution). The potential for change inherent in the system is valued in itself, due to the very fact that it is not used in the short term (“the ‘eating up’ of flexibility”):

Sectional detail of Type A (middle density) with indication of circulations (top: ramp, middle: informal, bottom: formal) between residential functions (yellow) and light industrial (gray).

“Social flexibility is a resource as precious as oil or titanium and must be budgeted in appropriate ways, to be spent (like fat) upon needed change. Broadly, since the ‘eating up’ of flexibility is due to regenerative (i.e., escalating) sub-systems within the civilization, it is, in the end, these that must be controlled.”10 The fundamental recommendation which Bateson makes is about how the flexibility is to be managed if change is due to be accommodated in the future: “It follows that while the ecologist’s goal is to increase flexibility, and to this extent he is less tyrannical than most welfare planners (who tend to increase legislative control), he must also exert authority to preserve such flex­ ibility as exists or can be created. At this point (as in the matter of unreplaceable natural resources), his recommendations must be tyrannical.” 11 The management of flexibility is fairly common in planning prac­ tices dealing with infrastructure. One of the fundamental tasks of the traffic planner is to understand the impacts of land use change within the overall city network and to set limits in terms of parking ratios or GFA, in order not to eat up spare capacity in the network. This may be crucial for maintaining service levels in other areas. The question would be how this type of thinking can be expanded so as to encompass spatial design principles and socio-economic variables. Flexibility, in this sense, is far removed from current accounts of the concept, where it is merely a motto for an urbanism infinitely accommodating market caprice and the all-too-common mixed-use development. The exercise of flexibility becomes a careful opening of degrees of freedom within the design variables, in order to hold on to those that are needed for the long-term development of the city. The task of relational urbanism is to set up a strategic agenda where the processes that shape the territory can be steered, or re-appropriated in future scenarios. This shall ensure the longterm evolution and survival of the emancipatory and progressive

Formation of corridors with proliferation of blocks in western slope, ranging from dense (west, near industrial area) to sparse (east, close to ravine) (top left). Definition of functions within a single corridor (plan shown on left) ranging from agriculture to workshop, production, and residential (top right to bottom right).

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characteristics, which may be embedded in the social structures that are at stake. The use of relational models, with their capacity to control both quantitative and spatial variables, opens the door for modes of operation where this concept of flexibility is brought to the core of the design problem. The project in Arnavutkö­y develops a relational model which links the scales described in the previous sections (architectural design of corridor­s) with the larger scale of the whole water catchment area while understanding the productive and economic consequences of the design. The model allows control of the development massing through a numeric interface which ultimately gives information of the overall quantum of land uses, agricultural production, water consumption, and sewage generation. The model opens up a whole family of options for development scenarios. One example is the study of how the distance to valley areas influence the potential outcome; another one, focusing on one of the previously defined options, shows the local influenc­e of agricultural programmes in the northern edge on the development. Such option studies open up considerations about the distribution variables to be used, but also about the common spatial qualities and quantitative elements of the development that shall be maintained throughout. The relational urban model, beyond the time savings in the drafting of any single option, enables a more informed discussion about spatial design while being less dependent on detail. The urban layout emerges from the combination of large-scale distribution patterns with smaller-scale studies of the urban typology. This results in a multi-layered structure which allows the understanding of both spatial implications of the architectural decisions and of overall quantitative data. The field of exploration of relational urbanism has just started to open up in terms of its currency within a critically informed

Relational model with block option distribution (bottom left) and interface system with density control and numeric output per plot (bottom right; high occupation in warm colors and lower occupation in green). 106

Detailed massing resulting in both sides of ravine (top).

Distribution tests using river influence (blue marker below images) as single parameter (gradient offset from ravines).

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praxis. The final aim would be to move to a spatial proposition which is contingent and capable of incorporating change, yet at the same time manages to make a clear typological and spatial statement on some sort of kernel of non-negotiable characteristics of the city. The aim is to use the inherent flexibility of the modelling techniques in order to focus precisely on those aspects, in terms of spatial and social characteristics, that should not change during future uncertainties linked to the urban phenomenon.

NOTES Territorialism, Introduction, Relational Urbanism Studio 2010 – 1011, Eduardo Rico and Enriqueta Llabres (directors) and Brendon Carlin (software), Berlage Institute, Rotterdam. 2 Project shown: Informal Redundancies. Giorgio Ponzo, Zhouer Wang. Relational Urbanis­m Studio 2010 – 2011. http://www.relationalurbanism.blogspot.com. 3 Kucukmehmetoglu, Mehmet, and Abdurrahman Geymen. The spatial impacts of rapid urbanization on the limited surface water resources in Istanbul. Paper presented at the 46th Congress of the European Regional Science Association, August 30 – September 3, 2006, Volos, Greece. 4 For a complete account on matters of displaced communities see: Forced Evictions – Towards Solutions? Advisory Group on Forced Evictions (AGFE), UN-HABITAT, 2005. 5 For details on regional planning and industrial development scenarios see: IMP (ed.), The Istanbul Masterplan Summary, Section 3.1, 2007. 6 Swyngedouw, Erik. “Metabolic Urbanization: The Making of Cyborg Cities” in Heynen, N., M. Kaika, and E. Swyngedouw (eds.). In the Nature of Cities – Urban Politica­l Ecology and the Politics of Urban Metabolism. London: Routledge, 2006. 7 Harvey, David. Justice, nature, and the geography of difference. Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell Publishers, 1996. 8 A shby, Ross. An introduction to cybernetics. London: Chapman & Hall, 1957. 9 B ateson, Gregory. Steps to an Ecology of Mind. Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution, and Epistemology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972. 10 Ibid. p. 349. 11 Ibid. 1

informal structure

productive activities

housing

urban area #2 14000 inhabitants (75 people/ha)

Territorialism Studio, layers generated in model. Left top to bottom: Informal structure, productive activities, housing. Right top to bottom: built fabric, road network, agriculture, urban agriculture, water treatment.

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built fabric

roads network

agriculture

urban agriculture

water treatment

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MobiLIZE Sustainable Energy Landscapes: The Power of Imagination by Sven Stremke

Resource depletion and climate change motivate a transition to sustainable energy systems that make effective use of renewable sources. Sustainable energy transition necessitates a transformation of large parts of the existing built environment and presents one of the great challenges of present-day environmental designers. Energy transition is not limited to the generation of renewable energy, but also entails a reduction of energy demand. Energy-conscious environmental design, as envisioned in this chapter, aims at increasing renewable energy generation while at the same time reducing energy demand.1 The physical reality that results from such a sustainable approach to energy transition is referred to as sustainable energy landscape – a landscape that is well adapted to renewable energy sources without compromising other landscape services, landscape quality, or biodiversity.2 In the past, we studied the ways in which natural ecosystems overcome resource scarcity and improve renewable energy flows. We identified and discussed ecological concepts with relevance to environmental design.3 Thermodynamics presents another valuable source of inspiration to environmental designers. All energy flows on earth are governed by the Laws of Thermodynamics. While the First Law of Thermodynamics states that energy is always conserved, the Second Law states that during any process, exergy (work capacity) is destroyed and entropy (disorder) produced. Cities and landscapes that are designed disregarding the Laws of Thermodynamics will continue to depend on excessive amounts of fossil fuels and cannot be considered sustainable.4

View across rural energy landscape in Drenthe, The Netherlands , rendering (courtesy of Tim Snippert). 111

The combination of scientific knowledge and creative spatial thinking forms the very basis of the designs presented in this chapter. Natural ecosystems tend to increase assimilation of renewable energy and optimize energy flows as they mature; they can serve as model for sustainable development.5 The integration of system thinking in the design of buildings, cities, and landscapes has been practiced for several decades6 – after all, what model for sustainable development do we have at our disposal other than the natural world? A growing number of peerreviewed publications on energy-conscious design illustrate that many designers are willing to share and discuss their know­ ledge with others. At the same time, design awards at the 2007, 2010, and 2011 IFLA student competitions prove that the application of scientific knowledge can result in innovative and attractive designs dealing with the challenges we are facing today. Seven scientific concepts have inspired original proposals for a sustainable energy-conscious transformation of two islands in the Dutch delta region, Goeree-Overflakkee and SchouwenDuiveland. The following concepts and related designs will be discussed in this chapter: Sources and Sinks, System Size, Symbiosis, Differentiation of Niches, Food Chain, Storage, and Biorhythm.

Sources and Sinks For understanding sustainable energy landscapes it is helpful to conceptualize the urban landscape as “energy sink” and the rural landscape as “energy source.” This perspective, of course, does not conflict with the objective of designing eco-cities. Instead, it draws attention to one of the many imperative relations between cities and their surrounding landscapes. Over the past decades, we have come to understand that every city on earth depends on energy, food, and materials from rural

Sources and Sinks – Spatial distribution of existing energy sinks (-) and potential energy sources (+) on Schouwen-Duiveland.9 112

landscapes nearby or elsewhere. Eco-cities are no exception; they must co-evolve in symbiosis with well-functioning and attractive rural landscapes. The source-sink concept originated as a demographic model describing the flow of organisms between different habitat patches.7 In the study of energy flows, “source” refers to an area where energy assimilation exceeds use.8 A source-sink relationshi­p is established when a source area (e.g., rural landscape) exports surplus energy to a sink area with energy deficiency (e.g., urban landscape). A first strategy derived from the source-sink concept is to facilitate relationships between existing sources and sinks in the built environment. If source and sink areas lie in close proximity to one another, new physical connections can facilitate energy flows. A second strategy is to locate new energy sinks in the proximity of existing source areas. A third, and perhaps most effective strategy, is to concentrate energy sources and sinks spatially. On Schouwen-Duiveland, we proposed to relocate all existing (fairly widely distributed) greenhouses in one location. This would allow optimizing organic matter and water cycles as well as energy flows. The significant size of the proposed elevated greenhouse allows making best use of local resources and is sufficient to grow the vegetable supply for the 380,000 inhabitants of the province of Zeeland.

System Size System size is a relevant parameter for energy-conscious design of the built environment. Once the size of a system goes beyond its energetic optimum (in either direction), it generates

Sources and Sinks – Spatial concentration of energy sources and energy sinks. Proposal for an elevated green­house, biogas-cogeneration power plant, thermal energy storage and water treatment facility in the southwest of Bruinisse (courtesy of Roel Theunissen).

System Size – Design and phasing for the development of energy-conscious housing clusters near the city of Middelharnis (courtesy of Darius Reznek). 113

greater energy costs to maintain that system.10 The maximum size of energy systems is influenced by energy losses, like heat dissipated to the environment. The minimum size of energy systems is determined by technological parameters. The optimum size of energy systems depends on available energy quan­ tity and quality, infrastructure, and energy demand.11 The designer of energy-conscious cities and landscapes must take into consideration that the optimum system size varies for different types of energy carriers. Heat distribution systems, for example, typically serve a neighborhood or a town. Electricity grids, by contrast, can transmit energy efficiently over long distances. The use of renewable and lower-quality energy carriers, such as biomass and warm water, is expected to result in smaller and more distributed energy systems.12 For the island of Goeree-Overflakkee, we proposed the development of energy-conscious housing clusters. The size, location, and layout of these clusters are determined by thermodynamic parameters, historical references, as well as specific characteristics of the local landscape.

Symbiosis Ecologists have demonstrated that the chance for mutual relationships increases significantly when organisms experience resource scarcity.13 A close relationship that is sustained over long periods of time is considered symbiotic. Symbiotic relation­ ships also exist in the human world. If resources are scarce or expensive, it is more likely that they are recycled or reused. One of the proposals for Schouwen-Duiveland, inspired by the concept of symbiotic relationships, was to combine the treatment of wastewater with the recharge of local groundwater reservoirs. Nowadays, farmers rely on sweet water imported

from the mainland via a pipeline. At the same time, water from the treatment plant is disposed into the nearby lake Grevelingen. The proposal is to expand the existing treatment plant near Haamstede with a symbiotic wetland machine, where helophyte plants improve the water quality, so that the sweet water can infiltrate and recharge the groundwater. Local farmers will have to sacrifice several hectares of land for the development of this wetland machine; in exchange they will receive renewable energy, nutrients, and clean water.

Differentiation of Niches Resource scarcity may also lead to the differentiation of niches. The concept of niche describes an organism’s place in the community, its relations to food and to enemies.14 Highly differentiated ecosystems are capable of sustaining a higher population density compared with less differentiated ecosystems.15 Differentiation of niches can not only increase diversity, but also improv­e energy utilization and reduce resource competition. Systems may differentiate by means of vertical stratification, horizontal, and temporal zonation. On Schouwen-Duiveland, we mapped vacant plots of land and building surface and studied their potentials to provide renewable energy. Differentiation through vertical stratification, for example installation of photovoltaic panels on farm buildings and in business parks, can avoid increasing land-use pressure due to renewable energy generation. Other spatial niches that can be utilized for energy provision are the existing highway roundabouts on the island. The proposed Algae-Plant Energy Landmark on the main roundabout in Zierikzee not only contrib­ utes to renewable energy provision but also signposts the ambitious plans to transform the island into a sustainable energy island.

Symbiosis – Design for a symbiotic wetland machine with schemes of water circulation (left), pedestrian loop (middle) and infrastructure (right). Wastewater is purified by conventional water treatment first, then by helophytes. The purified water can infiltrate the ground and recharge the groundwater (courtesy of Zuzana Jancovicova).

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Differentiation of Niches – The design for the Algae-Plant Energy Landmark on the main roundabout of Zierikzee makes reference to the local church tower, Monster Toren, the highest building on SchouwenDuiveland (courtesy of Hu Xiaolu).

Differentiation of Niches – Proposal for a Climate-Energy Dike (brown) that protects the island (with agri­ culture, nature, roads, buildings, and urban areas) from the effects of climate change while providing renewable energy in the form of rapeseed. Top right: Cycle of bio fuel for agri­ culture, agricultural land for biomass, protected from the rising water level by the climate-proof dike (courtesy of Karlijn Looman).

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Another means to differentiate spatial niches is to combine the necessary dike expansion (adaptation to climate change) with the generation of renewable energy. This strategy possesses great potential for the Dutch delta region but also for many other flood-prone coastal areas around the world. In the proposal for a Climate-Energy Dike for Goeree-Overflakkee, horizontal surfaces of the elevated dike structure provide ground for energy crops, such as rapeseed.

Food Chain The concept of food chain describes the relations between primary producers and consumers on different trophic levels. In spite of the relative inefficiency of energy conversion from one trophic level to another, resources are used multiple times. In the technosphere, too, there are examples for multiple use of energy, like the multi-stage use of heat in so-called “energy cascades.” Environmental design can help to integrate energy cascades in the existing built environment as well as in new developments. On Goeree-Overflakkee and Schouwen-Duiveland, we proposed energy cascades for several locations. In the design for Middelharnis, an energy cascade connects a heat source (a combined heat power plant) with several heat sinks, with the sinks organized in space according to their heat demand (temperature requirement­s vary from 90°C to 15°C). In the design for an Energy Park near Stellendam, a heat network connects several heat sources (closed greenhouses and a solar dike) with the nearby village. The location of the greenhouses is determined by the presence of an aquifer that can function as seasonal heat storage and the presence of dwellings with heat demand.

Storage Organisms exposed to periodic fluctuations in energy supply tend to store energy. Plants, for example, assimilate and store solar energy during the day. At night, they use the organic energy stored in their biomass. At the ecosystem level, surface water bodies store heat / cold and release it over long periods of time to the environment. The characteristics of any energy carrier inhibit storage to a certain extent. It is often argued that electricity generated on the basis of renewable sources cannot be stored – a drawback which may hinder further penetration of green electricity on the grid. In order to develop a fully renewable energy system for the island of Schouwen-Duiveland, we proposed to employ pumped water storage in the 16 ha harbor of Bommende that was built for the construction of the nearby Brouwersdam. Pumped water storage is a well-proven technology that allows storing elec­ tricity and thus buffering periodic fluctuations in energy supply and demand. In this design, surplus electricity can be used to pump water from the sea level to a reservoir 7.5 m above sea level. Once a day, during peak demand, the potential energy is released over the period of one hour and hydro-electrical turbines generate approximately 10 MW of electricity.

Biorhythm Organisms may also adapt to periodic changes in their physical environment through physiological and behavioral responses, also referred to as biorhythm. This adaptation enables them to survive through less favorable periods; it balances resource demand with supply and allows ecosystems to recuperate.16 The growing season of plants as well as hibernation and migration of animals are among the adaptive strategies that can be

Food Chain – Visualization of a proposed 10ha Energy Park in the South of Stellendam. During the summer, the greenhouses and the solar dike collect heat that is stored in the 116

underground. During the winter, the heat network distributes the heat to the nearby village (courtesy of Lisa Verbon).

found in the biosphere. Can the concept of biorhythm, similar to energy storage, inform spatial interventions that help to match energy supply and demand? There are plans for Goeree-Overflakkee to expand the tourist sector and provide year-around attractions near the village of Stellendam. One design proposal suggests to house recreational facilities in new greenhouses. During the summer, green­ houses are a source of heat that can be stored for the winter, while constituting heat sinks with constant energy demand in winter. As a building type they fit the characteristics of the rural landscape in the south of Stellendam. Three types of greenhouses, each with distinct functions and appearance, form an effective energy system that is well adapted to periodic changes in energy demand and supply. A heat cascade forms the backbone of this energy landscape. Excess heat is stored in the shallow underground, while biogas and small-scale pumped water storage can help matching demand and supply of renewable electricity.

Ways of Transitio­n: From Biosphere to Technosphere Comparing the strategies of the biosphere with those of the technosphere, one notices many similarities. In nature, for example, solar energy is used several times; it is cascaded from autotrophs through highly complex food webs. Energy-conscious industrial parks reuse energy as well, for instance through heat cascades. There is a trend in environmental design toward a “systems view”17 or a “systemic approach.”18 No longer we simply design with nature.19 Instead, we combine scientific know­ ledge with human creativity and design like nature – an approach

Food Chain – Conceptual drawing of a heat cascade for the town of Middelharnis. Heat from the district heat plant is first used in the tourist sector before being reused for room heating of old houses and offices, newer houses, and eventually in agriculture (courtesy of Darius Reznek).

Biorhythm – Proposal for three types of greenhouse clusters near the village of Stellendam. They respond to the need for year-around tourist attractions on Goeree-Overflakkee and at the same time adapt to the periodic changes in energy supply and demand on the island (courtesy of Jeroen Castricum).

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that has been described as “eco-mimetic.”20 Principles and strategies derived from the biosphere, in combination with architectural imagination, can facilitate the design of a sustainable physical environment that is not only well-functioning but also attractive to inhabitants and visitors. In spite of the many similarities between natural and human ecosystems, a number of crucial differences exist. In nature, for example, there is no goal-oriented planning. Energy-conscious design relies on the ability to foresee climate change and resource depletion, and to transform the existing environment accordingly.21 In order to envision a physical environment that can be sustained on the basis of renewable energies, we apply what James Corner22 called “translation” of fundamental ecological knowledge: design principles that have emerged from the study of natural ecosystems should inform, but not determine, the design process. Most of the designs presented in this chapter are far from generic; they are sensible both to locality and time. What might work at one moment and location may not work at other times and places. The site-specific character of energy-conscious design, I am convinced, presents no limitation but rather stimulates the creativity of environmental designers. The rich body of scientific knowledge, combined with the need for site-specific design, gives rise to an almost infinite number of energy-conscious design principles. Over the course of the 2011 Atelier, a selection of scientific concepts has been translated into site-specific designs for sustainable energy landscapes. These designs have been presented to the public; both the project commissioners and the inhabitants expressed their appreciation. It remains important to stress that the body of knowledge about sustainable envi-

Storage – Birds-eye perspective of the Energy Harbor of Bommende near Zonnemaire – a landscape machine that can store renewable electricity generated elsewhere on Schouwen-Duiveland (courtesy of Dirk Harden).

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ronmental design is still inadequate to deal with climate change and resource depletion; many knowledge gaps persist and others emerge. At Wageningen University, we will continue to combine research, education, and commissioned design projects. This combination of knowledge generation, dissemination and testing enables us to further substantiate the discourse on sustainable environmental design. Simultaneously, we are working on a comprehensive overview of the various approaches to the planning and design of sustainable energy landscapes across the world; the book will be published in 2012.23 Acknowledgements This chapter presents results from research conducted in collaboration with Delft University of Technology and the University of Groningen, as well as research carried out within the graduate student program of landscape architecture and planning at Wagen­ ingen University. It presents the results of a graduate studio where we shared scientific knowledge with students in order to envision the sustainable transformation of two islands in the Dutch delta region, Schouwen-Duiveland and Goeree-Overflakkee. This chapter also reflects upon discussions we have with fellow environmental designers24 and experiences we made while working on several commissioned design projects.25 I would like to thank my colleagues and all participants of the 2011 Atelier. Last but not least, I like to thank all contributors and the commissioners of the Atelier from the Ministry of Infrastructure and Environment, as well as the municipalities of Goeree-Overflakkee and Schouwen-Duiveland.

NOTES 1 2 3

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 NAW. Duurzaamheid duurt het langst: Onderzoeksuitdagingen voor een duurzame K energievoorziening. Amsterdam: KNAW, 2007. S tremke, Sven. Designing Sustainable Energy Landscapes: Concepts, Principles and Procedures. PhD thesis, Wageningen University and Research, 2010. S tremke, Sven and Jusuck Koh. “Ecological concepts and strategies with relevance to energy-conscious spatial planning and design” in Environment and Planning B, 37 (3) (2010). pp. 518-532. S tremke, Sven, Andy van den Dobbelsteen, and Jusuck Koh. “Exergy landscapes: Exploration of second-law thinking towards sustainable spatial planning and landscape design” in International Journal of Exergy, 8 (2) (2011). pp. 148-174. S ee also, for example, Johnson, Bart, et al. ”The nature of dialogue and the dialogue of nature: Designers and ecologists in collaboration” in Johnson, Bart, and Kristina Hill (eds.). Ecology and design: Frameworks for learning. Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2002. pp. 305-356. S ee for example Newman, Peter W.G. “An ecological model for city structure and development” in Ekistics 239 (1975). pp. 258-265; Hough, Michael. City form and

7 8 9

10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

18 19 20

21

22 23 24

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natural process: Towards a new urban vernacular. New York: Croom Helm, 1984; Lyle, John T. Regenerative Design for Sustainable Development. New York: John Wiley, 1994; Pulliam, Ronald and Bart Johnson, ”Ecology’s new paradigm: What does it offer designers and planners?” in Johnson, Bart, and Kristina Hill (eds.). Ecology and design: Frameworks for learning. Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2002. pp. 51-84. Pulliam, Ronald. ”Sources, sinks, and population regulation” in American Naturalist, 135 (1988), pp. 652-661. O dum, Eugene P. Ecology: A bridge between science and society. Sunderland, Mass.: Sinauer Associates, 1997. S tremke, Sven, Rudi van Etteger, Renée de Waal, Henk de Haan, Claudia Basta and Maaike Andela (eds.) Beyond fossils: Envisioning desired futures for two sustainable energy islands in the Dutch delta region. Wageningen: Wageningen University / Landscape Architecture chair group, 2011. O dum, Howard T., and Elisabeth C. Odum. Energy Basis for Man and Nature. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976. S ee also Stremke, Sven, Andy van den Dobbelsteen, and Jusuck Koh. “Exergy landscapes …” KNAW. Duurzaamheid duurt het langst … O dum, Eugene P. “Great ideas in ecology for the 1990s” in BioScience, 42 (7) (1992). pp. 542-45. Elton, Charles S. Animal Ecology. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 2001. Pulliam, Ronald and Bart Johnson, ”Ecology’s new paradigm …” Molles, Manuel C. Ecology: Concepts and Applications. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2005. Vroom, Meto J., “Images of an Ideal Landscape and the Consequences for Design and Planning,” in Thompson, George F., and Frederick R. Steiner (eds.). Ecological design and planning. New York: John Wiley, 1997. pp. 293-320. Berger, A. Systemic Design can Change the World. Amsterdam: Sun Publishers, 2009. McHarg, I. L. Design with Nature. New York: Natural History Press, 1969. Nielsen, Søren N. “What has modern ecosystem theory to offer to cleaner production, industrial ecology and society? The views of an ecologist” in Journal of Cleaner Production, 15 (2006). pp. 1639-53. S ee also Roncken, Paul A., Sven Stremke,, and Maurice P. C. P. Paulissen. “Landscape Machine: Productive nature and the future sublime” in Landscape Journal, 6 (1) (2011). pp. 6-19. C orner, James. “Ecology and landscape as agents of creativity” in Thompson, George F., and Frederick R. Steiner (eds.). Ecological design…, pp. 81-108. S tremke, S. and Dobbelsteen, A. V. D. (Eds.). Sustainable Energy Landscapes: Designing, Planning and Development. Boca Raton, Taylor & Francis, 2012. S ee for example Stremke, Sven (2011), “Sustainable Energy Landscapes 2.0: Desig­n Methods,” special session at the 2011 IFLA world congress (International Federation of Landscape Architects) (Zurich, Switzerland: IFLA). S ee for example Broersma, Siebe, Andy van den Dobbelsteen, Bram van der Grinten,and Sven Stremke. Energiepotenties Groningen: Energiepotentiestudie De Groene Compagnie. Delft: TU Delft, 2009.

From Biosphere to Technosphere – Energy-conscious interventions are not limited to functional elements but can also improve the quality of urban environments, as illustrated by this heated bench that twines through the harbor of Middelharnis (courtesy of Taicia Marques).

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Simulate A NEW SYNTHESIS by thomas Schröpfer

As greater numbers of variables come into play with the design of ecological urban environments, computational tools become invaluable in predicting the outcomes and negotiating increasing interdependent complexity. Computational design techniques are changing the role of analytical tools in evaluating the environ­ mental implications of design decisions. The creation of digital tectonics – a systematic use of geometric and spatial ordinances, executed in combination with construction-related details and components – marks a turn away from formalism toward a material practice open to ecological potential. Replacing the strategy of loosely associated techniques, wherein a preconceived form is enhanced by technical components that meet their respective best-practice criteria, synthetic processes of design aim to obviate the inherent redundancies of systems and materials by capitalizing on their interdependency and overlap. Parametric methods allow designers to consider ways in which the effects of one factor can be corroborated with others and thus multiplied, to use dynamic scenario planning in which assessment systems examine design effects via quantitative and qualitative factors. These synthetic design processes have been employed toward a conception of ecological architectural and urban expression.

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Parameterize: Revolution of Choice New urban typologies are elaborated by describing, encoding, and quantifying the options and constraints at play in a building typology. In his essay titled “Simulating Interdependent Complexity: Beyond Prescriptive Zoning,” John Hong terms the use of potential permutations from precisely defined data as “design-on-a-slider,” in which the parametric operations produce a field of options that meet ecological requirements and can adjust to the circumstances and conditions of particular locations. An example given by Hong is a parametric solution for geometries that simultaneously provide the most beneficial solar orientation, the most productive water-runoff profiles, and the most efficient programmatic and typological organizations. The process of parameterization identifies persistent rules that generate optimal variations within a given set of constraints. Parametric design creates a flux of recombinant solutions that allow designers to evaluate decisions within a broad range of precisely overlapped criteria. Design decisions are conceived of as a range of potential permutations. The design space is the range of all possible scenarios that can be generated within the system. Evolutionary algorithms generate and manipulate the relational codes that serve as genotypes, or blueprints, of entire populations of structures. The genotypes serve as input data for generating parametric structural models, the phenotypes, which in turn are successively analyzed and evaluated. The designer drives this process through encoding his or her preferences by establishing the criteria that organize the part-to-whole relationship of the design components. Form-generation can then lead to the creation of parametric 3D models that explore

multiple requirements. In the design of the Phare Tower, a 68-story skyscraper in La Défense, Paris by Morphosis Architects, software developed by Satoru Sugihara was used to iteratively develop, test, and refine the structure to address optimization for solar performance, panel-dimension optimization, and panel-angle analysis.1 Thinking in relations rather than numbers, parametric models allow them to remain stable with changing numbers. Thousands of coordinates are reduced to parameters, as a form of “parametric standardization,” where individuation is expressed in variables.2 Sustainability in practice requires that design takes into consideration complex interrelating issues that cannot be manipulated with sequential processes, as currently practiced. Instead of a linear cause-effect relationship, digital feedback loops of synthesis, analysis, and evaluation establish a “process of becoming” – as termed by Bollinger + Grohmann – in which structural solutions evolve and adapt to specific requirements.3 The role of computation tools in the design of the C2 Academic Facility for New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology by SHoP Architects allows structural systems, environmental technologies, and visual permeability to be interwoven. Design research for the project focused on replicating, analyzing, and scrutinizing the predicted environmental performance of the C2 Building. Site and climate analysis, daylighting analysis, and thermal analysis provided the means by which iterative analysis laid the foundations for a highly intelligent “parametric DNA” from which the building could be designed.4

SHoP Architects, Fashion Institute of Technology, New York City, New York, USA, 2005, perspective, multilayered glass and metal facade.

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Simulate: Dynamic Scenario Planning Computational tools simulate the future environmental implications of decisions, creating a laboratory for testing new ideas. Simulations allow designers to enter real-time climate data and study the implications on architectural design over time. Complex simulations measure the effects of ecological factors such as transportation, carbon emissions, water use, stormwater systems, and renewable energy potential on local microclimate and urban ecologies. While parameterization allows for precise top-down control of form, simulation involves bottom-up mechanisms that allow to see how a particular system would behave that otherwise would be very difficult to predict. Iteration will often reveal differing results, which may not be obvious from the description of the system. The open-ended quality of simulations using bottomup mechanisms to predict the effects of ecological design leads to novel and unexpected possibilities of form. Parameterization provides “totalizing systems of organization versatile enough to engage variable relationships, diverse parameters, and complex proportions;” but of course, when it comes to architectural design, “absolute measure can never be avoided when dealing with architecture due to material constraints, building codes, and anthropomorphic imperatives.” 5 Simulation allows designers to test options in a virtual environment to confirm and understand the implications of decisions enacted through the parameterization process. Used for feedback on building structures, simulation tools show how forces and loads move through virtual structures. The

parametric model is modified in response to the outcome and the simulation is run again, until an optimal combination of structure and material is found. Mutsuro Sasaki, the Japanese structural engineer, calls this process the “morphogenesis of flux structure.”6 In collaboration with architects, Sasaki uses structural simulation to optimize a given form in what he calls a “Sensitivity Analysis.”7 Based on the optimization of shape analysis, a computer algorithm modifies the original shape for the generation of free-curved shells. Local adjustments of trial-and-­ error modifications to parts with structural problems are applied up to an evolutionary step when there is no more visible change in the strain energy. Sasaki used this method in his cooperation on the design of Toyo Ito’s Crematorium in Kakamigahara, a one-story building composed of reinforced-concrete bearing walls and a thin continuous free-curved surface shell as roof structure. Triangulated shell elements following a 1m grid composed the model for the shape analysis. Constraining conditions included columns as roller supports and walls as well as other columns as pin supports. The sequence of the roof’s vertical deformation illustrates the shape-evolution process in which the level of deformation is successively reduced, eventually producing an extremely light and rational roof. The arrangement of steel reinforcement was defined according to the results of the analysis and the structural safety of the final shape obtained was examined, again, through simulation software. While simulation can serve as a corrective tool in the refinement of the performance of a structural form, it can also serve as a method for understanding other kinds of data. Scenario planning extends beyond structural concerns; according to Cynthia Ottchen, creative uses of “soft data” – qualitative aspects of aesthetics and sociocultural, political, and historical dimensions – contribute to the richness of computational design.8 Designers use simulation to understand qualitative performance

Toyo Ito & Associates, Crematorium in Kakamigahara, Japan, 2006, section (top) and elevation (bottom). 122

Toyo Ito & Associates, Crematorium in Kakamigahara, exterior view (top), interior views (middle left, bottom left), roof (middle right). .

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within a variety of contexts. At the individual, bodily, scale, the Stuttgart-based firm Transsolar studies the interdependence of comfort issues and the integration of building systems within larger urban and environmental contexts. Intelligent climate engineering of interiors is based on a system of daylighting, natural ventilation, air quality and temperature, acoustics, and the well-being of people. The firm uses methods of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), thermal simulations with TRNSYS, and daylight simulations with Radiance to measure and codify these qualitative components of human comfort. At a collective, socio-spatial level, the System for Urban Space Information and Evaluation described by Limin Hee in her essay titled “Evaluation of Sustainable High-Density Environments” represents and codifies information on the transformative processes that shape urban spaces, in order to create an understanding of qualitative as well as quantitative ecological imperatives. This supports a shift from the “dictation” of urban spaces toward transformative processes based on how urban spaces are experienced. In his essay on relational scales in the framework of New Critical Territorialism in the “Mobilize” section of this book, Eduardo Rico traces the relationships between socio-ecological processes and the spatial configuration of the city. Rico uses 3D design tools to create a systemic approach toward urban “territories” that understands flexibility, nature, and ecology in terms of contemporary sustainable development.

easier to make. Such assessment tools invaluably impact design decisions from the building to the urban scale; one key area being how the temporal and spatial dimensions of solar access in the urban environment affect thermal and daylighting performance. Toward this end, such tools have been developed through research at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design to produce fully automated daylighting analysis workflows using Radiance / Daysim within the Rhinoceros / Grasshopper CAD modeling environment. Using the Grasshopper plug-in for Rhinocero­s, key design parameters such as window size and material descriptions can be changed incrementally and the simulation results can be combined into an animated building performance simulation, i.e. a dynamic visualization of the effect of these design parameters on the daylight availability within the scene. Increased sophistication of these digital tools to assess daylight and energy in buildings creates a potential to integrate performance and interior user comfort into contemporary building facades with their aesthetic ambitions. For example, a recent student thesis project by Azadeh Omidfar at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design established a process for applying daylighting and energy analysis software to optimize the performance of a sun-shading screen based on sculptor Erwin Hauer’s architectural screen designs.9 10 modules, selected out of 42 variations, were parametrically modeled and explored using the performance criteria of view, control of radiation, and interior illuminance levels. Balancing useful daylight with harmful heat gain was critical to the design, as the energy demand of a building would be greatly influenced by solar radiation levels through apertures. Modules with higher degrees of rotation – and thus greater depth – allowed for deeper light penetration by redirecting daylight, and blocking undesirable summer radiation. However, these modules obstructed views

Synthetic Processes Computation processes that incorporate performance data make it possible to derive design methods and solutions from analysis-driven generation and evolution. Computation methods can be implemented as pre-design information strategies, which calculate performance metrics during the early stages of the design process, when critical changes to siting or footprint are Aperture Diameter 13 cm

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Azadeh Omidfar, Harvard University Graduate School of Design, Master of Design Studies Thesis, 2011, facade module studies.

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Azadeh Omidfar, Harvard University Graduate School of Design, Master of Design Studies Thesis, view from interior, rendering (top), prototype (left), and fabrication detail (bottom).

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0 250 kwh/m2

Thomas Schröpfer in collaboration with Christoph Reinhart, Associate Professor of Architectural Technology at the Harvard GSD, New Jurong Christian Church, 2010-12

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when standing close to the wall, thus necessitating their placement above human eye level (6 ft above the finished floor) to minimize glare and maximize light-penetration into the space. Modules with low angles of rotation performed similarly to a thin screen and were ideal for maximizing views while maintaining a level of daylight control. Homogenously sized apertures allowed for the eye to focus beyond the screen plane for a uniform view out. Energy simulation revealed that, even at 100 % glazing, the cooling energy consumption is lower than that of a design that fulfills the ASHRAE engineering benchmark of a 30 % window-to-wall ratio for “maximizing energy use.” This surprising result was due to both the screen’s ability to block the undesirable radiation during summer months and the reduction of electric lighting needed throughout the year.

1000

Cumulative annual solar insolation Without (left) and with (right) shading foliage

Omidfar’s research exposes the shortfalls of benchmarks, as they often act as crude guidelines that only account for quantity rather than quality to be fulfilled. By establishing performative criteria that define components of desired qualitative results – understanding sunlight as composed of heat and daylighting rather than as an allotted quantity – and optimizing these around a desired effect (view), the research shows how digital computation can go beyond benchmarks by defining the right constraints. Such research on how to fundamentally integrate building performance simulation with the architectural design process is being implemented in the design of the New Jurong Church in Singapore by Schröpfer + Hee. The climatically responsive facade

South-Orientation Screen Test Results

glazing only Percent Time with View

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bottom-hinged 30 degrees

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Percent Time with View

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DA500lx DA300lx DA150lx

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5cm punch screen only Percent Time with View

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Schröpfer + Hee, New Jurong Church, annual insolation without (top left) and with plants (top right), roofgarden with skylights, rendering (middle), facade variations based on interior lighting requirements and programmatic needs (bottom).

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SANAA, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne Rolex Learning Center, Switzerland, 2010, aerial view (opposite page).

mediates sunlight and views for the programmatic needs of each interior space that it shades. Consisting of aggregated units, the size and shape of each opening are strategically calibrated through quantitative analysis to achieve desired illuminance levels for specific building programs contained within the structure. A rich visual and spatial experience within the building, the facade creates a novel form that situates the project in its surrounding environment. Multiple variations on this strategy are investigated to explore opportunities and constraints through analysis of cost, manufacturing, installation, and maintenance. Through an iterative digital design and analysis process, opening sizes and shapes of multiple screen designs are parametrically manipulated to optimize daylight performance and heat gain of interior spaces. All iterations are analyzed quantitatively, using Radiance and Daysim software for lighting analysis, and qualitatively through graphical renderings and mock-ups to assess how each design maintains visual connection to the outside environment. In this project the screens are used in conjunction with vegetation developed into a composite shading device. The screen apertures are carefully orchestrated with the vegetation, allowing for different densities of light-penetration depending on programmatic needs, with the level of shading based on vegetation

density dictating the porosity of the screen to be utilized. This research explores the effects of a unified screen on the interior spaces, a screen whose aperture sizes and depths vary strategically as a response to the surrounding environment. Multiple layered screens control the quality and quantity of daylight. The final screen design controls the undesired radiation, which would directly affect the energy consumption in the building, providing both appropriate light levels and view. SANAA’s Rolex Learning Center for the EPFL at Lausanne exemplifies the synthesis of simulation and parametric techniques for structural and environmental performance. To accomplish intended visual relations within the column-free spans, SANAA collaborated with structural engineer SAPS to find the optimal shapes of the 3-dimensional curved concrete shells. After defining final shapes with the least bending stresses via computer simulations, SANAA worked closely with the total service contractor, Losinger Construction, on the final calculations and physical implementation of the large and gentle slopes. The complex facade system required precise construction, since it was expected to absorb both the concrete shell deflection movement and the construction tolerances. The required level of precision resulted in the production of laser-cut 2.5 m x 2.5 m wooden formwork, which was positioned using GPS technolog­y

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on site. For ventilation and heating, the one-room volume was also studied via computer simulation of airflow, lighting, and thermal measurements to determine the periods when natural ventilation was possible and when floor heating would be necessary. The study of natural ventilation and heat changes required 13 consecutive simulation models to determine the distribution of openings in the facades. As a result of these studies, double-glazed windows, 20 cm of insulation in the roof and up to 35 cm in the ground, exterior blinds, natural lighting and ventilation, and thermal pumps that use lake water all result in an annual energy consumption of 38.5 kWh / m2 (139 MJ / m2). Computational techniques allowed the architects to precisely define design criteria through a negotiation process between intended effect and optimized execution. On the scale of the city, computational methods enable specific forms of spatially informed urbanism; in Rico’s relational urbanism, as discussed in his essay, the overall distribution of landscape and building typologies can be defined through the control of variables and parameters: the location of nodes, relative weights, physical limitations in height, etc. The model then produces readings of results linking the urban fabric to the variables, generating mechanisms of feedback and compensation within a time-based simulation. The quantitative relationships between activities are evaluated in tandem with the spatial re-

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sults. Moving away from a finalized render or fixed spatial formation as the main outcome of planning and design, spatial design is considered as part of an evolving process that is carefully managed over time. Associative design tools shape collective form, manipulating the overall structures via defined variables, in order to generate degrees of freedom and create a flexibility of outcomes.

Beyond Benchmarks Building in an urban environment requires precise interdependency and overlap between myriad factors of sustainable design. Rarely do economic, environmental, aesthetic, and programmatic factors coincide at one optimum solution; the selection and prioritization of parameter variables and trade-offs require the critical evaluation of intelligent designers. Information modeling in combination with the parametric gives designers a way to go beyond engineering performance benchmarks, to systematically examine parameters without being slaves to numerical values. Free from being forced into either the “formal indulgence of signature architecture or a hyper-rational mode of performative justifications,” architects are able to consider more types of information and imagine new ways of using them.10 As neither “romantic genius nor technological guru,” the architect is a multidisciplinary strategist, still ultimately responsible for de-

sign intent and deciding what factors and methods to use. A comprehensive conceptualization of information modeling can lead to the discovery of new qualities and relationships, rather than merely generating taxonomies or collecting an envelope of prescribed constraints. A new conception of computational desig­n allows minimum form to take maximum effect across a broad range of disciplines, by creating an architecture that positively impacts its urban environment through values encoded by the designer.11

Notes http://morphopedia.com/projects/phare-tower, quoted 4 July 2010. Ibid. In Oxman, Rivka and Robert (eds.). The New Structuralism: Design, Engineering and Architectural Technologies, Architectural Design, v.80, n.4, (2010). 4 Garber, Richard (ed.). Closing the Gap: Information Models in Contemporary Design Practice, Architectural Design … (2009). p. 51. 5 Meredith, Michael et al. (eds.). From Control to Design: Parametric / Algorithmic Architectur­e. Barcelona: Actar, 2008. 6 Ibid. 7 Ibid. p. 72. 8 Garber, Richard (ed.). Closing the Gap … 9 Omidfar, Azadeh. A Methodolgy for Designing Contemporary High-performance Shading Screens. 10 Garber, Richard (ed.). Closing the Gap … p. 24. 11 Ibid. p. 25. 1 2 3

Schröpfer + Hee, New Jurong Church, performative facade study, effect of opening variations according to programmatic daylighting needs, rendering. 129

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simulate Modeling the Future of Sustainable Cities by Nico Kienzl, Benjamin Shepherd, Shanta Tucker (Atelier Ten)

Why Simulate? Rapid urbanization is causing migration from rural communities into cities globally. As a result, urbanization increases the pressures on natural resources and transportation, not to mention physical space. Yet, residents of today’s increasingly global metropolises can live with a smaller environmental footprint than rural or suburban dwellers with the same standard of living, if they are supported by infrastructure and planning principles that properly incorporate environmental concerns. Increasing our understanding of the potential in sustainable urban development drives the need for better information to plan cities. Incorporating design strategies, technologies, and policies to support such development requires decisions on many levels that have often significant long-term environmental, economic, and social implications. Through the use of new computational tools we are now able to simulate the future environmental implication of such decisions. The power of simulation lies in the fact that these models are by their very nature dynamic and multi-variable. They factor in time-dependent variables (such as climate data or utility pricing structures that adjust based on demand) and can link these variables in new and innovative ways. Unlike in traditional Environmental Impact Studies (EIS) that are part of planning applications to determine the potential worst-case impact of a new planning effort, this type of simulation is often used for dynamic scenario planning to minimize environmental impact.

Solar study for future urban development to determine optimal city grid orientation. 131

A good example is a district stormwater system that collects rainwater and uses it for heat rejection in a district cooling plant. The appropriate simulation combines information on rainfall, the surface characteristics of the district, the available storage capacity based on previous rain events, the building cooling loads, and the efficiency of the cooling system to predict how much stormwater can be utilized. This information can be used to analyze various tank sizes and capture scenarios to optimize water savings. It can also be used to determine the extent of green roofs or paving materials to optimize the balance between rainwater capture and infiltration. Such a simulation is a combination of detailed energy and stormwater models using hourly calculation intervals for a typical year, executing millions of calculations to arrive at an optimal solution. By optimizing the tank size instead of planning in the traditional way for a single worst-case event, cost, space, and other resource requirements can be reduced and make the implementation of such an innovative strategy much more likely and environmentally beneficial. A key aspect of successful simulations to inform sustainable cities is to assure that the analysis looks at the full problem space and not only at the bounda­ ries of an individual project or discipline. Energy and stormwater strategies cannot be sufficiently answered on an individual building or even district level without taking into account the larger urban or even regional context. For example, the use of stormwater for cooling might prove to be the wrong strategy, if the project is in a location where water is scarce and stormwater is better used for other functions. If the analysis is comprehensive and rigorous, then truly optimized solutions emerge. This requires an integrated team effort by many stakeholders and experts, an effort whose quality and scope is dependend on the scale of the project and the type of simulation conducted.

Simulation in Planning Simulation in design and urban planning has just started to scratch the surface of what can be done and is facing limitations due to the lack of good data and tools for many issues. A lot of relevant information is still kept in knowledge “silos” of engineering and planning disciplines that are stuck in traditional ways of looking at urban environmental problems. Also, the process in which new solutions can be permitted, policies are defined, or new tools are developed is lagging behind some of the recent advances in understanding and evaluating the sustainable city of tomorrow. However, a number of projects are exploring new ideas and are starting to transform the industry. They show a way in which simulations allow us to move toward informed sustainable design decisions and beyond what have been in the past often short-term economic, political, or technical solutions based on poorly understood information. Planners and policy-makers will come to expect greater considerations and detail in permitting and regulating projects. It is quite likely that simulation will be mandated to ascertain energy performance on ever larger scales, to reduce the life-cycle impact of materials, and to evaluate upstream or downstream resource implications on resulting infrastructure for both public and private undertakings. Increasing our understanding and ability to develop dynamic, data-driven planning scenarios that simulate local and global environmental problems will be essential in designing and developing the sustainable cities of the future. Simulation is currently being used in many aspects of urban and regional planning. Examples include physical planning of newly built environments to optimize building massing and orientatio­n to reduce energy consumption, utility and energy

Comprehensive site water assessment. The flow diagram illustrates water uses and available sources to match the appropriate level of quality needed for the different site functions. 132

infrastructur­e planning, evaluation of renewable energy strategies, urban heat island and microclimate studies, stormwater design and water conservation, transportation and traffic planning, air pollution and contamination studies, pedestrian comfort and light pollution, as well as waste management and material use. Critical for the proper evaluation of such systems is the issue of scale, as it affects physical size, development time horizon, issue of ownership, and available technology.

The District Scale Simulation in the built environment had its beginning with structural and energy evaluations of individual buildings. Modeling, as the process of creating and executing such simulations is often referred to, is still most commonly used for single-building performance analysis, but it can also be applied to multiple buildings that comprise a district or campus. Modeling a district is a matter of knowing how to strategically combine multiple buildings into one model and focus on issues relevant to larger scale. No longer are we looking at mullion details but rather how waste energy or waste water from one building can be utilized by its neighbors. On a district level, energy simulation can be used to evaluate synergies between different building uses, massing and envelope strategies, and the benefit of district versus individual building energy systems. Renewable energy strategies can be evaluated often better on such a larger scale, especially in an urban environment, as not all sites have the same potential for renewable energy installations, due to physical constraints such as available roof area or overshadowing. Similar to how water balances can be created for single buildings, they can be expanded to entire districts. For example, with the

right mix of building types, one building’s greywater can be used for another building’s irrigation or toilet flushing. Many districts or campuses in regions where water is a limited resource are already putting into place district greywater or stormwater reuse systems. On this scale, water use simulations can help to determine surface characteristics for hard surfaces and landscapes, storage tank sizes and locations, as well as the potential for grey and blackwater systems to reduce potable water use for purposes such as irrigation, heat rejection, and sanitary water conservation.

The City Scale At an even larger scale, our urban communities can also be the leverage point for examining, simulating, and defining policies and actions for both the public and private sectors. Increasingly, cities are serving as the focal point for modeling carbon reductions and positive environmental change, often in the absence of leadership on a larger, national scale. Especially in Asia, where large-scale urban developments create new cities, simulations of energy, water, waste, and transportation systems provide critical guidance on design decisions and planning policy. But even in existing urban contexts, citywide plans are starting to address sustainability on this large scale. For example, the Chicago Climate Action Plan or New York City’s PlaNYC provide comprehensive guidelines for improving the environmental performance of the entire city. At such a large scale, simulation often aggregates large number of models to set specific resource-use targets. At the Bozbuk Resort, a 5 sqkm development located in southwestern Turkey, Atelier Ten simulated the transport and utility infrastructure associated with creating a new community of an estimated

Harvard Allston. Estimating the ability of the campus to reduce carbon emissions with different combinations of efficiency measures.

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15,000 residents. We determined energy efficiency targets for all residential and commercial buildings on site as well as the percentage of on-site renewable energy generation technologies, and specific carbon-emissions targets down to the neighborhood scale. Additional environmental targets were developed for potable water use reductions and site reforestation for open space.

The System Scale Another issue that is relevant in this context is the scale of the systems being considered. Water, energy, or transportation systems are often not limited to the physical extends of a district or city, but extend into a regional or even bigger scale. Designers and planners often approach the sustainable city as a design challenge that is understood within the physical extents of the development. However, the scale of a system, in terms of its technical level, has a critical impact on its environmental performance and can provide important insights into the best use of resources. For example, the potential for renewable energy should be evaluated at the scale of the electrical grid in order to allocate utility incentives in the most advantageous way. Similarly, stormwater strategies should always be evaluated within the watershed context so as to maintain a sustainable water balance. For example, in Las Vegas, green roofs or site infiltration is discouraged and any stormwater is directed to Lake Meade to maintain water levels in the lake and the Colorado River. While this scale is the most difficult to simulate, it is at the same time critical to do this in order to address environmental issues comprehensively. It is, for example, the only way to optimize smart grid solutions that will allow significant energy reductions

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and renewable energy contributions in the electrical grid. Transportation systems also need to be evaluated at this scale. At the new Transbay Terminal in San Francisco, the carbon emissions of the various modes of public transportation where analyzed to evaluate to what extend landscape features of the park on the roof of the building could reduce such emissions. While the analysis showed that the plant material can only absorb a minor part of the total carbon emissions, the reduction in emissions due to the mode shift from individual to public transportation is significant. Furthermore, the simulated ridership population patterns were a critical input for the water use simulations of the building.

A Caveat Simulations are abstractions and need feedback loops to confirm whether the abstractions were valid and the solutions worked. But validation of models at larger scales is a real challenge because typically, ever only just one solution is built and in urban environments the overall plan is most often not fully executed as plans change over time. Therefore, the evaluation of whether something else would have worked better or how sensitive a specific result was to some critical assumptions is inherently complex. As a result, while simulations can provide critical input, they should not be relied on too much. Simulation is dynamic scenario planning, not accurate prediction of future performance. To quote General Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Plans are worthless, but planning is everything”; similarly simulation is most useful if employed for a rigorous discussion of ideas, exploration of alternatives, and to challenge assumptions. Then decisions can be based on the best information available at the time, knowing it is imperfect.

Client Headquarters in India. Annual water balance analysis to determine the optimal equilibrium between water reduction and reuse strategies.

Bozbuk Masterplan. Carbon-neutral analysis looking at the breakdown of carbon emissions according to site, development, and neighborhood scales. The analysis shows that contemporary best-practice efficiency measures provide some reductions, but a significant offset is needed to reach carbon neutrality.

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District Scale Case Study: Harvard Allston The Harvard University Allston Campus masterplan has incorporated a multitude of district-scale simulations to provide guidance on the development and the creation of a campus Sustainable Design Guideline. Though moving slower than originally anticipated, this 20-year expansion of the University to a new campus across the Charles River constitutes the largest planning effort in Harvard’s 375-year history. It has presented a unique opportunity for environmental simulation and eventual achievement at the district scale. Atelier Ten, as part of the Cooper Robertson and Partners team, helped establish a Sustainable Design Guideline for the proposed new campus. This Guideline embodies Harvard’s strongest and most comprehensive commitment to campus sustainability to date. These guidelines, informed by previous efforts including a Green Campus Initiative and a university-wide Green Building Guideline, along with a site unencumbered by existing constraints, establish key performance requirements for a sustainable approach to the Harvard Allston development and were directly informed by simulation exercises. Modeling for the masterplan included identifying energy performance targets based on the overall program and synergies between buildings of different uses. Analysis of the renewable energy potential for on and off-site comparison further informed targets and input on where to direct financing to achieve the greatest output, keeping in mind the public relations benefit of visible, on-site measures. Additional simulation of the fullbuildout scenario examined the implications of implementing

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District energy analysis to predict site carbon reduction, based on a combined approach of building efficiency measures and high-performance central plant design.

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mandator­y energy efficiency standards for new buildings over and above existing building code standards. It also included an estimate of the total carbon emissions reduction for campus buildings and infrastructure, the renewable energy generation potential, and the role of carbon offsets. This dynamic scenario planning allowed for reductions in the size of the proposed central utility plant and of the associated capital infrastructure outlays, which had immediate effects on capital cost and longterm operational savings. The Guidelines consist of over 25 goals across the five key environmental categories of water, energy, transport, landscape ecology, and human health / productivity. Future designers, consultants, and developers on the Allston campus will be held accountabl­e for meeting these goals as additional environmental standards within the design process. The University will track and update the Guidelines to maintain accountability and desired impact. In committing to continuous improvement, the Allston development will serve as a teaching tool and living laboratory for the development of a more sustainable campus. The simulation process allowed the University to fully understand and publically commit to a number of environmental actions, notably including a 30 % reduction in total carbon emissions for the development. Implementing this comprehensive Sustainable Design Guideline, with benefits defined and measured with simulation, has allowed the project to anticipate future environmental regulations and achieve permitting approvals from state regulators for the full-buildout scenario, saving time and costly filings.

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City Scale Case Study: PlaNYC PlaNYC, New York City’s vision for the future of the city in 2030, identifies goals not only for government agencies, but for private sector as well. Originally released in 2007, the initiative is unique in identifying the regional environmental priorities and the relevant aspects for focusing a green agenda through a mix of government, private, and local partnership initiatives. In four years, additional city parkland has been added, efficient and affordable housing created, and alternative transportation options have reduced greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 13 % relative to 2005 levels. While the challenges are numerous – increasing population, aging infrastructure, the impacts of global climate change and ever greater economic uncertainty – the effort seeks to shape a city of the relatively near future with local green actions. The average New Yorker is already quite efficient, being responsible for approximately one-third the GHG emissions as compared to the average American. This is due to less automobile reliance and inhabiting smaller spaces, often in multi-family buildings – although in terms of total emissions, New York City’s are equivalent to roughly those of the country of Switzerland. For these reasons, from an emissions perspective, and given New York’s existing and well-served transportation infrastructure, PlaNYC is less about transportation and more focused on improving the efficiency of existing buildings in building renovations, lighting retrofits, and closing previous loopholes that allowed existing buildings to avoid major energy efficiency upgrades. It is estimated that buildings in New York City account for 75 % of local GHG emissions; at the same time, up to 85 % of the buildings that will exist in 2030 are already built and in operation today.

PlaNYC also advocates the benefits of modernizing infrastructure, specifically focused on reducing peak electricity demands, which are the most expensive and generate the majority of emissions due to more polluting “peaking” plants. Increasingly more institutional (academic and healthcare) campuses in New York City are examining the potential benefits associated with cogeneration technologies, which produce electricity and capture useful waste-heat on-site. Atelier Ten has been modeling and working with district energy systems that have the potential to cut operational energy costs in half and reduce the associated GHG emissions by at least 60 %. On a city scale, PlaNYC has simulated the positive impacts of green or vegetated roofs on stormwater runoff and the urban heat island effect; and in partnership with a local University, mapped the most advantageous rooftops for renewable photovoltaic installations. In addition to energy efficiency and renewables, PlaNYC also addresses issues of transportation, waste, water, and climate adaptation. Focusing on climate adaptation, or coping with likely impacts of climate change, is quite innovative for planning at this scale. Specifically, it recognizes that changes in local climate are already occurring and will continue to occur unless there is a major course correction on GHG emissions. The specific concerns include an increase in temperatures as well as increased flooding and storm surges, all of which will place new strains on existing infrastructure. PlaNYC’s response is to further manage urban heat island impacts as well as stormwater issues, and to preserve habitat that is at risk, in addition to reducing GHG emissions by 30 % by 2030 relative to 2005 levels. Increasingly, municipalities will be at the front in approaching these issues of climate change, as they are intimately related to both the greatest risk and the best opportunity for change.

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simulate Simulating Interdependent Complexity: Beyond Prescriptive Zoning by John Hong

When thinking broadly about the intention of zoning, especially in regard to urban form, one can conjecture that its purpose is to maintain a level of relational environmental quality and equality within the context of urban density. Its endgame is about democratic access to light, air, public space, and those aspects that are loosely defined as “quality of life.” For the most part, however, our urban fabric is still governed by prescriptive means that predetermine building mass in ways that are not readily apparent, or worse yet detrimental to neighboring parcels and open spaces, while not even taking into account energy consumption. In the USA, the most prevalent way of adjudicating urban form and program is Euclidean zoning (ironically named not after the ancient Greek mathematician, but for the town of Euclid, Ohio where the model ordinance was adopted1). Because this method is based on setting hard and fast rules, it is simple to implement – hence its ubiquity today. Euclidean zoning methods have recently been criticized for their arbitrariness and lack of transparency. The question arises: if the building out-performs in terms of environmental factors, why is its figure limited to “building block” typologies administered by a set of inflexible codes? If zoning is about negotiating egalitarian relationships, is it not contradictory that we have defaulted to mainly prescriptive means to attain something that is at its core relational?

Kisho Kurokawa, Nagakin Capsule Tower, Shimbashi, Tokyo, Japan, 1972. 141

Running in parallel with conceptual shifts brought on by digital culture, ways of conceiving urban form based on optimization are now being considered on many fronts. Performance Zoning is an emerging concept that brings forth ideas of correlation rather than fixed rules.2 Influenced by performance-based building codes that are gaining momentum in the realm of environmental stewardship, Performance Zoning criteria are goal-oriented rather than specific. Although praised for its potential to add a high level of accountability to environmental principles, it has not gained much momentum because of its reliance on supervising authorities that must arbitrate proposals through a step-by-step review to determine whether complex criteria have been met. Moreover, the definitions of many performance standards, although clearer at the architectural scale, still remain undefined at the level of urban design. Borrowing from the “new humanist” attitudes of the 1970s with a mixture of current-­ day science, notions of integrated urban zoning still lack definition both in criteria and process. It is here where computation can play a major role. Could we be at an important crossroads, a place in history where complex interdependencies can now be transparently and accurately designed for and represented? This is the core of this contribution – not to prove that any one set of rules should be adopted for their urban performance – but to open up the process of how these factors can be analyzed and resolved simultaneously through a set of parametric urban design tools. This is not to say that the inputs for these tools are wholly unbiased: all data must be validated in any situation. However, how these criteria are interrelated becomes a transparent and decisive methodology, driven by an intentional negotiation of different (and sometimes contradictory) parameters. In fact, achieving democratic results in urban form is a constant confrontation between many factors. Chantal Mouffe elucidates this paradoxical condition:

if the agonistic mode of differing forces becomes resolved and fixed, the democratic condition comes to an end.3 In the same way, this contribution hopes to make an important step away from prescriptive urban form to one that foregrounds negotiation and evolution.

Simultaneity: Methodological Considerations A brief word about the tools used to implement the research: for pedagogical accessibility, Rhinoceros and its Grasshopper plug-in was primarily used in conjunction with the programming language Python. As this is the beginning of a new thinking process where complex criteria can be simultaneously considered, the goal was to create an open-ended framework for students to expand the research in the future. Conceived of as a virtual “container,” individual modules, each controlling a specific design criterion, can parametrically integrate with a myriad of other modules, whose functions are limited only by the imagination (and current computation power). An important future goal is to include more cross-disciplinary input from outside the design disciplines, including concepts from the social sciences. Therefore, software that could have been more effective in terms of processing power but required specialized know-how was rejected early on for a platform more conducive to collaborative modes of working. Although there are many factors that can be put into this parametric structure, we focused on classic drivers of prescriptive zoning, such as solar exposure, daylighting, open space, density, and program, as the exact chemistry between these interrelated factors can be quite complex. We then looked at the way

The grid is one of the most ubiquitous armatures of contemporary urbanization. Acknowledging it as a starting point allows to compare one-to-one the differences between performance-based urbanism over prescriptive solutions.

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in which these parameters can be simultaneously manipulated, so that the most effective solution to be found is a result of the complex interdependency between all of them. One of the core questions was the definition of “optimization.” Optimized for whom? As invisible as the hand of the designer may seem in current manifestations of digital culture, the actual methods of data control, even if opposed to the direct manipulation of form, is still a mode of inflection that can infer vastly different social ideologies in the final outcome. What is more, discussion of optimization in the design world treads dangerously too close to the idea of the “lowest common denominator.” We would rather use the term “minimal solution,” as we envision our tool empowering designers to seek conceptually driven solutions where the resulting urban form effectively resolves multiple related issues rather than allowing optimization in and of itself be a surrogate driver for design. As the platform transparently represents the way in which data is arranged, this approach could be interpreted as a “computational” point of view. Although the description seems to follow a step-by-step structure, it is merely the limits of the written word that connotes linearity. Our parametric organization allows one to enter into the manipulation of urban form at any point – there is, in effect, no “correct” beginning or ending place to investigate a design problem. This is a distinguishing paradigm shift from traditional design modes, where decisions follow a linear additive process. Instead of the redundancy of trying to repair the consequences of an earlier choice that works for one logic but not for another, the purpose of our platform is to examine many conditions simultaneously, so that there is a constant feedback from one criterion to the next. Paradoxically enough, it is the power of computation that allows non-linear inductive thinking to prevail over deductive methods.

By distributing local parks throughout the city, the accessibility to open space can be increased while at the same time a performance-based massing can harbor higher densities.

We can therefore say we “started” with an urban grid. Although the grid in and of itself may not be the ideal structure for urban development (that is a whole separate discussion beyond this contribution) it is one of the ubiquitous armatures of contemporary urban organization and will be for years to come. Acknowledging the grid allowed us to compare one-to-one the differences and advantages of performance-based urbanism over existing prescriptive solutions. As the ability to accurately map open spaces in relation to both daylight and building mass is a powerful form driver within the urban grid, one of our most significant components calculates solar exposure. It dynamically represents direct sunlight to spaces on the ground (or on any horizontal plane, including elevated ones) according to the annual and diurnal solar position.4 Building from previous research, this Solar Fan can be used to assure a programmatic relationship between daylight and public open space – for instance, a schoolyard may require sunlight during very specific times of the day and year, while a semi-public space on a building roof might have entirely different criteria. For our exercise we distributed a series of local parks and ensured that they receive sunlight at different times of day throughout the year, with the prerequisite that the precinct would have at least one open space at any given time during the day with direct solar access. The open space of the street also factors prominently into the geometry of building envelopes. Typically called “sky exposure planes,” 5 they are prescriptive geometries that control building setbacks in regard to building height. However, adherence to a fixed diagram neither assures a democratic access to the sky, nor does it take advantage of potential density. In order to address this variable condition we built a dynamic sky exposure generator, Sky Slice that deploys the use of Galápagos from within Grasshopper (an algorhythmic component literally named after Darwinian theories of evolutionary refinement).6 Beyond

For our test-case scenario a 3x3 block region is selected to compare prescriptive versus interdependent analyses.

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providing the guaranteed minimum sky exposure of prescriptive methods, Sky Slice takes into account varying massings at the localized level, resulting in increased density and, at the same time, greater sky exposure for the public space of the street. It is interesting to note that generating potential density in this way can create a Floor Area Ratio (FAR) of 17 where prescriptive methods with the performance criteria currently used in New York result in an FAR of 12. As both above-mentioned tools pertain to the generation of maximum envelopes, we can now discuss the idea of the voxel (short for volumentric pixel) as a way to subdivide this overall mass and imbue it with qualitative data in the form of both inputs and outputs. Designers have the freedom to assign any number of parameters to the voxels, limited only by computation power. For our test case we included such factors as minimum daylight factor, views, circulation, and proximity to open space. Qualitative outputs, or “readings,” of data are produced from these inputs. The voxels thereby become an interconnected mesh, as data output from one voxel can be fed into the input of another, allowing interdependencies to ripple through the entire model. It is interesting to note that the idea of the three-dimensional pixel has consistently been in the background of aggregated urban form throughout the modernist era. Perhaps the clearest examples are the Habitat housing projects by Moshe Safdie or the Metabolist Nakagin Capsule Tower in Japan by Kisho Kurokawa. It is important to make a distinction here, however: where these projects were important precedents in regard to urban aggregation, the voxel we are referencing here is first and foremost considered an informational module before becoming a spatial one.

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Investigating Simultaneity: Daylight­ ing and Lot Lines Daylighting criteria was applied to the voxels by embedding a customized version of the Rhinoceros-based tool DIVA, developed at the Harvard Graduate School of Design under the directio­n of Professor Christoph Reinhart.7 Applying LEED baseline standards, our tool begins to automatically adjust floor-tofloor heights along the entire urban mass to optimize daylighting conditions. Through the willful hand of the designer, one can “clamp” or fix any number of variables, for example maximum / minimum floor heights or certain programmatic height requirements for specific parts of the urban territory. Vice versa, the platform can run the information back into the model to begin to suggest which areas can accommodate what types of program (for example, housing has different lighting and dimensional requirements than retail). As part of the visualization interface, voxels that do not meet the predetermined daylight criteria are noted in red, awaiting input as to whether the urban mass should be further optimized or other criteria should be simultaneously imposed. In our demonstration case, we found solutions for the under-daylit areas by deploying a component that generates lot lines. (Again, this parametric can be imposed on the system at any given time, to subdivide the mass for improved daylighting, to account for economic factors of building size, or for any combination of interrelated motives). It is interesting to observe that a parametric subdivision that negotiates multiple factors allows us to rethink the lot line as a more integrated three-dimensional approach to property – namely a dynamically assimilated version of air rights

Top: Computing for both density and daylight: Instead of capping the city at an arbitrary height (right) areas of urban massing that interfere with the sunlight exposure of open spaces (left) allows for a much higher density. Bottom: In simultaneously computing the sunlight exposure of park open space and street level sky exposure (left), an FAR of 17 is achieved over the FAR of 12 offered by prescriptive means (right). Moreover, the red areas show how parts of the prescriptively generated massing interferes with access to light, where the interdependent method consistently guarantees access to light.

Top: Maximizing sky exposure and density: While prescriptive means (right) create a constant building setback for sky exposure, a responsive sky exposure that negotiates context can create more democratic access to skylight while maximizing the buildable envelope (left).

Bottom: The voxels can be analyzed with a limitless number of criteria. For our test case, we included factors such as maximum daylight factor, views, circulation, property lines, and proximity to open space.

Bottom of page: Although there is a recent history of architects who have studied the idea of the aggregated pixel, this research distinguishes itself from these examples. Instead of a compositional strategy, the aggregated voxel is a way of managing information. Safdie Architects, Habitat, Montreal, Canada, 1967.

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(as seen in New York’s zoning code). Currently air rights merely exist as a zoning by-product, to be traded opportunistically in very specific locations creating rarified results. As the increased density of our cities puts more pressure on overall environmental quality, should we not begin to rethink whether a two-dimensional understanding of property is an outdated mode of urbanism, inherited from when our cities were only several storys in height? Now, with Floor Area Ratios easily reaching 15 or more in our densest metropolitan regions, the three-dimensional voxel has the potential to liberate the idea of property subdivision into three-dimensional boundaries that can increase the quality of our cities while maintaining density.

Typical zoning extrudes lot lines from the ground plane (above). Analyzed voxels can be used to enhance lot subdivisions in a three-dimensional framework (below).

As an example, a new conception of lot lines can guide the way to either subtract from or add to the overall urban mass for optimizing relationships between daylighting, passive energy strategies, proximity to core, building type, and overall relationships to public open space, to name a few. To demonstrate how different design teams might control this process in nuanced ways, we provided several scenarios as if we were wearing the hats of different stakeholders: the developer might maximize density while maintaining baseline environmental conditions defined by LEED standards, while the individual user may have an opposing strategy, prioritizing higher daylighting criteria, access to views, and access to recreational programs – a community development group may prioritize public open space, community programs, and urban circulation. Two important related ideas are gained from this experiment: that interdependent data can be arranged into hierarchies that create very different results; and that the specific values applied to the parametric logic of the voxels allow a high level of transparency to the management of this data. The result is an empowering democratic check and balance to the way we represent, evaluate, and produce urban form. Floor levels are adjusted interdependently in response to daylighting criteria, location of cores, and programmatic considerations.

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Convergent Solutions and the Designer’s Role Even though these test-case parameters are relatively straight­ forward, their precise interrelationship puts forth a myriad of complex results, each with their own social connotations. We have always imprecisely guessed that privileging urban economy and efficiency at the urban scale may have negative repercussions on public space. However, through obtaining direct visual feedback on specific optimizations, can we more fluidly negotiate a more convergent solution that can apply both developer-driven and community-driven paradigms? One could argue that the schematic design stage of envisioning our cities is the most important – it is at this level where ideas either take flight or are squelched. Instead of resorting to a design rhetoric that merely references ambitions without specificity, one could incorporate this parametric platform as part of a public negotiation process that gives immediate and specific spatial feedback to the social repercussions of our design decisions. Finally, geometric and tectonic constraints can be incorporated as part of the computational platform. Unlike the visionary images of Hugh Ferris that showed a kind of singular tectonic for New York’s skyline, a greater diversity of forms can be produced. Particularly since digital fabrication is entering into a closer relationship to full-scale building techniques, tectonic constraints can be built into the urban model. For instance, curvilinear skins that follow specific disciplinary logics can be quickly tested versus panelized surfaces with specific subdivision rules. The future potential is incorporating this information into a larger BIM model, so that costs and feasibility can be fluidly assessed. This would not just be about value engineering

Diffferent constituents can privilege different data sets. Spaces that do not meet certain criteria (top left) can be re-evaluated with other criteria. This information is fed back into the computational system to continuously refine the solution.

Air rights currently are merely a by-product of the zoning ordinance, creating rarified opportunities to larger-scale developers instead of privileging the formation of more democratic and dynamic urban massings (top). Since the voxels all contain informational data, they can be used to locate specific programmatic and spatial conditions (bottom).

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as a final afterthought of the design process, but would place in the hands of the architect and urban designer tools to quickly explore the convergence of environmental performance, scale, iconography, and economy. Our computational framework is akin to a decision-support tool8 that productively engages the increasing interdependent complexity of contemporary urbanism as an integral design matter. Making a decisive split from previous modes of parametric methods that imply an erasure of the designer’s hand, our goal is to provide a platform to radically increase the efficacy of the designer’s role. Where in traditional linear processes, consequences cascade from hierarchical decisions that are made in isolation to other factors, in this new methodology decision and consequence are simultaneous – one in real-time feedback to the other. Therefore, recombinant factors are set in a field condition rather than a singular logic structure. This allows designers and stakeholders to launch exploration from diverse and collaborative starting points instead of from a fixed prescriptive path. The subsequent refinement of this multiplicity into what we are calling a minimal solution rather than an optimized one is central. It is a shift from focusing on the lowest common denominator, which many times drives optimization, to a mode of design that attempts to bring in the most effective set of hierarchies from the overall complexity of interrelated factors. In this way, we hope to re-open democratic processes as part of the ecological discussion of how our cities are envisioned. Our platform will allow multiple stakeholder points of view to be tested and

debated more effectively, as the intentional control of each parametric component will be transparently represented. With the onset of more intense environmental and sociological expectations toward the way our cities should be developed – not only in rapidly developing areas in Asia, but also throughout the Americas and Africa – prescriptive means of shaping urban form are perhaps no longer adequate to deal with this criseslevel contemporary condition. Relational and performancedriven zoning will allow both flexibility and necessary checks and balances to ensure democratic environmental quality. Perhaps a recent statement preceding the New York City’s zoning text conveys the situation most succinctly: “In a certain sense, zoning is never final; it is renewed constantly in response to new ideas – and to new challenges.” 9 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Harvard GSD Project Team: Marshall Prado, Sophia Chang, Jeff Niemasz, Eli Allen, Daekwo­n Park, Marcela Delgado. Special consulting: Christoph Reinhart, Associate Professor, MIT; Panagiotis Michalatos, Lecturer in Architecture, Harvard GSD This research was made possible with a grant from The Real Estate Academic Initiative at Harvard University.

Because of the transparency and control of the data flows, a democratic negotiation can occur when evaluating the outcome of the computational solutions. For instance, the building’s inhabitants might privilege the quality of the individual units (opposite page, middle) where a community development group might privilege public open space and programs (opposite page, top). Mixed use programming can also be fed into the system iteratively, combining use with light, massing, accessability, etc. (left).

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Village of Euclid v. Ambler Realty Co., 272 U.S. 365, 1926. “Flexible Zoning: A Status Report on Performance Zoning Standards” in Zoning News, January 1998. Mouffe, Chantal. The Democratic Paradox. New York: Verso Books, 2009. Bosselmann, Peter, Juan Flores, and Terrence O’Hare. “Sun and Light for Downtown San Francisco” in IURD Monograph No. 34. Report by Environmental Simulation Laboratory, Institute of Urban and Regional Development. Berkeley, CA: College of Environmental Design, 1983; Bosselmann, P., E. Arens, K. Dunker, and R. Wright. “Urban Form and Climate, Case Study, Toronto” in Journal of the American Planning Association, v. 61, n. 2 (Spring 1995). pp. 226-239. Produced in collaboration with the Berkeley Environmental Simulation Laboratory; General Solar Position Calculation, adopted from NOAA website, http://www.srrb. noaa.gov/highlights/sunrise/solareqns.pdf (accessed 22 January 2011). New York City zoning ordinance, from the NYC.gov website, http://home2.nyc.gov/html/dcp/html/zone/glossary.shtml (accessed 2 September 2011). Galapagos Evolutionary Solver, from the Grasshopper website, http://www.grasshopper3d.com/group/galapagos (accessed 12 June 2011). http://www.diva-for-rhino.com/ is Alstan Jakubiec, Kera Lagios, Jeff Niemasz, Christoph Reinhart and Jon Sargent Publications: Sargent, Jon, Jeff Niemasz, and Christoph Reinhart, “Shaderade: Combining Rhinoceros and EnergyPlus for the design of static exterior shading devices,” submitted to Building Simulation conference BS2011, Sydney. Niemasz, Jeff, Jon Sargent, and Christoph Reinhart, “Solar Zoning and Energy in Detached Residential Dwellings,” Proceedings of SimAUD 2011, Boston, April 2011, submitted in section Environment and Planning B. Lagios, Kera, Jeff Niemasz, Christoph Reinhart, “Animated Building Performance Simulation (ABPS) Linking Rhinoceros/ Grasshopper with Radiance/Daysim,” Proceedings of SimBuild 2010, New York, August 2010. S ol, Henk G., et al. Expert systems and artificial intelligence in decision support systems: proceedings of the Second Mini Euroconference, Lunteren, The Netherlands, 17–20 November 1985. Heidelberg: Springer, 1987. New York City zoning ordinance, from the NYC.gov website, http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/html/zone/zonehis.shtml (accessed 2 September 2011).

The generated envelope consisting of voxelized data is merely a framework to envision new possible massings. Instead of traditional zoning that dictates the form of the exterior, exterior and interior parameters can be negotiated interdependently.

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simulate Evaluation of Sustainable High-Density Environments by Limin Hee with Zdravko Trivic

High-density spaces require qualitative re-orientation of the conception of urban public spaces, rather than mere quantitative re-adjustments. With new high-density typologies, it is necessary to consider a difference in the nature of these urban spaces, rather than a difference in degree from the status quo. A central aspect in the relationship of urban space to high-density environments is that space becomes a precious commodity once densities increase. The challenge for dense urban conditions is to create good urban spaces that fit well in such environments and have the potential to become vibrant spaces that are ecologically and socially sustainable. The research discussed in this chapter outlines methods to catalogue, evaluate, and parameterize urban space in sustainable high-density environments, and speculate on how to generate new spaces based loosely on the types that are documented here. The existing literature and research offers no values and criteria specifically tailored for high-density environments. We understand high-density environments in terms of both spatial density and intensity of uses and users. By looking at case studies that fall within at least one of these two contexts, we propose a set of values and parameters that better describe urban spaces in high-density contexts and suggest more appropriate, sustainable, and ecology-driven design actions.

Steven Holl Architects, Linked Hybrid, Beijing, China, 2009. 151

High-Density Environments and Ecology The problem of relating urban space to urban ecology is that the study of ecology often necessitates research on a macroscale, while urban space occurs at what planners and urban designers would deem a much more localized scale. By contrast, we see urban public space as a means that can successfully bridge the gap between the micro-scale of individual buildings and the macro-scale of a city. Therefore, the study focuses on qualitative, not just quantitative imperatives of the ecological, as urban public spaces form part of larger urban and environmental systems that contribute to the overall sustainability capabilitie­s of high-density environments. Such an approach is aligned with contemporary urban ecology research, which tends to be more encompassing and, apart from natural ecosystems, incorporates new technologies, public policies, and social and cultural dynamics, creating the basis for more ecologically flexible, responsive and adaptable design.1 Although ecological design and sustainability paradigms have recently become a focus in architectural and urban design research and practice, the number of projects and practices fully addressing and successfully responding to ecology and sustainability issues has remained small. The emphasis has often been on technical and energy performance of individual architectural objects as well as almost exclusively on quantitative measures. Urban environments are poorly understood in both sustainable and ecological terms. Such a lack of understanding partly emerges from the complexity of the issues, but also because

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ecology as a discipline tends to focus primarily on natural ecosystems, eschewing people and their artificially built environments.2 Contemporary ecological paradigms have moved beyond such an exclusive standpoint, showing tendencies to be more inclusive of social and cultural dynamics as important factors in creating more liveable and sustainable ecosystems.

Concepts and Tools: Evolution, Information and Parameterization Current research in information science suggests that ways of representing information can produce novel ways of interpreting material. While seeking to refine the understanding and categorization of the types of space being studied, this research also explores ways of representing the information in a visual manner that reveals the transformative processes of urban spaces. In its categorization of urban space, the research draws its inspiration from evolution and natural processes3 - not in terms of forms and appearances, but rather in terms of the order and processes of natural systems as means for organizing and enhancing information presentation. Advances in digital tools and processes have radically revolutionized the design, practice, and construction of architecture in the past decade. Generative and parametric techniques have demonstrated their versatility in architecture through their ability to integrate variable aspects such as time, sun exposure, wind patterns, and spatial trajectories into the digital design process. In the past few years, there has been a shift in the usage of such tools and processes to explore their potential at the urban scale. The ability to simulate and evaluate the implications

of design strategies over time is a key attribute for which generative and parametric tools have been instrumental in urban design.

Research Methods The investigation is carried out in four parts: ıı Documentation: Through a set of criteria for mapping, both quantitatively and qualitatively, a number of case studies of urban spaces in high-density contexts in different cities are documented.

ıı Evaluation: An evaluative framework was developed, based on a set of urban space attributes, parameters, and criteria. Five-sided radar charts and barcodes visually represent the rankings of the urban spaces. A matrix forms a useful catalogue for reference and direct visual comparison of case studies.

ıı Parameterization and Classification: Exercises with classification and parameterization of selected case studies further refine the evaluative framework, classifying the case studies according to their sub-groups or typologies, and introducing a new barcode notation to distinguish the spaces.

ıı Analysis and Synthesis: The ensuing steps are automated digitally, resulting in SUSIE – System for Urban Space Information and Evaluation, an interactive, open-source, electronic repository with capabilities to search the database, evaluate, and compare documented urban spaces, and to help planners and designers by proposing closest matches to spaces they wish to formulate.

Documentation: Urban Space Typologies Familiar models of urban space include those predicated on the relationship between the form, use, and socio-cultural meaning of urban spaces. Squares, boulevards, public gardens, and arcades have not only made the city readable, but have held meanings and uses that are understood by everyone. While past research had focused on such typologies, we lack ways of understanding and describing emerging typologies. The increasing complexity and cultural diversity of cities and their dwellers are leading to a multiplicity of hybridized space typologies. It is necessary to examine the shifting meanings and uses of places over time, and the deformations of typologies of spaces. The understanding of emerging spatial typologies and their reconstitutio­n in high-density contexts is more relevant in this study than a typical review of the historical taxonomy of types of urban public spaces. In selecting the case studies, we have therefore prioritized spaces that are hybrid and dense in terms of both spatial density and intensity of use, including instances of transformations in existing typologies of public spaces. In total, 45 have been selected for this research, including projects like Linked Hybrid (Beijing), Sanlitun (Beijing), Times Square (New York), High Line Park (New York), Shinonome Codan (Tokyo), as well as projects in Hong Kong and Singapore. Each case study records spatial typologies and features, types, and intensity of uses, as well as comprehensive documentation of the design parameters and planning policies, including measure­s to enhance sustainability capabilities of the larger urban environment.

Urban Space Planning for Sustainable High Density Environments, examples of case studies.

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Evaluative Framework: Urban Space Attributes

Classification System: Geometry, Use, and Ecology Frameworks

Five key attributes are identified to assess the performance of an urban space: nodal, spatial, perceptual, social, and environmental values. Each attribute contains a sub-set of five para­ meters that are rated with the help of criteria that establish the key points for the objective comparison of the case studies. These criteria include both passive and performative attributes. A diagram shows the five attributes and their corresponding parameters.

Spaces are categorized according to geometry, use, and ecology aspects. This tri-faceted approach to classifying space is better suited to represent processes and transformations than the static bracketing of typologies. The space classification system works on a bifurcation basis, separating spaces via parameters identified as crucial in distinguishing the geometry, use, and ecology aspects of the frame­work. The “either-or” basis for establishing each descriptor-­parameter in the system establishes unique sets of types along the themes of the classification, so that instances within each typological group can be compared and rated efficiently and within a narrow range of relevant criteria for better precision. Each descriptor value has its own graphical symbol, serving as visual codes for spaces that further enhance visual communication and information processing. Classification involves a certain degree of abstraction, subjectivity, arbitrariness, and manipulation. The tri-faceted classification system reduces the level of subjectivity. While enhancing objectivity, the classification process is also intuitive, revealing not only existing properties of spaces, but also their possible relationships to other grouped typologies of space. Therefore, the rigor of classification becomes a productive process itself, pointing out patterns of innate attributes of spaces as well as design strategies for good performance.

A five-point radar chart indicates the rating of the space for each of the attributes, where each radar scale belongs to one of five related parameters. A value plotted on each of these scales represents a number of criteria that an urban space acquired for a particular parameter. Finally, a resulting radar chart combining the five attributes is used to indicate the urban space value. An average value of parameter scores is used for this purpose. However, more than having a numeric value, the radar chart helps visually to highlight the parameters that are dominant for a given space, and allow for a comparison of urban space values across case studies. Overall matrices for visual comparison of urban space rankings reveal patterns, or “barcodes,” which embody the detailed evalu­ation of the space resulting from the parameters and criteria mentioned earlier.

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Urban Space Planning for Sustainable High Density Environments, case study The High Line Park (James Corner Field Operations and Diller Scofidio + Renfro, New York City, New York, USA, 2009)

Urban Space Planning for Sustainable High Density Environments, case study Henderson Waves (IJP Corporation with RSP Architects and Planners, Singapore, 2008) (opposite page).

The High Line Park: Elevated urban space and diagrams.

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Qualitative Values of Ecological Viability

Mapping the Process – SUSIE

Although the evaluative framework as described above posits ecology as an integral part of the environmental value of urban space, the relationship of ecology with other aspects of space evaluation is established in a more complex way and sometimes through multiple agents. Through the criterion of accessibility of green spaces, the nodal value of a space directly influences its ecological performance (levels of visual, air, and noise pollution) and also the ways in which it responds to perceived ecological issues. Similarly, spatial arrangements of masses and voids (density, permeability, and intensity of activities, para­ meters that define the attribute of the spatial value of a space) directly influence ecological viability of an urban space. More precisely, they determine the size and position of space available for greenery and eco-system development, the types of greenery and eco-systems, as well as the ways of integrating with the context. Spatial properties also affect wind penetration and exposure to sunlight and other weather conditions, which are relevant factors for ecological sustainability and performance. The influence of ecology on the social values of space may seem less direct, yet they emerge at the levels of the sustained social life of communities. While the presence of greenery has potentials to attract people and enhance social interaction, it also raises awareness about ecological issues and persuades people to take better care of the environment. Furthermore, natural features have aesthetic and restorative values, sometimes shaping the overall identity of a space.

A result of the synthesis and integration of the documentation, evaluation and classification of urban space is the System for Urban Space Information and Evaluation (SUSIE). This interactive, open-source system is an automated electronic repository of urban space information, both quantitative and qualitative, as well as for retrieval of spatial information. It allows planners and designers to search the database, evaluate and compare documented urban spaces, and find the closest matches to spaces they wish to formulate. The system does not prescribe any ready-made solutions, but rather reveals design possibilities along with useful empirical information gleaned from built examples. User-end innovation is sought for how the data can be used to coax new ways of looking at the design of urban space. The aim is to capture and communicate information in a novel way, and also to precipitate in novel ways of design thinking.

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The potentials of the tool are further illustrated by looking at the case study of The High Line Park in New York City. The “Geometry” classification system recognizes the High Line as a volumetric connector, which has defined edges and is elevated. It is also meandering in shape, largely non-covered, as well as perforated and penetrated by other objects that connect the elevated surface with the street level. As such, it belongs to the type G3, along with other geometrically similar spaces, such as bridges and elevated parks. Type G3 is clearly distinguished from streets and other elongated spaces (e.g., type G4), since the belonging urban spaces are less complex in terms of composition and level of porosity, as well as elevation. In the “Use” classification system, The High Line is described as having no

time-specific character; it is used by the general public and is relatively homogenous, since it has one predominant activity, that of meeting and recreation. It combines transient and socially engaging activities, which are programmed, regulated, and time-restricted. As such, it belongs to the type U3, which gathers spaces similar to geometrical type G3. Finally, the “Ecology” classification system recognizes the High Line as a predominantly recreated ecosystem in continental climate condition. Greenery is extensive in pattern (rather than networked), well integrated into the hardscape, and largely exposed to weather conditions, noise and air pollution, with small water features. As such, it is classified as type E5. Each urban space is thus a hybrid, consisting of three-segmented “DNA” generated through the three classification systems. The “DNA” of the High Line is thus G3 / U3 / E5. The acquired typologies directly influence the evaluative framework, by removing the irrelevant criteria for the particular type. For example,

being an elevated park space, provision of biking lanes may not be relevant for the High Line. Once the space is evaluated according to the set of relevant criteria, radar charts for parameters and attributes are generated, allowing for various comparisons of spatial performance from different aspects. However, while the described processes serve to catalogue, classify and evaluate the urban spaces within the collected database, the database also provides means for easy addition of new case studies and qualitative comparison between spaces of the same type. Additional qualitative and quantitative information (visual material – plans, maps, drawings, models, photographs, videos, evaluation charts; textual and layer analysis; and various available empirical facts) about each case study is provided within the digital library. The descriptive character of the criteria helps in establishing guidelines and principles that constitute good performance of specific spatial types.

Chart of urban space value and its components.

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Finally, the tool surpasses the role of being simply an interactive catalog, since it has capacity of encoding both existing and desired characteristics and performances of urban spaces. The classification system preserves a certain level of design intui­ tiveness by providing ways of modifying the values of the descriptors and, as such, speculating on possible new typologies. The system highlights the closest matches according to modified descriptors, leading to design characteristics and concepts that need to be considered in the actual design stage in order to create desired conditions. By allowing the search for possible relations between particular design properties, use context, and ecological performance, SUSIE holds the potential of becoming a useful spatial generator, thus surpassing the notion of being just a repository of spatial typologies. Ecological viability is most often measured quantitatively, using specific scientific techniques, instruments and indicators, such as carbon footprint or green-plot ratio. The approach of this research into values of urban space is through qualitative and descriptive means, often based on observations on site. It is hoped that such information contributes better to the initial stages of design, offering insights to the potentials for improvements. In the study of ecological urban space it may, in fact, become as instrumental as empirical findings gathered through scientific measurements. Acknowlegements The research discussed in this chapter is based on the research project “Urban Space Planning for Sustainable High Density Environments,” conducted at the Centre for Sustainable Asian Cities (CSAC), School of Design and Environment, National University of Singapore, in collaboration with the Urban Redevelopment Authority, Singapore (URA), the National Parks Board, Singapore (N’Parks) and the Housing and Development Board, Singapore (HDB). The author was the Principal Investigator of the project up to July 2011. As the research is on-going, the work presented here is not the final outcome of the study. The project is funded by the Ministry of National Development, Singapore. Also acknowledged are the valuable contributions to this work made by Patrick Janssen, Assistant Professor at the Department of Architecture, Erwin Viray, Assistant Professor at the Department of Architecture, Davisi Boontharm, Assistant Professor at the Department of Architecture, and Heng Chye Kiang, Professor, School of Design and Environment, at the National University of Singapore, as collaborators in the research. The authors also thank URA for the permission to publish this study based on part of the research.

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 ork in this area includes, among others: Mostafavi, Mohsen, with Gareth Doherty W (eds.). Ecological Urbanism. Baden: Lars Müller, 2010; Gaston, Kevin J. Urban Ecology. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010; The Why Factory [Winy Maas, with Ulf Hackauf, and Pirjo Haikola]. Green Dream: How Future Cities Can Outsmart Nature. Rotterdam: Nai Publishers, 2010; Lehmann, Steffen. The Principles of Green Urbanism: Transforming the City for Sustainability. Washington, D.C.: Earthscan, 2010. Felson, Alexander J., and Pollak, Linda. “Situating Urban Ecological Experiments in Public Space” in Mostafavi, Mohsen, with Gareth Doherty (eds.). Ecological Urbanism …, pp. 356-361. T his also includes the phylogenesis hypothesis applied in the work by Foreign Office Architects. Cf. Foreign Office Architects. Phylogenesis: foa’s ark. Barcelona: Actar, 2003.

Urban Space Planning for Sustainable High Density Environments, urban space value “barcode” matrix.

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*(20(75