architechts have to become more than just designers of two dimensionals ? ? ?
? or three dimensional architecture objects we have to become designers of eco-systems systems of both ecology and economy that channel not only the flow of people throughout cities and buildings but also the flow of resources like heat, energy, waste and water into some sort of perpetual motion engine some sort of stop seeing our presence like the human presence on the planet earth as a sort of detrimental to our eco-system but we should try to integrate and incorporate our cosumption paterns and our leftovers into our national environment the reason for this sort of expanded role of the architect is because of the atmosphere you capture on this image it was taken at the COP15 the UN Climate change conference in 2009 in Copenhagen a year and a half ago and as you can see on Sarcozy and Brown and Markel and Obama it wasn't exactly a party it was a complete failure, essentially non of the goals that has been established for the meeting were met, and the generals of discussion for sustainabiliy were sort of drawned in this general conception how much of our existing quality of life are we prepared to sacrifice in order to afford becoming sustainable almost of this sort protestant idea that it has to hurt to do good, but sustainability can't be like some kind of moral sacrifice or political dilemma or even like a philantropial cause. It has to be a design challenge so, when we were sort of recently ask to do the Danish Pavillion for the Shanghai World Expo that was focused on sustainable cities we try to ask ourselves if there was another sustainability that this sort of sad depressing one we try to ask ourselves if we can find examples where sustainable cities and buildings actually increase life quality so we decided to make a Pavillion as a sort of condensation of how Danish cities throught their sustainable designs actually increase life quality we can see on the Pavillion as a sort of loop of a danish street complete with a blue bicicle lane of the Copenhagen cause in Copenhagen, 37% of the ?
? is comuted by bike so people visiting could actually feel how cool is to ride a bike through the city instead of sitting in a traffic jam or looking endlessly for a parking slot, also in Copenhagen our harbor water has become so clean that you can swim in it, so don't have like to take the bus for hours to go to the hamptons you can actually jump in the port so at the heart of the pavillion we allow the visitors to experience on their own bodies how clean if not how cold our harbor water is, so in middle of this sort of harbor bath we decided to place "the little mermade" of denmark, not a copy of the mermade, we actually move it to China, we have to whrist it out of the hands of the danish equivalent of the tea-party who was trying to pass a law against moving the mermade we have to get it trough chinese customs and there she is. In her absence we invited for the chinese artist Ai Weiwei to sort of install a chinese survailance camera, is the same chinese surveilance camera that the chinese state has installed in front of his house this one however it was a part of the installation called "the marmade exchange" it was trasmitting a live image to giant flat screen so that the Copenhagen ?
? to see that she was alright but sort of more importantly for the six months of the duration of the expo it became the only tv show from China to the rest of the world transmitting sort of uncensored live footage almost turning Copenhagen into this global speakers corner for chine, sadly ai weiwei has been sort of silenced for this critical voice of China has actually been captured by the government and has been missing for the last 6 weeks but sort of back in the pavillion you can see like to sum it up what we were trying to do, was to show how esentially sustainable life can be more fun than normal life and as a sort of ? ?
test this was the first image we published of the danish pavillion, notice the red rectangle this is the first image or one of the first published on iron man 2, showing tony stark's mad science expo and if you compare the rectangles. This is Hollywood and this is Shanghai. So first is all like.
This is all big bussiness it's America the land of mitigation we should sue them and get rich but then we thought that Coco chanel said that copying is the high form of complement and if you know Hollywood stars ? ? off sustainable architecture to portrait science fiction.
It could be a sign that we are moving towards hedonistic sustainability in other idea we have been working to try to think this idea of how architecture and design connection to be most environmentally aware but also increase life quality starting a project we called "the mountain" in Copenhagen it's a combination of a big parking building and an apartment building, but the parking creates a man made mountain that lifts all the apartments up in the sun in the view creating this sort of houses in gardens but in the middle of the Danish city. We call this idea architecture alchemy because is this idea that by mixings traditional ingredients of parking and apartments you can actually create if not gold at least some added value. We took this idea one step further in a project in Copenhegan.
Where by mixing shops and offices town houses and apartments putting them in this stack where they occupy their fauvorite position. Distorting the blocks to maximize view for the apartments and access to sun light we created this building called "the 8 house" named after it's shape and this approach doesn't only allow us to optimize the individual position of the different parts of the program like leaving offices and shops on the street lifting the town houses and gardens into the sun shine but it also allows public life which is traditionally restricted to ocurring on street level. So actually invade the three dimentional space of the urban block so that 8 house in Copenhagen is not a two dimensional flat design or even a three dimentional architectural object is three dimentional urban condition that allow the public life the posibility for spontaneus social encounters to actually invade the normally private space of the urban block and it's the pen house of the city.
so this building is at the edge of Copenhagen. Basically at the city limits. So you have this clash of life forms.
the last idea is that in the eight house is escencially a private developed project built for private apartments and town houses but somehow it has this generosity towards the city that invites public life into it. This idea of public participation we took one step further in a project we did for the new city hall in Talim. We thought that instead of having this traditional dicotomy of the polititians inside and the public outside.
we would hover the city hall above the ground allowing the public to invade the ground floor, in what we call the public service market place. Where they can interact with the public servant and see the polititians at work. we called it "the public village" cause it's escencially an accumulation of all the differents departments that have their own buildings.
They merge to form a single consolidated village in one place we invited the people of Talim to access the roof and enjoy the panorama of the surrounding city and finally in the master plan the wanted a tower. Cause in europe it's hard to imagine a city without a tower. So we thought "what are we gonna do with the tower".
Why don't we place the city council inside the tower so we created this incredible generous space for political reflection. The sealing is made as a giant mirror. So when the polititians have to do difficult desitions all they have to do is look up and they get a periscopial view of the city they are messing with.
But as a sort of side effect. When the angry citizens gathers to demonstrate. They get this perfect insight they can see if polititians are missing, if they are sleeping, if they are playing "angry birds".
So we called it "the democratic periscope" that combines political overview with public insight into and the city council liked the idea. And they are now building this architectural realization of radical political transparency so, this three ideas we try to bring togeather in what is until now the biggest project. It combines this ideas of of edonistic sustainability, architectural alchemy and notion of public participation and it's located within a master plan we were comitioned by the ten municipalities of metropolitan Copenhagen.
To do a plan along a new train line that would connect all the municipalities. We proposed in return to say "why just focus of Copenhagen or even Denmark? " right on the other side of the ?
? waters we have Sweden (southern Sweden). It's the most densily populated and the most economically active region in scandinavia and by adding a single three mile bridge.
We could actually connect all into a single binational metropolital region. Where no area is further away than 40 minutes by public transportation and it would just be an infrastructure for public transportation it would also be an infrastructure for waste management for water management for energy combining a smart grid that combines hydro-electricity from Sweden with wind power from Denmark. It connects the most prosperous bussinesses in the entire region.
And by merging it and making it into a binational master plan. We also introduce pink into our flag for the first time. It has exactly the same size as the San Francisco bay.
So it is actually a quite likely a regional planning size just because of the national bounderies and this holistic perspective has never been applied. and our idea was: instead of just focusing on the individual infrastructure to actually mergit all so that the the train line is also the first face identification of the down town areas the train really stops at the hearts of the different neighborhoods and finally since we are combining industry commerce and residential we were propousing that pherhaps the excess energy from the power production of the industry could become to human programs like thermo ? ?
. So this could sound like science fiction or "The Jetsons". But to take it to something really tangeable.
This is gonna be the first building that we are completing within the loop city it's a waste to energy plant. In Copenhagen we only land field 4% of our waste. As an example in Chicago is 85%.
42% gets recycled and 54% is escencially used as fuel to create heat and electricity. 97% of homes in Copenhagen has District heating. So they don't spend any energy heating in a very cold country they get it all as heat from the power production.
And escencially the form this loop that the people give they trash to the insulation plant and the get it back as power. So as a thumb rule 3 kg of house hold trash turns into 4 hours of electricity and 5 hours of heating. And just to give you an idea of this resource.
One tone of waste is almost two barrels of oil. But this is a power plant like any other. It's a big boxy ugly factory that cast shadows on the neighbors and block the view so the city wanted because it's located in down town Copenhagen to somehow make it beautifull "it should be a gift to the city" said the CEO of the plant.
So this is not only got to be the biggest building of Copenhagen it's also gonna be the tallest it's gonna be more than 350 feet tall. It's located right in the middle of the historical city. You can see that's the opera the royal theater at down town.
And that's where it's going it's right next to the Copenhagen marina. And right in front of it there's something called "The Copenhagen cable track" which is a track of the pools wake boarders and border skyiers around in this sort of perpetual loop of water fount. And speaking of skying.
Copenhagen has love skying but unfortunately is flat as a pancake. We have the snow but we dont have the hills. So we happily go by hours on buses to the south of sweden.
So we thought that if Copenhagen doesnt have mountains. At least we have mountains of trash so why dont we transplant one of the sweden sky slopes and put it on the roof of the factory. So escencially we know the size of the machines.
So we create a minimum envelope the wanted to make a visitor center. Which escencially is a place where school teachers drag the children to force them to listen how trash turns into energy. Instead we propouse to install an elevator that takes you to the roof.
Where you can choose between a blue, a green and a black sky slope and because is man made sure that it ends at the foot of the elevetor so it creates this perpetual loop of skying. miraculously we won the competition based on this idea. The roof material is a form of artifitial carpet.
That all the rain water that drops on the mountain it's collected and it can be blowed out in this humidifiers that in the summer can create so little friction that with normal skying equipment you can actually sky creating this nice brazilian hibrid of bikini skying but in the winter we do have 3 to 4 months of frost and snow so from 2015 you gonna have to look out to the danish competitors in alpine skying. Originally the competition was to make the factory look good so we also have to do it for that so we propouse to make it from this giant planters made out of recycle plastics. The excess water runs through the facade watering the plants.
So in the summer we create this natural shade that turns the working space of the factory into this naturally illuminated and naturally ventilated work space at night you see the machines work inside the factory so this initial vision of trying to design citizen buildings as ecosystems is quite close to materializing in this project cause not only locally does this re-use of the water, the daylight the natural ventilation. But also in a more regional perspective togeather with Copenhagen and the rest of the loop city the plant actually forms an ecosystem. as a last thing they wanted some kind of building integrated art project and traditionally what you do is to hire some light artist to blow color lights to buildings at night we thought "why don't we play with the resources we have" this is gonna be the cleanest way to energy plant in the world the smoke coming out of the chimney is non-toxic but still does contain some co2, a lot less than the current plant but it does contain some.
So we thought "why dont we design the mouth of the chimney in such a way that is fills gradually with co2 and when it contains 100 kg it compresses and puffs a giant smoke ring. So we can play with it at night but of course on one hand we liked it cause it's almost like the ultimate artistic expression of the hedonistic sustainability you take symbol of the problem, the polution of the chimney, and turn it into something playful but more importantly one of the main driver of the behavioural change is knowledge that if people dont know they can't act. When my nethews ask me "what is a ton of co2" I have to say "I don't have a clue" in 2015 I can tell the to count 10 smoke rings and when they counted 10 of the we've just emitted a ton of co2 so you're saying the waste of energy in Copenhagen is not only economically and ecologically sustainable by turning waste into energy.
It's also socially sustainable because it turns a power plant into a park. And turns a flat land into a man made mountain for skying. So as a last thing you may object that this is the kind of thing that only happens in a sunny semi-socialist sentimental scandinavia.
But just to wrappit up recently we got approached by Durst Fetner. A residential of Manhattan. To look at this side on the west side water front it's quite far away from the nearby pass.
It's right next to "the helena" building owned by our client named after his daughter and normally residentially area looks like this extruded boxes. So we thought why don't we having to spent 10 years of my carrer trying to scape the tyranny of the Copenhagen Court Yard as a typology. We though maybe in Manhattan this idea of creating an urban oasis at the heart of the block could be interesting if you like the Copenhagen court yard is at this architectural scale what central park is to an urban scale.
A human habitat surrounded by a dense wall of people so we ask ourselves what happened when we combine a skycarper with a court yard. And what would a court scraper look like So first we placed the court yard next to the helena and we tried to preserve all of his use. To be a good neighbor but also because it is our client's building.
and then in the north east top corner to create density in views. We lift it up 450 feet creating this sort of ? ?
preliminal block that has views and sunshine from the west side. And what happens is that you can say traditionally perimetral blocks are court yards as secrets kept for the tenants in this case it really becomes the main ? ?
of the building towards the high way. Almost showing how the facade of the water fount moves into the city fabric itself. And the geometry also brings daylight into the streets gate and finally all of the apartments are rotated towards the view.
Creating this sort of pattern of balconies but also allowing the residents to recognize their own apartment almost as a building within a building. And of course the people next to the roof has this nice views of the Hudson. So because of the incredible asimetry the court yard really goes from 42 inches to 400 feet and back down again.
So this has been a fast foward and it has been well received. And according to the plan and sometimes even in architecture things happen according to plan we should be breaking ground the 1st of september this year. some of the architectural illusion that we have been conducting in scandinavia is now starting to cross breed with New York typologies to finish off this is what it could look like to driving down the west side highway in 4 years.
