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