Sustainability in architecture and design with Bjarke Ingels | WIRED Live

now on to our next session uh our next speaker is architect bjark ingles the founder and creative director of big uh bjark ingles group beyonc defines architecture as the art and science of making sure our cities and buildings fit with the way we want to live our lives through careful analysis of various parameters from local culture and climate ever-changing patterns of contemporary life to the ebbs and flows of the global economy bjark believes in the idea of information driven design as the driving force for his design and creative process bjark great to have you with us today thanks so much for joining us at wired live over to you thank you yeah yeah so um so what i'd like to spend the next 15 minutes or so talking about is something that has been sneaking up on us in our work over the last uh uh two decades um you can say that we are architects and designers or in danish form-givers which means that we give form to the world around us at all scales from uh essentially product uh to to uh to plan it and this is uh our different work environments or at least what they used to look like of course like everybody else uh we've been working like this for the last nine months uh and our uh model shop was instantly turned into a sort of uh makeshift medical equipment uh uh uh factory for the first uh eight weeks of of the shutdown um but apart from sort of uh these kind of radical changes of uh how we uh how we work and our work environment um it also gave gave rise or accelerated another change that has been happening i would say beginning uh 20 years ago with our first project which is the copenhagen harbour bath essentially the copenhagen port had become so clean that we could extend the life of the city into the water around it we've made another one in ahu's recently but essentially it became clear to us that an environmentally friendly city or port is not only good for the environment it's also amazing for the lives of the people inhabiting it and we've called this hedonistic sustainability the idea that sustainable buildings are not only good for the for the environment they're actually better for the lives of the people living in them uh and and last year we we opened our sort of last iteration of this idea it's essentially the cleanest waste to energy power plant in the world um it is so clean that there are no toxins coming out of the chimney and because of that we've been capable of turning its facade into a climbing wall we've been able to turn its roof into an alpine park where you can hike uh you can of course uh sort of scale the 100 meters of extreme danger by climbing the actual facade itself uh or you can take the elevator up inside the the belly of the beast and uh and reach the the roof park where we planted hundreds of trees and um so this kind of range of indigenous plants from denmark denmark doesn't have any mountains but if we do if we did and now we do they would they would actually look like this um and it's actually um an all-year skiing alpine ski slope um so as a little demonstration you can see um uh you know things normally have to go uh you know hours like i have to get to the sweden uh now we can actually take the elevator up on the roof of our power plant and i think it becomes a beautiful testament to the sort of game-changing power of form-giving that children growing up in in copenhagen now including my my two-year-old son they won't know that there was a time when you couldn't of course ski on the roof of the flower plant or climate's walls for for the so for them that's their new normal that's where they start dreaming about crazy ideas for for their future which makes me really excited to see what kind of a future they're they're going to come up with so um taking this idea one step further we've been working over the last uh uh years with uh the oakland a's the baseball team um and and the idea is basically to um you know typically stadia are like these kind of lonely giants in a in a sea of parking and we thought it's called a ballpark why don't we bring the park back in ballpark so it's going to be located on the waterfront of oakland so we're considering the the ballpark the the central park of this new neighborhood we're wrapping the streets of the city around the the park and because baseball is an asymmetric sport with an outfield we can actually dip down the perimeter so so instead of a castle it becomes this inviting valley that you can enter into and it means for the sort of 80 or 90 game days uh you actually have uh you know uh a ballpark with this kind of beautiful uh perimeter park on the roof uh you know the concessions the bars the restaurants open out to the park and typically the worst streets the the worst worst seats are the ones the first furthest away from the game but in this case they become park seats so you can imagine on a game day this park is uh is for the for the fans but the sort of 270 other days of the year it's for the people living in oakland so in that sense it really means that the kind of often wasted resource that a stadium is suddenly really becomes an integral part of the public space uh of the city of uh of oakland um and of course from the from the stadium you have these kind of spectacular views over the over the valley and and out onto the to the port um the cranes uh are the sort of classic cranes left behind from the old terminal that urban myth has it that they inspired george lucas to come up with the all-terrain and transport uh vehicles from uh uh star wars ii and and a sort of a last example of how this kind of progression in architecture is beginning to carve spaces or urban resources back and give it to the public is a proposal we've been developing with toyota trying to see what is going to be the impact on our cities once cars become sentient they become driverless mobility becomes a service so looking at all the different sort of technologies that toyota is currently advancing and see how they might might impact our cities and it's not the first time toyota has been changing their game they started being a loom company and then in the 30s their ability to make large complex machines made them the apparent to take over car manufacturing and eventually became the largest auto manufacturer in the world uh did the first mass-produced hybrid car and are continuing to to sort of propel this sort of transformation forward with personal mobility and and these kind of e-pallets uh driverless uh vessels so we basically sat down and said like how can we take all the technologies that are there and apply them to a city of 7000 people working and living there analyzing saying every third road in this city is going to be for electric vehicles as a service and pedestrians like a normal street almost every third street is going to be like a promenade for shared personal mobility and for programs like pop-up stores or food trucks and finally every third street is going to be a park only for pedestrians and then we sort of imagine taking these three types of streets and weaving them together in two directions creating this kind of woven fabric where every city block has direct access from a vehicle but also from the promenade and the park there's always a little park in the middle and that can be scaled up or down to to fit the community so um so essentially when you look at at the street today it's a bit of a mess because you have everything and essentially also nothing everywhere so by splitting it up in these kind of three parts we create one that is uh all four electric vehicles uh and pedestrians one that is the promenade uh also for personal mobility and and finally the park um and that essentially means that you can walk from anywhere to anywhere in this city moving only through a park or bicycling only along a promenade or using a shared piece of driverless mobility so um all the roofs are photovoltaic powering a fuel cell energy storage system the the buildings are relatively low rise so we maximize the use of cross-laminated timber and within it toyota and their collaborators are going to experiment with all kinds of cohabitation between different kinds of movement there's a matter net that delivers good straight to people homes there's the fuel cell technology uh becoming the energy storage for the for the entire city and and inside the homes um we experiment with all kinds of assisted living for the aging demographic of uh of japan and of course beautiful views of of mount fuji so you can say like what what is paradoxical and interesting in my mind is that in this case it's actually an automaker that is commissioning the entire woven city uh that we are scheduled to break ground on in the spring of 2021 but it actually gives over two-thirds of the right-of-way that is currently monopolized by cars and giving it over to other forms of life including human life uh animal life and and plant life so um so of course that's that seems to be sort of um a very fundamental shift that is uh occurring uh and of course it's a prototype but the the principles can be applied to all kinds of cities including new york barcelona or tokyo and this basically brings me to um to the sort of corona quarantine our offices in new york are located in dumbo so from our windows we look out at the brooklyn bridge um and um we started looking into the history of the brooklyn bridge when when it opened 425 000 people were crossing every day but then when they modernized it and took down the streetcars and and moved away some bicycle lanes um and made it for all cars it actually reduced its capacity by almost so today we're essentially moving cars rather than people the people part is getting incredibly congested and suddenly because of the the quarantine we suddenly saw this kind of a available space you know parking lots were turned over to outdoor terraces for the restaurants and the brooklyn bridge was used for uh uh black lives matter's demonstrations um and it gave us uh gave us like the idea to maybe reconsider the future of of brooklyn bridge and maybe bringing it back to where it it came from the brooklyn bridge built in 1883 is one of the most memorable and iconic structures in new york city and in the world at its inception the bridge was a symbol for the powerful new energy of the american city and an innovative transit artery carrying 425 000 passengers a day on its cable railway and streetcars and by bike foot and carriage sadly these collective transit facilities were demolished in the 1950s to make way for the automobile and today the bridge moves a little more than a hundred thousand people a day less than a third of its original capacity many stuck in traffic below or crammed together on the dangerous shared walkway above the result is a bridge that has become better at moving cars than it is at moving people the brooklyn bridge is wonderful it's a good bridge to walk across it's not a good bridge to ride a bicycle it's really hot and crowded and during these times of cobit it would really help to have more distance between the people tons of cars it's like right beside both of the sides and it's like very kind of like the air just kind of like a little bit more polluted actually been taking up biking recently i've loved it so far it's changed my perspective when it comes to traveling with back to the future we propose a radical but incremental rethinking of the brooklyn bridge that takes advantage of congestion pricing and other innovations that will reduce and redistribute car traffic around our urban core beginning with the introduction of safe dedicated bike lanes slowly transitioning to include dedicated public transit routes expanded space for pedestrians and finally paving the way for an electric and autonomous future [Music] towards new york harbor the resulting plaza in the sky is proposed as a flexible space accommodating new sweeping views quiet spaces for reflection and a diversity of activities for new yorkers changing with the seasons and evolving over time [Music] at the bridge anchorages legacy car infrastructure has strangled the historic bridge walls impeded access to the waterfront and divided communities from one another for decades as the bridge transitions away from vehicular use these ramps can be removed and life brought back to the historic vaults and their surroundings 32 acres of public realm more than five times the area of the high line will be created reconnecting neighborhoods and offering natural and recreational spaces for adjacent communities and a growing city [Music] in dumbo legacy city properties can be rethought and create spaces that will welcome new yorkers of all stripes [Music] meanwhile new york has been quickly changing around us covet 19 has revealed a city in urgent need of more public realm as new yorkers take back their streets for play and for commerce and nationwide protests have shown us what streets focused on people rather than cars might actually look like as our aging subway system strains to keep up with demands and we look for new and safe ways to commute in the coming years the creation of safe dedicated shaded corridors for biking and collective transit is the most high impact and low cost urban investment we can make towards our recovery these corridors can be interwoven seamlessly with the existing network of vehicular streets creating a binary city that makes room for both people and for logistical demands as innovations at the brooklyn bridge and other bridges are piloted this network of people streets can branch out to reach across the city strategically linking to the neighborhoods that need them the most and as the brooklyn bridge did one and a half centuries ago bringing new york back to the forefront of urban innovation so essentially you can say um this this kind of slow process of of of carving back the public realm and and giving the streets back to the people rather than to the automobiles that have been dominating them over the last century

Channel: WIRED UK

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Keywords: wired video, wired magazine, wired uk, wired, pop culture, science, politics, conde nast, health, technology, new technology, Bjarke Ingels, sustainability in architecture and design, sustainable design, sustainable architecture, sustainable cities, green cities, Bjarke Ingels Group, sustainable building

Id: Rx3DYgSfeCU

Length: 17min 38sec (1058 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 10 2021