There's another aspect, which is the shine effect. So , the Anish Kapoor patented black, the least reflective material on earth, had a shine effect of zero, and perfect white, of one... [A]n ocean or a parking lot has almost no shine effect so it absorbs a lot of heat. So the more open ocean... the more parking lots, the more heat is absorbed, whereas fresh snow has a... good shine effect... [T]o give you an idea of how impactful this is, if earth was all ocean we would have an average temperature of 27°C. Today it's 15°C... If 1/3 of the planet was glacial, it would be frozen. So 1% of change in the shine effect of earth is the equivalent of doubling the amount of <chem>CO2</chem> in the atmosphere. So it's also an important factor that... now works against us.
Danish architect (b.1974)
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[W]hat was mesmerizing... was this... marvel of modern engineering... was going to be the cleanest waste-to-energy power plant in the world. No toxins coming out of the chimney. So we thought maybe a mountain of trash could become an actual mountain. Our nearest ski slope... is 6 hours away in Isaberg... Sweden... We could put 2/3 of Isaberg's main slope on the roof of the power plant, and so we did. ...The kind of cliff face of the mountain is made out of these gigantic folded raw aluminum bricks that are... planters. ...Raw aluminum so they... reflect the surroundings, so... the building changes color over the course of the day. ...The entire power plant is ...daylit. 50% of the facade is transparent. ...This spring it's going to open the tallest in the world, 300 feet. ...[T]he roof is maybe the most exciting facade. ...[T]he skiing is ...free. It's a public park. If you want to use the lift system, you have to buy a lift pass. It's... designed to... help spread vegetation to the surrounding... post-industrial area. You have hiking paths, different... activity zones. You have... vegetation that changes over the... season. There's more than 400 different trees. ...It's purely indigenous species. If Denmark had mountains this is probably what they would look like. ...[T]he entire roof park has been made for a budget of... $13 million dollars... absurdly inexpensive so everything has... been done with... the least... maintenance and... acquisition cost. ...Maybe the most important material, because Denmark doesn't have enough snow so... we found this Italian company that makes this... mat that has the same friction as a groomed slope. The only problem was that it was... ugly. Also because of the and contraction it had to be split in... 7x7 foot squares. So we sat down... with the company and... managed to develop a... new product... by joining every two circles [holes in the material] in two... directions... This... simple geometric invention... now the standard product of the company, meant that we could have a continuous surface on the... roof... We color-coded it so that the brighter the slope... the less likely... to crash... [E]ventually the grass grows through... [T]he grass... holds the mat to the roof, so eventually it's going to be like skiing on an alpine meadow. ...What is amazing ...it ...shows this ...world-changing power of architecture ...[M]y son is ...never going to remember that there was a time when you couldn't ski on the power plant in Copenhagen ...[F]or him and his entire generation, that's going to be their normal ...the starting point from where they start having crazy ideas about their future. ...A landmark for this ...idea of hedonistic sustainability, that a sustainable city can also be, not just better for the environment, but better for the people living there.
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In Amsterdam we... opened the Slicehouse. ...We put a floating solar farm in the water... There's a public promenade where people can overlook... Amsterdam. It's... completely framed by . ...[W]e lift up the courtyard so you can sail into the city block. The local kids can swim. You can dock a boat. It becomes... a... fusion between the public realm, the port, and the private. The facade is made out of maritime aluminum... so the facade continues into the water. ...[T]o let in sunlight some of the apartments become houses with gardens, and you can walk... up to the public promenade... [T]he building... becomes an extension of the city landscape of Amsterdam. It's... piled on energy piles extracting heat and cold from the port... to heat and cool the building.
[Y]ou have different kinds of es, 4 of them affected by human activity, and of the 4... carbon dioxide and methane... nirous oxide loop and... F-gases... [I]f you have 610 gigatons of carbon in our vegetation, you have a million times more in the sediments, and that's... what we're releasing by burning fossil fuels. So you have two carbon dioxide loops, one takes millions of years as volcanic activity, but then becomes sequestered in rocks and sand and it's then... sedimented on the ocean floors and it's pushed back through tectonic movement into magma... [T]hen you have a more annual loop, which is... living beings absorbing <chem>CO2</chem> and then... releasing it through respiration, decomposition and... human emissions... [C]urrently we are releasing our <chem>CO2</chem> emissions with 4 billion tons per year.
[W]hat we're trying to do... is try to apply the kind of tangible, practical thinking. We almost took the... way we would normally approach an architectural project and a master plan. So this is the kind of index... for the master plan of the planet, and going through it with this kind of pragmatic utopian approach, hoping that we can develop insights, and ideally a master plan for the planet that could be... handed... to corporations and governments with a much more tangible and... promising concrete plan of action than the reports or sort of political agendas that... exist today.
So what are our energy sources? We have 4... the sun, that provides photovoltaics, solar heating, fossil fuels, wind power is all... solar energy; Earth... thermal energy..; the moon, tidal turbine energy... because of gravity; and nuclear energy... So... all the different forms of energy are related... Gravity creates pressure, nuclear activity through fusion provides sunlight. Through sunlight is translating into chemical energy that can... be burned to provide heat, that with an engine can be translated into kinetic movement, that can then be turned into electricity... [O]ver the years we've been... mastering more... of these translations... [A]ny kind of energy source is translation... so a water mill or hydropower is gravity turned into kinetic movement and from there into electricity. Nuclear fission is nucler energy translated into heat and from there into mechanical and electrical. Batteries: from chemical to electrical... [I]f you look at the energy storage vs. batteries... It's not very efficient. 1/2 ton of batteries has the same stored energy as 5 kilos or 10 lbs. of hydrogen.
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[I]n many ways... this idea of social infrastructure and the utilitarian and the social, and bringing it together into a... new hybrid... [F]or the poster... [T]en years ago I was so keen on getting some buildings built, that I didn't care about master plans because they took forever and they resulted in nothing, at least in the horizon that I could overview. Now that I an older and more patient, and I realize that two decades go quickly, I have more appetite for master plans... [T]here's a lot of things that can only be dealt with... on a... wholistic level at a certain scale... [W]e had an unfortunate encounter with ... and he had this idea of turning the site of two former factories at the base of into an experimental city, where we would look at studying the potential impact on cities, from advances in personal mobility, mobility as a service, autonomy, robotics, smart homes, ...creativity through AI, multi-generational, assisted living, hydrogen powered infrastructure, academic research and incubation... [W]e... started... to look at the typical city of today. ...[T]oday the street has... everything: bikes, cars, pedestrians. We thought, maybe... to tailor different... experiences: one street-only autonomous vehicles and pedestrians, one for mixed personal mobility... more like a promenade, and finally a park, only for pedestrians... [E]every third street varies, and leaves in both directions. You can... walk through the entire city moving only through a park, or only along a promenade. ...[T]he roofs are powering the city with building-integrated photovoltaics... [A]ll these different intersections between the three different kinds of streets allows Toyota and collaborating companies to test the Toyota connected city traffic management system. There's a matternet for the delivery of goods.
In Sevilla, the hottest city in Spain, we are building the for the . It's half a public square and half the... Commission. It's covered by this... canopy of photovoltaic panels that creates a shaded square, which means that we can make the facade in one of the sunniest places in the world entirely out of glass, because it's... shaded... It's a naturally ventilated square... The building... produces twice as much energy as it consumes... [T]he photovoltaics are funded and maintained by the local energy company... It becomes... an energy machine or a decentralized power plant...
[T]his... relationship between the pragmatic and the utopian, or... the utilitarian and the . One such example... This is where the Granville bridge touches downtown Vancouver. We got invited to look at turning it into a mostly residential and also educational development. So we just started mapping the constraints. There are setbacks from the streets... from the bridges. The city has a rule that you cannot build residences closer than 30 meters, or a hundred feet to the traffic on the bridge. There's a park where we're not supposed to cast any shadows, and finally we were left with this tiny triangular footprint, almost too small to build. So... we started thinking... If the purpose of the 100 ft setback is a minimum distance, once we get a hundred feet up in the air we can grow the building back, so... the triangular footprint... turns into a rectangle. ...[W]hen you drive over Granville bridge it's... as if someone is pulling a curtain aside, welcoming you to Vancouver.
[T]he idea of the Vltava Philharmonic is to... celebrate the journey of the Vltava river, the Vltava symphony, the journey from the stream, the source in the mountains... through the ... through dams, through cities, and eventually to [Prague]... Imagine an architecture that... is... a journey from the river to the roof... as public... engaging and inviting... To bring the... the life of the city center down to the river. Create a landmark... for the neighborhood, for the city. To resolve this... of trams... trains... highways... metro stops... pedestrians and cars, in a three dimensional city, to create a literal and accessible connection to the river, to provide... an active social environment for the fine performing arts... also for the popular culture... to create this... perfectly tuned instrument for the performance and delivery of symphonic music. ...[F]rom this incredibly rational, orthoganal diagram, use the public realm, the canopies, the es and the s to create a public destination, and similarly in plan, to blur the distinction between inside and outside by pulling out the canopies to connect with the environment to create a zone that is neither indoor nor outdoor, that is protected from the rain and shaded from the sun... [T]his kind of very basic principle created this building that... starts at the edge of the water and winds itself up to the main level of the city and the bridge, and from here creates a series of destinations and lookouts... to the top of the city. ...[A] music student can walk all the way up to class on the outside of the building. ...[T]he highway... has... been overflown, so instead of having cars dominating the waterfront... it becomes public life. ...[Y]ou don't really know where the building ends or the city begins, and you have... generous spaces where public life is invited to enter and linger. ...From the city side you can see into... green rooms, rehearsal rooms and... a culture hub with musical studios. ...[A]t night the... transparency... illuminates the wooden... [ceilings] made out of locally sourced timber. Towards the water... pulling out the balconies and... terraces you get these... lookouts... almost at the... water's edge. [A]... pavement made out of locally sourced stone and the... integration of greenery... blurs the distinction between what is park, what is plaza, what is building... [S]tepping of stones create a series of... hangout spaces or... informal performance spaces. ...[W]hat could... sometimes be construed as a... , highbrow cultural institution becomes a very... welcoming and accessible landscape of... familiar local materials, and an abundance of places with views... shade... sun and shelter. ...[O]n the plaza level between the city and the traffic of the main street... a very permeable zone that also becomes an informal hangout space, so before performances or after, a place to linger... [W]hen the [day]light drops and the... [interior lighting] energy arises the building... comes alive when it starts... inviting guests for the performances. ...[E]ven though all of the... sloping roofs are... gentle in their ascent, at certain angles it... becomes this... incredibly dramatic overlapping of forms. ...Arriving across the bridge you... have the choice to connect... to the plaza... passing through the trees of the plaza that provide shade... having a major arrival plaza in front of the . The foyer wraps the city and the riverfront... [A] building without a... back side.
[U]nderneath the bridge we worked with a series of local artists. You have... a university in these two triangular buildings... wedged between the legs of the bridge... proposed to... turn one of his video art works into a giant urban art work with this gigantic chandelier that... twice a day it... drops and spins dramatically... above the main street... [O]nce open the entire underside is going to turn into... the "Sistine Chapel of Street Art"... trying to turn the otherwise negative impact of the bridge into a positive. So that what ends up looking like this... surreal silhouette is... like a... precise analysis in response to a very difficult... urban situation. It is... one of the most striking places in Vancouver. ...[T]his is an example of... social infrastructure, the idea that infrastructure can have positive social and environmental side effects.
[A] decade ago I got invited to make a proposal for a building on the waterfront of , and we took that as an opportunity to move to New York, and open our studio there. ...[W]e thought we should make a courtyard building. All buildings in are courtyards... a little oasis in the middle of the city. It's communal, so it's shared by... all 700 apartments... The court-scraper... the height of a skyscraper to the northeast and... the height of a handrail in the southwest. So everybody who lives around the courtyard has views of the sun setting over the Hudson river... almost like bringing the communal qualities of a Copenhagen courtyard with the... verticality and density of an American skyscraper.