Flooding, parking and lack of green spaces are only few challenges our cities face. And with the climate change we are likely to face growing numbers of cloudbursts. The young Danish architectural office THIRD NATURE, founded by Ole Schrøder and Flemming Rafn Thomsen in 2012, aims to adapt cities to the consequences of climate changes.

By stacking water reservoir, parking facility and urban space, the project POP-UP solves three challenges at once. As heavy rain falls, storm water fills the underground reservoir and the parking structure will pop up in the cityscape, highlighting the adaption to the forces of nature. THIRD NATURE has exemplified POP-UP in St. John’s Park in New York.

“With POP-UP, we have a humane response to man-made problems, that by combining multiple challenges in one overall solution shows the world how climate adaptation, mobility and urban development do not have to be each other’s opposites in the viable cities of the future.”

– says Ole Schrøder, partner in THIRD NATURE.

Climate challenges force many cities to establish large and very expensive water reservoirs under existing roads and squares. With POP-UP, THIRD NATURE wants to create added value by making use of the expensive reservoirs and establishing underground parking facilities, with urban spaces or public features on top.

The round shape of the parking facility and the water reservoir makes the parking facility lighter and thus helps the buoyancy. The spiral-shaped ramp of the parking facility makes it possible to drive to and from the parking facility on ground level, regardless of the water level in the water reservoir.

“POP-UP is an example of a radical thinking, where design and complex engineering is applied to face challenges imposed by climate change and the need for sustainable urban living,” says Tommy Olsen, Project Director at COWI, one of the engineering firm that has contributed to the project with structural modeling and economic calculations.

Instead of constructing a rainwater reservoir that will be empty 99% of the time, a monofunctional parking facility – often too expensive to build underground where it does not occupy space, and an active urban space fighting for m² in the dense cities, THIRD NATURE suggests POP-UP. A climatic, vibrant and innovative solution that meets all three needs in one solution, which makes it an attractive solution in an overall economic perspective.

“Cities are in extreme situations where billions need to be spent on climate mitigation solutions and the equivalent amount on handling densification of the cities, especially the conflict between cars and urban spaces, so for us it is natural to think of the solutions together,” says Flemming Raft Thomsen, partner at THIRD NATURE.

In September 2015, the New York City Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) and the City of Copenhagen’s Technical and Environmental Administration signed a cooperation agreement to develop innovative climate adaptation solutions. THIRD NATURE, together with engineering firms COWI and RAMBØLL, have participated in a number of workshops in New York, with the aim of developing scalable solutions based on experiences from Copenhagen’s climate adaptations.

POP-UP has the inherent potential to be scaled and adapted to other big cities facing similar issues of climate adaptation and parking challenges. The project has been developed and refined for locations in Copenhagen and St. John’s Park in New York (where the illustrations are from).

POP-UP can therefore contribute to the development of a compact metropolitan area based on a decentralized and design-integrated climate adaptation strategy. The co-operation between THIRD NATURE, COWI and RAMBØLL shows how design and climate adaptation can be integrated into a strong business case, with optimized investments that make space for more buildings and attractive urban spaces.

Location:

St. John’s Park, New York City, USA

Project Data:

• Architect: THIRD NATURE
• Engineering Firms: COWI and RAMBØLL

The post POP-UP Parking Aims to Revolutionize Climate Adaptation in Major Cities appeared first on Archipreneur.

This week’s interview is with paper planes e.V., the initiative behind the project Radbahn.

The team behind paper planes e.V. consists of architects, urban planners, cultural managers and entrepreneurs. Their goal is to develop Berlin into a bike-friendly city by transforming the forgotten space underneath Berlin’s famous elevated subway line “U1” into a bike path connecting Bahnhof Zoo in the west all the way to Oberbaum bridge in the east. The vision of Radbahn is not only to create space for contemporary mobility, but also for innovation and leisure.

The team has just produced a 140-page book proving that the implementation of Radbahn is possible. Right now the people behind paper planes e.V. are engaging with decision makers, current and future partners and other coalition members to ensure that Radbahn will be build in the near future – we sure hope so!

You can help turn this vision into reality by supporting their crowdfunding campaign! See more crowdfunded architecture projects here.

We spoke with one of the members of the initiative, Matthias Heskamp, an architect who studied under Álvaro Siza for 10 years in Porto and has led projects for David Chipperfield Architects in Berlin. As the head of the association, he now dedicates himself full-time to paper planes e.V.

Enjoy the interview!

You combined your knowledge of architecture, urban planning and development and business to make Berlin a better place – at least for cyclists. Could you tell us how you met and what your respective backgrounds are?

Initiative projects usually start with a problem. In our case the problem was detected by Martti Mela, an entrepreneur, on one of these rainy days in Berlin. He rang me up, asking, why it is not possible to ride his bike underneath the elevated U1? One day later we met with a group of architect friends to examine the situation and came up with an intriguing proposal.

The team quickly grew to eight members of different fields, a professional in campaigning with business background, a cultural manager, an expert of integrational traffic planning, an urban planner and various architects.

When did you come up with the concept for Radbahn? What inspired you?

The idea arose end of September 2014. We have been working for one year on the concept for Radbahn and then launched it to the public in November 2015.

The unused, predominantly abandoned space under the elevated listed U1 construction inspired us to come up with a unique solution for covered and save cycling, space for culture and leisure activities and most important: a testbed for innovative intermodal mobility concepts and sustainable energy use.

Your concept for the Radbahn has won prices and was mentioned in the press worldwide. Why does the Radbahn not exist yet, what are the obstacles?

We got worldwide recognition for the concept, which proves that the idea has been very convincing. We were aware that at the time of going to public in November 2015, it didn’t show, how we would imagine Radbahn to be build in detail and how to solve intersections with car traffic. We sensed not only the need to come up with detailed proposals for that but further to outline the vast field of possibilities and chances for Berlin going along with the realization of Radbahn.

The result is a comprehensive study called “Radbahn Berlin”, a book with 140 pages, which we have launched recently, end of May 2017.

You have just launched a Startnext campaign. What is your goal?

Raising 17,000 Euros would allow us to finally get the book printed and start sending copies of it to key politicians and other influencers in Berlin. This is, what we achieved already thanks to the amazing support we got so far. Our next threshold is to reach 30,000 Euro to make it possible to dedicate more time to push Radbahn forward over the next three month. If we reach our goal of 40,000 Euro, we will organize a public street party in fall 2017, obviously located under the U1.

What major problems and opportunities do you think cities face in the 21^st century?

The future of quickly rising cities is painted mostly negatively. Main topics are traffic congestion and air pollution. If we would see the chance in contemporary technology, which facilitates effective ways of intermodal mobility, sharing economy, energy harvesting we would be able to create amazing scenarios for sustainable cities, scaled back to human proportion. The trend of home office working make people tend to care about there districts they are living in. Local communities help cities to face global problems.

And how about Berlin?

Berlin is a city with low density, thus it does have a lot of space to allow for pedestrian and bike-friendly infrastructure. It furthermore is high in ranking regarding people who prefer to use sustainable means of transport. Generally Berlin has a young and open spirit, which would help to position the city to be the leading one regarding a modern mobility concept.

Do you have any advice for archipreneurs who are interested in starting their own business?

The idea and conviction for a project comes first. Bring potential stakeholders on board from the very beginning. Release early stages of a project on social media, to get a sense of public recognition. Networking will allow you to share work, and have a broader community to strive for the potential realization of your initiative.

How do you see the future of the architectural profession? In which areas (outside of traditional practice) can you see major opportunities for up and coming developers and architects?

Architects will have to assume more responsibility to influence tendencies of urban developments. If the driving force would only come from investors and authorities, we would lack the vision for a comprehensive understanding of chances for the cities of tomorrow.

About Radbahn/Paper planes e.V.

The team behind the Radbahn formed a registered nonprofit association called paper planes e.V. in summer 2016. Our goal is to research innovative social and technological concepts that make urban spaces more people-oriented and environmentally friendly for more livable cities.

We believe that increasing urbanization brings with it great opportunities. If we manage to make the right investments in our cities, it will not only be possible to make our everyday environment more livable, but we can also tackle today’s major global challenges.

Our ‘paper planes’ are designed to inspire as many people as possible about the exciting opportunities of tomorrow. To make it happen, we develop concrete concepts, carry out comprehensive project planning and promote our ideas with convincing communication.

The post Radbahn for Berlin: Converting Forgotten Space for Contemporary Mobility and Innovation appeared first on Archipreneur.

This week’s interview is with Antje Kunze, Co-Founder and CEO of SmarterBetterCities.

Antje founded SmarterBetterCities together with Jan Halatsch in 2012. It started out as a spin-off from ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology); the company has since gone from strength to strength and has recently opened its second office in Berkeley, California.

The initial goal of the company was to provide easy-to-use and intuitive tools for urban planning and management. They did so with their web-based tool CloudCities, an online platform where users can view, upload, share and discuss 3D city models.

This “YouTube for cities”, as Antje calls it, runs on any device that has a web browser. You can bring all of your design data into CloudCities’ practical and eye-catching dashboards without any prior coding knowledge necessary. This web-based tool is especially designed to help governments, city planners, architectural companies and consulting companies with their planning scenarios and city visualizations.

Keep on reading to learn from an architect with a background in computer science on how she started her business, the kinds of services and products she creates, and how she envisions the future of the building industry and energy-aware urban planning – all from a simple web browser.

I hope you enjoy the interview!

What made you decide to found the software company SmarterBetterCities?

In 2013, we established SmarterBetterCities to provide easy-to-use and intuitive tools for urban planning and management. We designed our products for integrating, sharing and understanding complex urban data.

Back in the days at ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology), my colleagues and I researched urbanization and how information technology can support designers, stakeholders and decision makers to arrive at the best decisions. Traditional software technology is difficult to use, and creates data silos and unnecessary boundaries between people.

We believe that combining and sharing planning information is important. However, it should not be so time-consuming and complicated. People should be able to easily access contextual urban information and analyses. In addition, the urban fabric is becoming even more important with emerging technologies such as IoT and Smart Meters, creating Big Databases of planning information.

Was there a particular moment that sealed the decision for you?

The idea of founding a company and becoming its CEO did not instantly come to mind. In fact, I had been planning for an academic career. In that sense, there was no particular moment. However, my co-founders and I had been involved in a couple of large-scale research projects that provided our team with an opportunity to create an ETH spin-off company.

At the same time, our research group at ETH Zurich had received several requests for consulting work, which were beyond the scope of the university. It was the perfect time to bootstrap SmarterBetterCities.

Who were your co-founders and in what professional position were you at that moment?

Initially, I founded the company together with Jan Halatsch in 2013. We had both known each other for years. At the time, we were working as research scientists and project leaders with the Chair of Information Architecture at ETH Zurich.

Half a year later, Michael Van den Bergh joined us as a co-founder of SmarterBetterCities. He was a Postdoc at the Computer Vision Laboratory of ETH Zurich and was very interested in designing great user interfaces and 3D computer graphics. I think we are quite a unique combination of talents.

SmarterBetterCities developed the web-based tool CloudCities. Could you give us some examples of how the tool is used and how it helps architectural practices?

CloudCities is a novel tool to present and share complex 3D data containing architectural and urban designs. CloudCities runs on any device and on any modern web browser. Think of it as a YouTube for cities.

Using CloudCities, architects and urban planners can upload 3D data from CAD, BIM or GIS applications. In a few steps, they can configure the look and feel of their design, and share them online. The resulting web scene can be easily embedded inside blog posts or shared on social media for public or closed audience approval.

When you configure a CloudCities web scene, you can control what information, layers, cameras and animations are shown to your audience. You can set up sliders and toggles for design comparison. And, if you are using Esri ArcGIS or Esri CityEngine for 3D content authoring, then you can easily add meta-information.

For instance, you can report floor areas, open space ratios, energy demands and other key performance indicators. The great thing with CloudCities is you can bring all of your design data into useful and beautiful looking dashboards without the headache of coding it yourself. The result is a beautiful web application that is driven by architectural design facts.

CloudCities currently supports SketchUp, Google Earth, and Esri CityEngine. Soon we will add support for Autodesk Revit using the fbx file format as well as more CAD and GIS file formats.

What other software do you offer?

We offer 3D Libraries, making it very easy to create 3D city models using Esri CityEngine and Esri ArcGIS Pro. The 3D Libraries are parametric building and parcel models that contain typical urban morphologies. They come as abstract, simplified building models or as very detailed models including facades and some interior features.

Unlike conventional 3D models, our 3D Libraries work with footprint or parcel input of any size. The geometry (e.g., facade elements, courtyards, vegetation) will always adjust, depending on size or other input parameters. Designers can use the 3D Libraries to create a contextual 3D model, which surrounds their actual building or development proposal.

Alternatively, they can use the 3D Libraries to create a buildout analysis of land parcels. Urban planners can generate 3D zoning plans, following exact legal thresholds. Think of defining setbacks, governing floor area ratios, building masses and checking the energy efficiency of your proposed building shells at the same time.

Step by step, we are uniting our 3D Libraries with CloudCities. The idea is that, in the future, users will be able to instantly draft their urban scenarios online. Another novelty will be that CloudCities users can bridge their data between the architectural (CAD, BIM) world and the city planning and management world (GIS).

Your clients are both private and public – architectural offices and real estate agencies on the one hand, and municipalities and local governments on the other. Is it difficult to meet their very different needs?

All of our clients share more or less the same parts of the value creation chain. It is all about creating, modifying and optimizing urban assets. Unfortunately, the value creation chain lacked integration. We like to make life easier for both sides.

Imagine that a municipality can create a 3D zoning plan that optimizes the energy demand of its buildings (e.g., maximize solar impact for local energy generation, minimize building shell area to avoid energy losses) and also considers system thresholds such as traffic network traffic capacity.

On the other side, architects and urban planners can instantly check to see if their designs meet legislative requirements or if there is a need to negotiate. Both parties can easily digest different types of data and can profit from clear communication channels.

The reduction of CO2 emissions is a big topic in city planning. You are working on a pilot project that might help in the decision-making. Could you tell us a little bit about it?

Yes, of course. We are currently integrating our 3D Libraries into CloudCities. For a couple of years, we researched a novel product for energy aware urban planning. The idea is that you can quickly assess the current energy demand of buildings, even when very little usage data is available.

Using this product, users can understand what options might be effective for significantly reducing the energy demand of buildings. This product will be coupled with our 3D Libraries. Imagine that you can create energy efficient building and urban design proposals right at the design phase, only using a web browser.

This will be especially important for emerging countries, where cities are growing extremely fast and skilled planners are limited. We hope that we can leave a big impact there.

What are you working on right now?

This one is exciting. We are about to release the next version of CloudCities. The new release will stream whole cities instead of individual web scenes. We are also adding the ability to upload any 3D and 2D data to compose large urban scenarios, only using a web browser. The next big thing will be to include even more realtime data from sensors and refresh the user interface.

How did you finance your start-up? Any tips on how to manage it?

We used a combination of bootstrapping and Seed round supported by smart investors. Right from the start we had customers and worked on a consultancy basis. Research project funding provided us with additional resources to flesh out our products.

Last year, we completed a first Seed Investment Round and the Swiss Environmental Protection Agency certified that we created effective GHG assessment tools for urban planning. The certification was a great success and it brought additional resources to our company.

Do you have any advice for “Archipreneurs” who want to start and build their own business?

I think that the most important step is to just do it. It sounds bold but in the end you need to think about your business idea and how customers will use and pay for it. Finally, you need to implement it. Do not wait too long; make it a reality.

In which areas (outside of traditional practice) can you see major business opportunities for up and coming architects?

Smart cities, energy consultancy and data interoperability are hot topics for architects. Architects are extremely good to structure spatial information at all scales from indoor to city-scale. The big geospatial and IT companies are typically missing these kinds of qualities. Paired with local knowledge, an architect can provide true value.

About Antje Kunze

Antje is the co-founder and CEO of SmarterBetterCities, and the creator of CloudCities, an online platform to view, upload, share and discuss 3D city models. 3D has never been easier.

Antje founded SmarterBetterCities together with Jan Halatsch as an ETH Zurich spin-off in 2012. Up to 2013, Antje had been a research scientist at the Chair of Information Architecture ETH Zurich. In addition to her degree in Architecture, Antje has a background in Computer Science, with a strong focus on information visualization.

The post Smarter, Better Cities: Converting Data into Designs for Urban Planning with Antje Kunze appeared first on Archipreneur.

This week’s interview is with Yiorgos Papamanousakis, Founder and Managing Director of Urban Transcripts, a firm dedicated to exploring the ‘city’ as a complex and evolving phenomenon that should be accessed and discussed across disciplinary boundaries.

Cities and the way we live in and respond to them have been topics of focus in recent years. Widely distributed magazines have added a specific section for the topic in their publications, TED talks explore cities in a separate category and cities are an especially hot topic for industry leaders from the tech scene.

It will be very interesting to see how cities, their transportation links and their residents’ responses to growth will change over the coming years. So it is great that architects can position themselves as experts on this topic more broadly.

Let’s hear what Yiorgios has to say about his approach to making cities by bringing concepts from design and research together with the view of an architect. And how to build a business around it…

I hope you enjoy the interview!

What made you decide to start Urban Transcripts? Was there a particular moment that sealed the decision for you?

Urban Transcripts is, in a way, a product of the crisis. It was in 2009 when, after all the years of studying and/or working in architecture, I found myself in London at the peak of the [financial] crisis, having just completed my MSc in UCL and looking for a job that no one could actually offer me.

Architecture firms were continuously making people redundant, small offices were closing down – it wasn’t nice and didn’t look it would get any better. So I decided it was the time to make my own job. I didn’t have many options anyway. And London helped a lot because, despite the crisis, it’s a place that gives you the feeling that everything new and different to what you know already is possible.

Why this new thing was Urban Transcripts, was because of what I saw as a growing collaboration and communication gap amongst different approaches and professions that deal with the city. I started UT because I wanted to create a platform that can bring together different disciplines, and people with different professional, creative, or academic expertise, and enable a broader collaboration to solve common problems.

What major problems and opportunities do cities face in the 21st century? And what services does your company provide to create successful solutions for re-shaping the urban fabric?

In the last decade we’re witnessing cities becoming themselves as organisms – an object of research and debate. It is no coincidence that Urban Studies programs in universities around the world are multiplying; even The Guardian has launched a “Cities” section now.

It seems that many disciplines have been regrouped into what appears like a city science. There is in this sense a reframing of problems and issues through a ‘city lens’. And rightly so: when socio-economic problems are seen through this ‘city lens’, architecture and urban design become truly relevant as effective spatial tools through which to address greater challenges.

Challenges such as social exclusion and increasing inequality have a spatial component: it is revealing to look at the evidence from spatial analysis studies on how, for example, poverty and spatial patterns relate to each other.

Therefore, many if not all of the challenges of the city are also world challenges: inequality, social exclusion, unsustainable environmental practices, inadequate access to housing, break-up of local communities as a result of gentrification, loss of the public spaces of the city to private and market-oriented interests.

Further, when we look beyond Europe and North America, large parts of the world are entering urbanization with a remarkable speed: China is the obvious example, with whole new cities being developed from scratch.

This new era of urbanization, while it can aggravate these challenges in an unpredictable way, can equally provide us with an opportunity to make the best use of our urban design and programming tools to have a real impact on society – to change society through spatial design.

I guess this is our ambition as a company: to produce solutions that, by redesigning the structure of space and the way that we programm uses and activities in it, can have a greater impact on urban life and society.

We started our work by bringing together people who share an interest about urban development. Urban festivals, conferences, workshops are the pillars upon which we have based our development. Currently, after expanding our activities to research and design and growing our network of collaborators, we are proposing a 3-fold service for the city based on research, public participation, and urban design.

We aim to fuse expert research knowledge and public participation into the design process and provide urban solutions that are sustainably successful exactly because they are not only grounded in research but equally reflect the interests and visions of community stakeholders and the project’s broader public.

Our services include a) research and consulting, b) workshops and public events, and c) urban design projects and studies. Each project is for us a unique urban problem to resolve, the exact approach is always a unique mix of these three components in response to the requirements and the particularities of the brief.

What clients do you usually work for?

We have a good record of collaborations with local government and academia. Our services are proposed to municipalities and urban developers as the main clients, while we often engage universities and other professional or academic bodies as partners in these projects. However, it may well be that we are developing a research project only with academic partners, for example.

Also, a lot of our early work is self-initiated. Often, it has been us that set up and planned a project and then sought to form partnerships in order to realize it. There are many ways to do things and to engage clients and partners into something, as long as it is as interesting for them as it is for us.

How will technology impact the cities of the future in your opinion?

Well cities are technology in themselves: from large-scale infrastructure projects to the IT systems involved whenever you use your pass within an urban transport system. I find particularly interesting the technological developments in the fields of interaction design when this is applied on an urban scale.

Urban society is in essence all about interactions, between people with other people, spaces, devices and machines that we use to get from one place to another and do this or that thing.

I think technological innovations in this field can have a huge impact on how we experience ‘the city’ in the future, not only because they will create new products or services, but because they have the potential of changing the ways we interact with one another and with our surroundings.

Do you have any advice for “Archipreneurs” who are interested in starting their own business?

An old professor of mine used to say: “show me where the problem is”! I think that in order to create a new business that has real value in terms of being useful to the world and equally successful for oneself it needs to be able to offer a solution to a well-defined problem. So defining the problem is a good beginning in order to start making use of ideas towards a new business.

Then, all the things that you don’t know about running a business: the admin, the accounts, the law, all these great little things, be prepared to become an expert in all of them.

And have a plan! Not so much for following it, but for enabling you to see all the things that you didn’t manage to follow! If there is no plan, you can never measure your actual achievements against what you initially set up to do, so you can’t progress.

Last, faith, not in God, but in yourself and the people you work with.

How do you see the future of architecture? In which areas (outside of traditional practice) can you see major opportunities for up and coming architects?

It has always surprised me how rich (and long) architectural education really is and how limited the professional life of an architect can often become. Due to their long and project-oriented training, I think architects are great problem-solvers and excellent visual and verbal communicators.

This set of skills can be applied in many different professional activities: scientific research, consulting, project management, IT solutions design and programming, the real estate industry…

I would like to think that, in the future, architecture becomes bolder in its efforts to shape society and [becomes] less obsessed with beautiful objects. I guess what I’m saying is that architecture – in order to survive as something more than an aesthetic exercise for the privileged few – it has to become relevant for the many.

It can do that only by reaffirming, through its own practice, that designing space is not decorating it with beautiful objects but designing the material support or human interaction.

***

*Urban Transcripts is now looking for a business partner to join the company as their Head of Business Development. Visit http://urbantranscripts.org/?p=3590 for more details.

About Yiorgos Papamanousakis

Architecte DPLG MSc ARB

The founder of Urban Transcripts, Yiorgos initiated the company’s work by directing international collaborative projects – exhibitions, workshops, conferences – on the critical exploration of cities (Athens, 2010; Rome, 2011, London 2012; Berlin, 2014). Currently he is working towards the development of Urban Transcripts into a network of experts on the city, whose work encompasses design, research, and public participation.

Yiorgos is passionate about the relationships between the spatial structure of cities and their socioeconomic and cultural life. He trained as an architect in Paris and holds an MSc from The Bartlett – UCL, London, where developed a keen interest in, empirical research and the application of quantitative methodologies on understanding cities. His current research concerns how the configuration of urban waterfronts impacts on the evolution of coastal cities in Greece.

For 2014—2015 he was an architectural design studio lecturer in Umea School of Architecture (Sweden). Yiorgos has been an advisor and a speaker in various initiatives and projects focused on the city (UrbanIxD, Leipzig Plus Kultur), and a reviewer in academic journals (Urban Design International). He is based in London.

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