Falling Tea Leaves in Detroit

Our contemporary world is gripped in tension between economic development and the use of increasingly scarce environmental resources. This issue is pertinent to architecture and 2011 is an appropriate time to be considering possible reconciliations to it – the 2008 financial crisis has opened opportunities to rethink aspects of our globalised systems of commerce and distribution and the 2010 election of the coalition government introduced the notion of decentralisation - or localism - to political debate in the UK. And last summer the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico illuminated the environmental hazards of our consumption of fossil fuels as well as the vulnerabilities inherent within dependence on this form of energy.

Within this frame Detroit is highly relevant. Once the fifth largest city in the US and home to the three largest car manufacturers in the world it is now becoming a post-industrial city; an apocalyptic landscape populated by empty skyscrapers, redundant infrastructure, abandoned houses and vacant lots. The entropic condition of this shrinking city reflects the shifting fortunes of Ford, General Motors and Chrysler. And, looking ahead to a 21st century defined by higher oil prices and diminishing oil reserves, the future of the ultimate symbol of mass consumer confidence – the car – looks increasingly uncertain. What destiny awaits Detroit itself as a result?


One answer is a neo-liberal apologia: to allow the spiral of decline to continue or even, as has been suggested in the press, to formally abandon the city by federal act. But there is another more hopeful solution already arising within the city. This is a radical form of localism – one which questions the assumptions of centralised industrial processes and challenges the role of institutionalised authority. Vacant land across the city is now being taken over by local action groups for food production and abandoned buildings are being requisitioned, restored and taken ‘off-grid’ with micro systems of energy production which operate independently from centralised utility networks. These resourceful and innovative solutions by social entrepreneurs, artists and architects are particular to the extreme landscape of 21st century Detroit. But the ideas they represent contain nascent solutions to the contemporary global tension between economic development and environmental sustainability. And, as the 2011 UK Localism Bill is being debated in Parliament, the basis for the success, failure or wider application of these ideas is a topical area for investigation.

Tilting at windmills

On the landing of my late aunt’s house hung this watercolour of Holmwood in Surrey, from 1845 according to a note on the back. As a child I used to love studying how a few easy brush strokes describe the form of the mill, how the colours and thinning of the paint capture the particular aerial perspective of the Surrey Weald.

I’m looking at it again from a different perspective. Windmills are common in paintings (particularly from windy countries like England and the Low Countries) and are invariably portrayed as rather beautiful components of our native landscape. They have largely disappeared. No-one bemoans their loss and yet there is a widespread assumption that wind turbines - their successors in harnessing the useful power of the wind - are marring and will destroy our beautiful countryside.

“It’s a question of scale” you might say, but look at how the trees near the mill have been painted deliberately small to increase its scale towering above the fields. Windmills ‘fit in’ to the landscape because they are a physical identifier of the points of greatest wind intensity – they describe what we can’t see. If sited wrongly they would have fallen more quickly into disuse. Reaching for maximum exposure rather than nestling into the landscape for shelter as old farm buildings do they are similarly at one with it. As free-standing objects they reinforce the sense of openness of landscape space.

In the same way, our modern equivalents will have to be sited for maximum benefit rather than scattered randomly over fields and valleys, and as finely honed functional machines they have their own austere beauty.

How effective they are at meeting our energy needs is another matter but on aesthetic grounds they have my vote.

Parametrically cutting carbon

Last Thusday Ramboll showcased the work of their applied computational design unit at the building centre. In a follow on from Colin's blog on being thrifty, the skilful use of parametric design allows for thriftiness when it comes to structural design.

In the mid 20th century Pier Luigi Nervi mimicked bone structures at the Gatti Wool Mill to reduce the amount of concrete used. Rambol parametric boffins have applied the same principals of mapping stress to double curved roof of Greenlands National Gallery of Art. This has greatly cut the embodied carbon of the building. Perhaps as this drive to reduce carbon emissions intensifies we will see the structures of large buildings tend towards more organic, efficient forms.

Upcoming Urban Design Group Events

Upcoming Urban Design Group Events include:

Tonight...
Tim Long’s Covent Garden Walkabout: Innovations in Street Design in Covent Garden / Holborn

Starts at 6.30 outside Chancery Court Hotel, 252 High Holborn (150 metres east of Holborn Underground Station)

Join Tim Long to view some of the recent work in High Holborn and Great Queen Street ending up in a Covent Garden Market winebar in the balmy air of a fine London spring evening for an expansive discussion on urban issues.

Cost – free. Meet outside Chancery Court Hotel 252 High Holborn at 6.30 Monday, 18^th April

Wednesday 20th April 2011

Urban Design Group Monthly Event
Innovations in Street Design & Pedestrian progress?

Wednesday 20^th April, The Gallery, 70 Cowcross Street London EC1M 6 EJ – 6.00 for 6.30

Why does it take so long for thinking about street design to change? This event will reflect on the circumstances that have led up to Manual for Streets and beyond . In particular, it will look at the seminal 1991 Devon County Council Traffic Calming Guidelines. Based on a thorough and extensive study of street design and traffic management practice across Europe it presented designers in the UK with a radically different approach, that was to be followed in the Department for Transport's Manual for Streets in 2007.

Subjects to be debated will include:

How might innovation be made easier in the future?
Who leads on street design?
How might emerging technologies make a difference?
How do we stop today’s progressive design guidance turning into tomorrow’s reactionary design dogma.
Is risk aversion and the fear of litigation still obstructing good design?

Keynote Speaker
Tim Pharoah, Leading authority on the public realm and co-author of the Devon County Council Traffic Calming Guide
Followed by debate with Expert Discussion Panel including Dr Graham Smith & Colin Davis

Fun with thrift: towards the circular economy

I went with Simon Smith of Ramboll to the EAUC conference this week to listen to what was going on and to promote our ideas for ‘smart refurbishment’. Of course the current economic conditions are forcing us to make do with reuse of existing stock but the growing recognition of the importance of putting embodied carbon into the equation should be driving this in any case. The ‘smart’ bit is getting the balance right between optimum use of space, upgraded fabric and energy.

In the light of this, Ellen Macarthur gave a timely and inspiring closing key note on how she had gone from record-busting sailor to campaigner for a radical transformation of our economy, bringing to that overwhelming challenge the same sense that the impossible can be done. The overarching vision is that we must redesign our economy from a linear ‘take, make, dump’ pattern to a circular one in which resources are used more prudently, intensively and design enables their repeated re-use. If the world’s supplies of mineral resources used in the conventional way are running out at the pace predicted (‘coal will last for 117 years’ etc) this is clearly an imperative.

One aspect of the circular economy is the idea of ‘Industrial Symbiosis’ in which one industry’s waste is another’s resource. The principle underpins the London Sustainable Industries Park in Dagenham where we (with Ramboll, Hoare Lea and Grontmij designed the Institute for Sustainability’s Research Centre for the LTGDC. As in the natural world, symbiosis doesn’t happen overnight and it takes time for a richly complex industrial ecosystem to take root. Good ecological management to speed up germination, nurture seedlings, and link mutually beneficial organisms translates to some pretty challenging marketing and creative approaches to funding to get the industrial ecosystem underway and self-sustaining.

One of the pioneer plants at the LSIP is Closed Loop, the company that recycles plastic bottles to food grade plastic. As a small example of low energy reuse rather resource hungry recycling I must show you my reuse of plastic bottles for replacement mudguards for my Brompton. They have lasted far longer than the originals - the serious mismatch between supply and demand is perhaps a lesson in itself.

There’s an old fashioned word for this which I think we might begin to see more of – thrift. Whether you call it thrift or ‘Project Redesign’ we need more of it and I look forward to sharing ideas.

The Edge discusses the James Review

This week, I sat in on The Edge monthly meeting hosted by Robin Nicholson at our office. First on the agenda was the James (Schools Capital) Review which was hotly debated amongst the members. Although the call for POE was welcomed along with a National Database for the Condition of Schools ( work abandoned by the last government in 2005), the 10-15% target of energy reduction seemed wholly inadequate with no mention of CRC. Several members of the Edge sat on the Zero Carbon Schools Task Force which adopted Bill Bordass' mantra "Halve the demand, double the efficiency and halve the carbon in the supply and you are down to one eighth of the emissions" but Mr Gove has abandoned the whole ZC programme. So much for Osborne's promise to become the “greenest ever” Government. The Edge has a programme of debates coming up which are then published on the Edge website www.edgedebate.com The next is on the future of Research with the Carbon Trust on April 20th - speak to Robin if you are interested in going.

The hours of repose

‘Growing your own’ is becoming mainstream again.

What better way to enjoy the glorious weather at the weekend than to get out and plant? As a newcomer to this game I’m concentrating on high value or unusual herbs and veggies, or the ones – like potatoes – that taste so much better dug straight from the garden. Some lettuce, leeks, spinach and chard somehow survived the winter frosts, and I supplemented these by fresh planting. We have a couple of trays of chilli seedlings for the first time – why buy ones flown in when you can grow your own?

I’m not quite ready to go communal myself but I’m intrigued by how vegetable growing might be a core ‘grass root’ activity feeding the new localism. Incredible Edible appears to have had a truly regenerative effect in Todmorden – it is inspiring.

Le Corbusier isn’t the first urban designer to spring to mind when thinking about allotments. If you google ‘The City of Tomorrow’ you will find principally those familiar images ‘Cartesian’ skyscrapers we have learned to mock.

But elsewhere in the book (which is well worth a read) Le Corbusier vividly describes his ‘garden city housing scheme on the honeycomb principle’. By grouping dwellings together, each with their own terrace, shared land is available in the centre of the block 'just outside your own home'. As well as 150 square yards for communal sports, ‘close at hand are the 150 square yards of kitchen garden joined up with the similar plots belonging to the neighbours.’ By rationalising the layout the allotments are automatically watered. ‘There would be a farmer in charge of 100 such plots and heavy cultivation employed. The inhabitant comes back from his work and with the renewed strength given him by his games, set to work on his garden. His plot, cultivated in a standardised and scientific way, feeds him for the greater part of the year. There are storehouses on the boarders of each group of plots in which he can store his produce for the winter. Orchards lie between the houses and the cultivated ground. This new type of housing scheme turns the inhabitant into a producer.’

Published in 1924, even more relevant today.

Building Awards

As usual the Building Awards kicked off with a great VIP party for the judges (me) and other friends of the magazine. Our Kew Herbarium was pipped by FCB's Chelsea Academy for Public Building Project of the Award; Rab and Denise Bennetts got Architectural Practice of the Year and Building Magazine Project of the Year; Willmott Dixon got Major Contractor of the Year helped by placing sustainability at the heart of their business. Architype won the new Cut the Carbon Award with some impressive carbon savings over 26 years. Technical Editor Tom Lane explained to me that he is building up a library of Post Occupancy Evaluations; I explained that we were nearly there with Hoare Lea's POE on our Warwick Digital Laboratory.

Campus of the Future

I recently took part in an excellent multi-disciplinary Arup Foresight workshop looking at the STEEP (Social, Technical, Economic, Environmental and Political) drivers for the future of the university. At the end of the day the vast majority of us voted for The Village Campus, one of four options arranged around integrated/segregated and physical/virtual cross-axes. The other options were Open Education, A la Carte E-Learning and Faculty Islands. As part of the 'brain food' Annette Smith reminded us that lecturing was a cheap but very ineffective way of learning, Andy Black dazzled us with social media and Sean McDougall shocked us with the idea that on the basis that: 1. 80% of black children leave school at 16 while 97% of white middle class girls go to University 2. 99% of London teachers are white but 50% pupils have one non-white parent Schools are designed for those going to University but the other 50% need different kinds of space.