Lecture Response 2

Christoph Ingenhoven, Presented by a+u                                                            29 Sep 2015

This is the second (and only other) talk I attended during which I asked a question.

Ingenhoven really talks about his entire oeuvre the whole time, which I feel may not be that beneficial to discourse. However, there were still many things to learn from him.

Ingenhoven proposed the concept of ‘supergreen’, green architecture that doesn’t merely meet environmental standards, but also encompasses people and their daily activities. As the brief says it all, his architecture is about combining ecologic architecture with aesthetics and technology.

He has his own studio, Ingenhoven architects which is one of the world’s leading practices in sustainable design.

In Singapore, he is doing the Marina One project.

He first mentions his design philosophy with relation to the future of the world.

In 2050, 70% of the world’s population will live in urban areas. Right now, Shenzhen, Guangzhou: largest city contains 120 million people, and Tokyo, 37 million people. They are examples of hypercities, metropolises containing more than 20 million lives. 40 of the world’s largest cities represent 18% of the world’s population but represent 66% of the economy. Cities take up 3% of the surface; but 80% of the carbon emissions.

With all these being said, it is only right to focus on urban cities, which (in my general knowledge) have the potential to be efficient consumers of energy. We passed the point where over half the world’s population is living in an urban rather than suburban area already. Cities are what we need to develop architecture in relation to.

He talks about his works as follows:

RWE tower – one of the first skyscrapers to be naturally ventilated. 1996. Skin facade.

Toranomon Project, Tokyo, is a residential tower and office tower as well. Every balcony has both horizontal and vertical landscaping.

Breeze, Osaka. It has a double-skinned façade with natural ventilation. 50%. A 7-story podium is tucked under the building, with concert halls and shopping etc. Building has relationship to the others around it.

Kobogen 2 Dusseldorf. Positioned between a public park and something else. Ingenhoven’s practice looked for the types of trees with golden-brown leaves during autumn, kept during winter snows, and slightly more green during spring. Type of species is important. This creates a varying landscape through the course of the year as the seasons change.

Lufthansa HQ Frankfurt. Very surrounded by noise, yet the most approachable building around. Beside high-speed train tracks and the airport’s runway. The idea of a concrete shell with steel and glass. Each office is oriented to gardens. Not heated nor cooled. (gardens in between buildings. Kinda like a greenhouse. Louvres that allow for air circulation in the roof. Also opening windows ventilates the office.) There is heating in winter and cooling water through the floor slabs during summer. Vents in the ceiling ventilate as well as let smoke out (??? Thought smoke goes down)

European Investment Bank, Luxembourg, has a timber facade! This doesn’t radiate coldness and people can seat nearer to it. Very interesting idea, that his architecture is indeed climate responsive. It is a curved, v-shaped building (a series connected together like a W) and this helps reduce sound. Triangular glass panels for facade also.However, the Venturi effect throws a wrench into the ventilation. The shape of the building helps to counteract this effect.

Lanserhof Lake Tegern. A rural and nice getaway area. Designed similar to a monastery. All rooms oriented to the outside. Material: wood. Ingenhoven likes simple reduced elegant design. Luxury comes from the space and the landscape that the architecture supports.

Main Station Stuttgart. Ingenhoven saved most of the existing station and built downwards. 28 light-eyes allow light into the excavated interior. Heating and Cooling are done by the trains coming and leaving. So zero energy needed. The Light-eyes are above the train platforms. In winter, the minimum is 14 degrees Celsius and in Summer max of 28 degrees when it’s 34 degrees outside. Also facilitated by the shading of trees outside. The light-eye: 30cm thick at the extreme ends/thinnest. Great engineering to make things appear very light. Thickest part is 1.5m. Also have vents in them. There was also a need to build a temporary railway station (imagine a waterfall and making it flow earlier first while treating the original.) So does the architect need to design the interim structure well too? 7-8 years...

International Criminal Court, The Hague. This INTERNATIONAL court tries to cater to all nationalities, appearing first and foremost as a place of law. So dispense with the old stone building, the Greek pediments etc. Instead thin colonnades rising to hold up a light ceiling. Very transparent and light (both meanings.) IT’S HARD to get the energy balance even with a great climate, not too hot nor cold.

Alexanderplatz Berlin: A residential tower in the middle of Berlin. The volumes jut out to random extents. 3D shape. The first few floors provide a safe feeling for the pedestrians. Welcome. Facade played a big role.

University Dusseldorf. Surrounded by trees, nature, a body of water. Using the environment to cool, for aesthetic, etc... Ingehoven is very sensitive to the exact environment his buildings stand in. Harmoniusly blending in. The sun shines directly on the rows of steps leading to the building and letting the building and students interact with the lake and nature.

Swarovski Lake Zurich. U-shaped building. View of lake is emphasised. The interior U-shape is conceived as a public plaza to give back to the people of the village. (the two pointed ends face outwards to the water). Again as with the university previously, usage of lake water to cool the building. Very green.

1 Bligh Sydney: People sit on the steps (lots of steps) and eat lunch, there is interaction with the public. Talking through the curtain (facade) of the building. The building has no ‘back’ to it!  Apart from the openings for bicycle and carpark, it is meant to be viewed 360-degrees “in the round” like a sculpture. The atrial space, first few floors are given back to the public. The atrium is a space for looking across, up and down floors, into the transparent space, facilitating interaction, fostering community.

Google HQ, Palo Alto: Designing for climate change. California, LA, turning into a desert because of the drought. So how does one design something so big, make people feel as if they’re nerdy students when working, and yet cater to such a climate?

Other small projects that were skimmed past: House 61; Strandkai Hamburg; UCD University College Dublin.

Marina One Singapore: The tropical city is the city of the future. The countries likely to experience population growth tend to have this climate. Tropical areas need wind for people to feel good. Building designed to facilitate wind movement and ventilation. So, the design is such that wind speed and turbulence is enhanced. Air flows from the bottom to the top because hot air rises and is blown away. Everyone gets a little wind.

The plot of land given is right in the centre of the Marina Bay reclaimed area, and will not be affected by future land reclamation. Ingenhoven designed Marina One to be insular first until the developments for the next decade or two are completed and there is harmony between buildings in the district. Pedestrianisation and public space take place on the ground level – public space and the atrium. Rule to bring back about 25% of the greenery taken away. Eventually, 3000 will live and 30k people work here.

Questions:

Did your education in any way influence your future career path towards greening/sustainability?

Green party created an entire political agenda focused on “green politics”. The shift in German culture in the 70s caused the end of modern architecture being taught in German universities. Swing from modernism to postmodernism based on white, rose-striped buildings, turned the attention onto an artistic, intellectual, diverse form of architecture, whereas modernism was more rational.

Out of studying heritage and preserved buildings come many of the solutions for contemporary architecture. Brazil has a strong tradition of good architecture under difficult economic, political, climatic conditions. Singapore is on the edge of whether or not to develop an identity. Identity comes from dedication and being keenly attuned to local issues, while finding local solutions.

Certification is important, but boring. This is not the holistic approach to green and sustainable buildings. There may be things which do not contribute to any award rubric, but is still important to the building. You are not forced by the system to give back more land than you use, but you can do it anyway. That is the supergreen mentality.

For countries which do not enforce green and sustainability standards, is it the responsibility of the architect to create it in your design?

Is there anyone who would reject green design? So far in my personal experience there has been no one “forcing” me to create a green building or “forcing” a non-green building. Everyone usually agrees to do the right thing. Hence, if it is a realistic idea, do not be afraid to put such ideas on the table for discussion.

Firstly, I have learnt more about green architecture and the way the world is going from Ingenhoven. Granted, some statistics I already knew, but through his repeated examples of his own work, I gradually understood the key tenets of his philosophy. Architecture has to cater to high-density, high-rise living, such as that already found in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Tokyo for example. We need to cut down our energy usage and instead utilise the natural environment. (Perhaps some lessons could be taken from vernacular architecture and the shophouses of Singapore and adapted to a new concept of Tropical Architecture.) Architecture has to co-exist with the environment around it. Existing buildings should be conserved and made use of as far as possible, as cultural icons and to reduce wastage. Climate and micro-climates and ecosystems can be made use of and factored in to design. Perhaps, the issue of greenery and sustainability can be woven into the very process of design, present in the parti, and fulfilling part of the function. Architects need to proactively factor the concept of ‘supergreen’ into their designs, and not simply do it for the sake of the accreditation. It needs to be part of how we look at the world.

But then again, on a less ‘architectural’ note, what I didn’t like was the fact that he only talked about his own work. I’m not sure how many principal architects do this, but I know that I prefer to work for someone who is more collaborative and perhaps not as egoistic as to only bring across his own work while talking about his philosophy of ‘supergreen’. Perhaps a more nuanced discourse could be achieved by discussing other firms’ approach to this ongoing movement in architecture and then trying to lay some ground for the future and perhaps inspire others. I believe that two and a half hours on an oeuvre may indeed be too long and doesn’t serve to hold the audience’s attention. With that said, Ingenhoven has sadly lost a little bit of credibility with me. That, and that I expected more breaking of new ground. Since the future of architectural growth is likely to be in tropical cities, how can architecture adapt itself to the climate more? What kind of changes might sustainability take on in the near future? I think that these are questions that I will have to ask myself.

The question that I asked him was about whether he, in his architecture, was looking for a new typology. The high-rise, so ubiquitous and necessary in the urban city, and providing offices, private and public housing for people to live, work and play in: has he, or are there, new attempts to redefine a new typology, or is the concept of “supergreen” itself a new typology that is catering to the new requirements for energy efficiency and greenery and so on?

I honestly didn’t get a very satisfactory answer, but I felt that his reply was a sort of closure at any rate. Ingenhoven told me (more or less) that a new typology is not looked for; it is found, in the process of trying to adapt to the problems faced with every new building: site constraints, the client, the cultural and world context. While I have no way of verifying his words as of yet, if I take them as true, I suppose that it is so. Sustainable architecture, while being the next big thing, and even required by BCA for buildings to fulfil certain criteria, seems to have produced new elements: the green wall, the green rooftop, new types of skyscrapers with a void in the middle with a terrace garden and bringing a hint of nature into the building. Is that not a new typology when compared with the concrete office towers of the past? I gather that architecture evolves with the times, is a reflection of the current movement in the world, as quotes from the few Ideas lectures that I have attended (for the sake of curiosity) put it.

However – and this in retrospect, since this response is written more than a month after the lecture – perhaps new typologies really can be defined after all. At WOHA’s talk on their BTO at Dawson, Richard Hassel also questioned, why make skyscrapers the way it is done now? The trees should be on the ground and the rooftops of different buildings blended into a homogeneous whole at a specified height – that way, they don’t cast shadows on each other and minimise the efficiency of solar panels. He also proposed that the stepped terrace (a la Chan Soo Kian’s Dawson) be turned inside out and the terraces climb outwards instead from the inside; protected and creating a central green atrium. If this is not the creation of a new typology (were it put into actual practice), then what is it?

I feel that Ingenhoven has broken new ground for sure, but other architectural firms would do good to follow his example and build upon it and continue to challenge the notion of sustainability and green architecture even more.