Episode Transcript
[00:00:06] Tamlyn Shimizu: Welcome to Smart in the City, the BABLE podcast where we bring together top actors in the smart city arena, sparking dialogues and interactions around the stakeholders and themes most prevalent for today's citizens and tomorrow's generations.
I am your host, Tamlyn Shimizu and I hope you will enjoy this episode and gain knowledge and connections to accelerate the change for a better urban life.
Smart in the City is brought to you by BABLE Smart Cities. We enable processes from research and strategy development to co creation and implementation. To learn more about us, please visit the BABLE platform@BABLE SmartCities EU.
Welcome back to another episode of Smart in the City, everyone. This is a special episode hosted by one of my colleagues. This time hosted by our CEO and founder, Alexander Schmidt. I hope you enjoyed the change in voice and pace and I will catch you next time.
[00:01:02] Alexander Schmidt: Hello everyone and welcome back to the next Future Summit series from an episode recorded live here in Berlin. We are in a lovely tiny house. Today we're exploring how architecture can reshape our cities to be more sustainable, livable and adaptable to climate change. Joining us is Dennis Hauer from Urban Climate Architects, whose award winning work is Redefining Urban Landscapes. Welcome, Dennis.
[00:01:25] Dennis Hauer: Thank you. Nice to be here.
[00:01:28] Alexander Schmidt: I look so much forward to talking about these topics with you today. Before we jump into the core of our discussion, we always like to do this small like teaser question and to kick things off with this fun question. If you have to describe what you are doing as urban climate architect or your mission as a superhero, which superhero would it be and why?
[00:01:51] Dennis Hauer: Yeah, that's very interesting question. A part of me would say, but it may be more about my personality. It would be a bit about the Hulk or something to really shout out and go, yeah, and make big steps. But I think in practice we are a bit more subtle, but hopefully we can be some kind of superman in what we do. I think that would be a nice goal.
[00:02:15] Alexander Schmidt: Brilliant, Brilliant. Thanks for this. Tell us a little bit more about yourself, your journey from personal career perspectives as well, but then also about what you're doing in your company.
[00:02:25] Dennis Hauer: Yes.
Yeah, I'm. Yeah. So I'm Dennis from the Netherlands, born in Utrecht in the center of the Netherlands 46 years ago now.
I think I knew quite soon what I wanted to become. I think when I was a small kid I was drawing a lot and thinking about architecture and designing stuff. So I think it was quite clear to me soon that I wanted to become an architect.
Yeah. Which led me to Delft, where the Technical University is with the Architecture education. And yeah, there I graduated in 2002. After that I worked for 10 or 15, 10 to 12 years for a big engineer firm, Royal Housekening at the time, which really brought me into sustainability, also working from a very multidisciplinary perspective. So it was really taught in. I think that was also what I was missing, missing in the education. I guess it was all a lot about architecture then, at least about the beauty of architecture and how to design, but I think more about the integrated and sustainable topics. That's something that I really learned when I started to work in an interdisciplinary design firm.
After that I moved to one or two other companies and since 10 years now, already working as an architect director of our office. So Urban Climate Architects, together with one other director, Tim, we started to build on the company. What's there now.
[00:04:09] Alexander Schmidt: Brilliant. I think it's always interesting how quickly you go back to the Netherlands when it comes to these topics of sustainable urban development. The first book on sustainable urban development was just called Duressam Stadebon. I think that's about how you pronounce it. And there was no English translation, so I actually had to read. It was my first book on this topic. I had to read it in Dutch, so I still have it. It's actually in our office now. Tell us a little bit about how you, as urban climate architects, incorporate climate adaptation, sustainable urban development into urban design.
[00:04:43] Dennis Hauer: Yeah, I think the name Urban Climate Architect tells quite good about what we are and what we want to be. I think originally it was more about literally the urban climate. So we are designing buildings and areas in existing cities because we really think that when you have a dense city like the Netherlands, that the city takes a really important place. And basically it came from different angles what we do. On one side we saw that over the last 100 years the city has lost a bit of his. How do you call it?
His attraction. Because what you saw that at a certain point in urbanism, we started to take out functions out of the city, which were in the 16th and the 7th, 17th century, made sure that the city was very vivid and became alive. You would live in the city, you would trade in the city, you would work in the city, basically you would do anything over there. Of course there are downsides also because we used our canals as sewers and things like that. But that's a different topic, I guess. But I think what you saw is that at a certain point we started not living anymore in our cities. We got to suburbs and got beautiful houses over there. We also took A lot of working out of the city. Also maybe part as a mobility issue. When we started working in residential areas, and I think especially in our older cities, you see that they became more and more a museum. So they looked very nice. But when you're there at night, then it's almost empty. We have the shopping streets and when the shops are closed and above the shops you saw that there were nobody lived there anymore. The shops had their stores over there and their storage above the shops. And that's it. I think with our office about 15 years ago, we started to really look into those kinds of assignments. So what would happen if we started to live again above shops? If you would extend buildings by building on top of existing buildings and really add value and high quality space to the city. So to make sure that the city become more lively again. So on one side we could solve a really topic about housing. We need a lot of houses in the Netherlands and there's a lot of space within existing cities to do that. And that's really something we believe in by combining functions and making the existing city center stronger again. And besides that, also solving more the climate issues, of course, because you always have things like heat island effect, like what do you do with water in the city.
So our assignments also were about not only adding quality to the buildings, but also looking at topics like nature, inclusivity, water topics, and see how we can create solutions for that.
[00:07:37] Alexander Schmidt: Maybe you want to explain to our listeners what the urban heat island effect is.
[00:07:42] Dennis Hauer: What you see in our cities nowadays is that in a city the average temperature is higher than out of the city. And that's of course because you can imagine, you also see it in Berlin over here, there's a lot of stone into the city. So not only the pavement, because we have a lot of paved area in the city, but also because the adding of buildings, which creates a lot more a lot surface, which on one side makes.
On one side, when the sun is shining onto a building, it becomes a bit of a radiator. So it starts heating up and it takes quite a long time before it cools down again. And on the other side, what you also see is that wind is pushed upwards when it's moving towards buildings. So you see that the wind also has less influence in the city, which makes it slow down a bit. And also make sure that the heat stays there.
[00:08:36] Alexander Schmidt: Okay. And that means basically when there is already a hot day in an urban heat island, it's even hotter, it's even less.
[00:08:42] Dennis Hauer: Yes. And I think in certain cities you can see that it depends, but it can go up. It can go up to 1 or 2 degrees average. And even when you have paved areas in combination with green areas, it can, locally, it can even change for about 10 or 15 degrees on a hot day. So it's quite. It can be quite extreme.
[00:09:02] Alexander Schmidt: And that is interesting because there are some solutions for this build solutions that we can put in place. Green infrastructure, blue infrastructure, you already mentioned which solutions are there to kind of mitigate these effects and why is it so problematic implementing them in cities?
[00:09:19] Dennis Hauer: I think if you look integrating it into the public area, I think that a lot of cities are working on that a lot. I think Paris this year is quite a good example. They agreed a lot for the Olympics.
[00:09:31] Alexander Schmidt: And if you haven't heard that episode with the vice mayor of Paris who was responsible for that regreening, I really.
I think you should have a listen to it. That's to our listener. Sorry to interrupt you.
[00:09:43] Dennis Hauer: So I think in the urban, in the public area, you can see that cities can do a lot themselves by simply replacing stone for green, which is of course still easier said than done. But I think you are seeing a direction in a lot of cities where they really are working on that to making public area greener, but also to buildings themselves. You can imagine that if you would have all the rooftops of the buildings in the city and you would make them green, it would already help a lot. So I think really about greening also existing buildings, working more with green facades, working more with green roofs is a good solution, which you also, I think again, France is a good example of that, because in Paris you also see that a lot. But I think it's also creating some challenges, because then again, we always say that if you want green to work the best, then it's best to have its roots in the ground, because there it's easier to make sure that it stays green.
But when you incorporate it into facades or roofs, you also need to make sure that it stays green. So you really need to think about ways how you can water it or in the type of plants you choose. And I think in roofs, it works quite well. In green roofs, after the first year, they can keep themselves quite good in balance. But I think in green facades, you still see quite a lot of projects which fail because the. Yeah, because there isn't enough soil for the plants to. To root in. So that I think there are still. I think the market is growing on that and the market is changing also in that. But I think it will quite still need quite some innovations in that to, to make it really a good solution.
[00:11:29] Alexander Schmidt: What other types of, you know, design choices and maybe solutions, implementation are you using to kind of make cities more climate resilient?
[00:11:39] Dennis Hauer: I think especially in the Netherlands, what you see also, but I think all across Europe what you see is that also the changing of the weather patterns is becoming a lot more of an issue. We see that we're in the Netherlands. We were used, of course, we were a country which is really great in water management. And Yeah, I think 30% of the country wouldn't be there if you weren't good in water management. But what you see is that that's where we always had the effect of taking rid of the water as soon as possible. So getting sure that it goes out to the sea, pumping it out, that it stays out. What you see at the moment that because of the patterns are changing because of the higher temperature, you see that we are faced a lot more with extreme rainfall in combination with longer periods without rain. And that's a bit of a problem because then you get a lot of water in one time which we simply can't handle. So it leads to flooding. And on the other hand, when you need the water in drier periods, it isn't there. So I think we really need to change the way we look at water. And I think also urban solutions can really help for that. There are a lot of nice innovations already where you have storage of water below roads, but also underneath buildings or on top of buildings where you can store water so that you can use it when. Yeah, when you need it.
[00:13:10] Alexander Schmidt: Okay, that's very interesting. And I think you have done a lot of projects. We actually won a lot of awards for your work as well. Is there a project that you're most proud of and tell us a little bit about that one?
[00:13:22] Dennis Hauer: Yeah, I think that's always difficult because there are.
Yeah, it's always not necessarily the most prestigious project, but I think you can be proud in a lot of ways. I think last year we worked on a project where we designed a complete bio based building for the Salvation army where we could give housing to people who else will be living on the street. And although that isn't the most ambitious, expensive or biggest project, I think it's a really rewarding project because what you see is that you socially really can add quality with the design. And I think that's a different way of being proud than for instance, another project we are working on now that's called Urban Boots, which is under construction now. And There we really have a building which incorporates as well the aesthetic as the social, as the environmental aspects into a total concept where you also.
Where the building defines basically a way of living. It's not just that you live there, but you also can rent a car or you can have a complete insight how sustainable or how healthy your house is just by looking on your phone. So it's really a different kind of, of project, I guess, which for another target group which really creates a different type of proudness, I guess.
[00:14:45] Alexander Schmidt: And those are all in the Netherlands?
[00:14:47] Dennis Hauer: Yeah.
[00:14:47] Alexander Schmidt: Okay, can you explain to our listeners the bio based.
What does that mean? So what's built out of. So what's actually the material?
[00:14:56] Dennis Hauer: Yeah, I think what you see the bio based sector is really something which is quite booming in the Netherlands also something which the government is really supporting by seeing how we can use more natural resources to make building materials. And I think there are, I think, well, the most common one is wood, I guess. So when you use wood for buildings, and we use wood a lot as also as a structural material. So that means that we build, we basically replace the concrete or the steel of our structures by wood. And then we work with cost laminated timber, which is, it looks a bit like plywood, but then it's thicker structural wood which you can actually make floors and walls with. And there you already can replace about 65% of your building with a bio based material with also the benefits that it stores CO2 instead that it costs CO2 to produce. But I think other examples of bio based are more the fibers. So we see hemp is someone which is quite big, you can make isolation of it. But I think also the more natural materials like sheep wool or cotton or other types of plants like elephant grass, you can also use it to make isolation of it. So I think there are a lot of interesting innovations in the Netherlands to replace more chemical materials by biobase. And I think on the construction of buildings and on the isolation of the buildings, I think those two are the main markets at the moment where you see the biggest developments and also the biggest production.
[00:16:42] Alexander Schmidt: And let's see a little bit on the other side of the coin when we look at like kind of rebuilding our cities and buildings in a climate neutral way. There have been developments, for example the districts, the super blocks in Barcelona, we're getting some of those in Germany now as well. And they are not always perceived very positively. Right. So there is a lot of opposition also to these types of rework or change within the city center. Do you have these in your projects as well? And if so, how do you tackle them?
[00:17:19] Dennis Hauer: Well, I think. I think in the Netherlands, of course, we have a lot of ancient cities, which is always quite delicate, because a lot of the times it's a monumental setting where you simply can't demolish a building or something. But I think in the end, it's also good that you really try to add a new layer to the city, because I think then also architecturally it becomes more interesting. It becomes more. Yeah, you see this city develop over time, and I think that's not a bad thing. I think in the beginning of our office, we worked a lot where we would simply place contemporary elements on top of existing buildings. And I know we had quite some discussions also with beauty commissions there and monument commissions, but in the end, I think they worked quite well. And I think it's just about. With respect for the existing, by adding something new, I think you can really see that you can add quality and add value.
And also I see. Well, when we talk with. We talk a lot also with neighborhoods and with people living there, and I think if you show what the quality can be, what you add, and that you also maybe can add something socially, so add the quality to a space. For instance, in Delft, we are working. What you see in Delft is that there are not a lot, a lot of public spaces in the city. You see there are a lot of really nice gardens, but they're all more private, so private in city blocks. What we're trying to do now is make those areas stronger by adding more functions on one side, so adding more houses, adding more places to work over there, and on the other side, also making them public so that you can also give back public space to the city. And we see that when you talk with people on that scale, that almost nobody is against it. So most people really like that because you see that you really can add also some new space to the city which wasn't there. So you can solve multiple problems in one time then.
[00:19:19] Alexander Schmidt: And the Dutch housing market is in general very particular. Right. So you build on weak land, so to say, you said about 30% of the country wouldn't be there if you weren't so good at water management. But you also see lots of these old brick like houses, which seem to be very popular with. With young. With young families. So is there a particular, let's say, market or submarket that the type of buildings that you are designing is designed for? Or do you see this if you, as you said, explain it to the people that it's really something, it can be something for everyone.
[00:19:55] Dennis Hauer: I think basically for everyone what you see is, I think if you refer to the, the typical Dutch brick housing, I see you see a lot of more family houses, which is basically a house with a garden and you can place your car in front. But I think we work more within the density of the existing city. So I think the typing of houses, housing solutions we design are mostly like building blocks, apartment buildings, so more layered and then also you see more different type of housing. I think if you see where our demand of, the demand of housing is needed the most in the Netherlands is more now about basically the people who just graduate and need a house or are all the people you see that they live in a house and basically they live in a house which is too big and they want to move to another house, a smaller house, but it simply isn't there. So I think that you see that that family house market is served quite well. But the other parts, so maybe the smaller apartments or the apartments which are more for elderly people, there's simply not enough of them. So I think that's a market which we focus more and more on.
[00:21:10] Alexander Schmidt: Also we've talked a lot about bio based solutions, low tech, many of them, but new types of materials becoming available.
Is there a part in this kind of reshaping our inner cities to become more climate resilient for technology?
[00:21:33] Dennis Hauer: Yeah, I think there is. Because I think if you really there are quite some problems which, like for instance the balance in the energy in the energy net, which really needs technology to create a solution. So for instance, I think if you see that everybody is having his own power connection and is using his power during the day or during the evening, having his own PV panels on the roof and it's all just small boxes where something goes in and something goes out, but there's no connection between different type of functions. And you can imagine that if I have my PV panels on my roof and I'm producing during the day, but I'm working, then I'm not using it. But the office building which is across the street is working during the day and he has to take power from the net. So I think if you really can look at that balance of where energy is produced and where energy is used, I think the technology and can really provide smart solutions to get that more into balance and get the peaks out, the usage out more. So I think energy is a good example of how technology could really help to, to solve a problem in the city.
[00:22:55] Alexander Schmidt: Brilliant. I could talk about these things a lot longer with you. But is there anything that we couldn't touch yet that you are. That kind of is close to your heart that you want to maybe touch and share with our listeners?
[00:23:11] Dennis Hauer: Yeah, I think. I think what's. What's underrated a lot is the social aspect of creating diversity and creating more social place in centers. So it's a lot about living products, buildings making functions, but I think it really provides space for social experiments in the city and making sure that can grow. I think that's something which is really what we're trying a lot also in our work, but a lot of time is missing because there is no space for that or people are underestimating what the effect of that can be.
[00:23:54] Alexander Schmidt: Very cool. That's a great note and also great hand over to my next segment. The next question is shout out, Shout out.
[00:24:05] Tamlyn Shimizu: Mention a person, an organization, or a city you think deserves more recognition in the field.
[00:24:14] Dennis Hauer: That's a good question.
[00:24:16] Alexander Schmidt: Take your time.
[00:24:17] Dennis Hauer: Yeah, I think what's. What's really good in the Netherlands that there are some organizations who are working on crossing the bridge between the different sectors. And I think that's something which is really necessary to solve the whole sustainability problem we have.
And what you see is that everybody's trying to solve it within their own discipline.
And I think there's an organization in the Netherlands which is called Building Balance, and they're really trying to make a connection between the building sector and the agricultural sector, which basically both have a bit of the same problems, but they really could help each other by solving these problems. So I really think that we need more of these types of organizations which really help to cross the bridge and help each other to get a step further.
[00:25:18] Alexander Schmidt: So shout out to Building Balance. We'll make sure they hear about that. Thank you for that. The last question that I have for you is a question that we ask all our guests here in the podcast, and it's a definition question, and I am very interested in your personal definition of what a smart city is or should.
[00:25:38] Dennis Hauer: I think a smart city is a city where it makes a good combination between the social and the technical aspects to become more livable, which really helps connect different groups within the city with each other who can help each other and make the city more livable and also more durable.
[00:26:06] Alexander Schmidt: That's a great definition, Dennis. I thank you so much for being with us. This was very fun discussion. Learned a lot about the activities in the Netherlands, and let's hope we'll have a lot more climate resilient cities in the future. And to all of our listeners, don't forget, you can always create a free account on our website, BABLE Smart Cities you to learn about these innovations and a lot more from all across Europe. Thank you very much for listening in. Thanks again, Dennis, for joining.
[00:26:34] Dennis Hauer: Thank you.
[00:26:36] Tamlyn Shimizu: Thank you all for listening. I'll see you at the next stop on the journey to a better urban life.
