Initiated by Mathias Lehner and Maike van Stiphout in 2014 nextcity’s vision offers Quality of Life in the City to all species. Our mission is to develop and share knowledge by research, practice and university teaching. Tools include the symposia and exihibits held at Arcam Amsterdam, the Venice Architecture Biennale, the HNI and the Dutch Design Week. In 2019 the 'First Guide to Nature Inclusive Building' was published.
A new publication about Building with nature is published by Rius (Research in Urbanism Series), TU Delft. This publication offers an overview of the latest cross-disciplinary developments in the field of Building with Nature for the protection of coastal regions.
Drawing from the experience of DS landscape architects, four actualized projects and two student master theses of the Academy of Architecture illustrate the challenges, opportunities and benefits that building with nature presents. These cases highlight four important lessons for designing with nature in rural and urban landscapes
“The 2021 TNOC Festival pushes boundaries to radically imagine our cities for the future.Join a diverse international community of urban thinkers to re-imagine our cities today, to build the cities of tomorrow. “
This virtual festival spans 5 days with programming across all regional time zones and provided in multiple languages. TNOC Festival “offers the ability to truly connect local place and ideas on a global scale for a much broader perspective and participation than any one physical meeting in any one city could ever have achieved.“
Protecting the ‘skin’ of the city with all forms of greenery delivers a wide array of ecosystem services, as Nicole Pfoser shows in her research already in 2012. While the unprotected skin leads to noisy, hot and flooded cities, the ‘city skin’ composed of roofs, facades and public space surfaces delivers sound absorption, water buffering, reduction of urban heat islands – and an increase in urban biodiversity, when protected with urban flora.
The acces to the digital congres “natuurinclusief bouwen” is free! Look at the interesting line-up and join the workshops at https://www.congresnatuurlijk.nl/programma#5663
There is also positive news from Vienna these days: Because securing biodiversity on public green spaces is important – they are not only attractive areas to be used by people and animals and help cooling down the city in the summer – the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna (Boku) was asked by the metropolitan public transport company (Wiener Linien) how to preserve and maintain these spaces appropriately. A large scale investigation into insect and plant species on 20+ green spaces along the public transport network has shown surprising results.
In the only 3.7 hectares studied 378 species of plants and a third of all 460 bee species in Vienna could be found. This is remarkable, given the more than 200 km2 of green space in the entire metropole, and stresses the importance of transport infrastructure for green-blue urban networks in the city, and Quality of Life.
Read more on the still ongoing research of Bärbel Pachinger and Sophie Kratschmer at Wiener Linien or Der Standard. Final results will be published in 2021, see the university website for details. Image is (c) Boku.
The city of Breda has formulated the ambition to become the first ‘City in the Park’ and has been working consequently on improving biodiversity and nature-inclusive building. Recently the Breda Architecture Award 2020 (BLASt Prize) was awarded to the new Breda University of Applied Sciences Campus, a design by Inbo and Culd. In the heart of the project a formerly car-lined road was transferred into a new park. The courtyard of the adjacent cloister was opened up towards the new green campus. Even when the university buildings might be closed due to covid-19, the new campus space is open to the public and contributes to quality of life in the city.
The stone garden increases the climat problems such as heatstress and stormwater floods in the neighbourhoods. Since a few days a stone garden is forbidden in Baden-Würthemberg. Their garden-legislation (1995) prescribed that paving is only allowed where it is really needed. The recent garden trend to replace plants by small pebbles was not foreseen and not stopped. The film explains to the inhabitants why the new law is made and how to change the garden.
Trees
provide all kinds of ecosystem services, such as converting CO2 into
carbohydrates, producing oxygen, and purifying the air by trapping
particulates. They provide habitats for fungi, mosses, insects, mammals and birds
and so form the basis of all ecosystems, including in urban areas. But trees
also help to keep city squares, streets and buildings cooler. Their leaves
absorb solar radiation, transpire water and create shade, so lowering the
temperature in their immediate environment. During a heat wave, a dense foliage
provides much-needed shelter and a park or public garden with lots of trees
quickly feels like an oasis in the urban desert. On a hot, windless day, a
leafy neighbourhood may well feel 10 to 15°C cooler than an urban area that is
more exposed to the sun, which can be enough to prevent heat stress. Trees thus
play a key role in the design of climate-proof and healthier cities.
To
determine the cooling performance of various species of trees, in 2018 TU
Delft’s Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment and the Dutch
Association of Landscape Gardeners (VHG) formed the Urban Forestry joint
research programme to support fundamental research into the relationship
between tree architecture and the urban microclimate. Urban landscape
specialist René van der Velde, who is affiliated with the Faculty’s Chair of
Landscape Architecture, is leading the programme. Lotte Dijkstra joined the
programme as a researcher. “Although gardeners and other ‘green’ professionals
already understand a great deal about the performance of tree species in the
built environment, there is very little empirical knowledge about their cooling
capacity.”
In order to
determine how physical properties such as the trunk and crown shape, the branch
structure, and the leaf characteristics influence the local air temperature and
the apparent temperature, this spring the research team designed and built
special ‘climate arboreta’, experimental plots containing tree species that are
common in Dutch parks and gardens.
From earlier this week, 15th of July until 14th of August 2020 a special working space in immediate contact with nature although set amidst the urban environment of Berlin is available for small business meetings. This Outside Society Box announces the development of the 97 ha former military site in Berlin Lichterfelde with 2500 apartments which claims to protect today’s landscape character and its rich biodiversity – with partners on board like the German BUND, the national nature protection agency.
The box was built by the ‘Outside Society’, a young Berlin start up, and can be rented for workshops, strategy meetings and other work related sessions, ideally set next to an S-Bahn station. The idea of the sustainable, wifi equipped and PV operated autarchic box is based upon the notion that “the best ideas and creative solutions in business life are often found during free time and in spaces that offer freedom and recreation. The green character of Berlin offers a unique opportunity for this”. The box is naturally ventilated and opens up on all 4 sides which makes it covid-19 proof to convene with groups up to 12 persons.
“Mooi…” – the daylighted Grift in Apeldoorn, (c) WEF. Still of video ‘Dayligting Urban Rivers’
More and more towns break open culverts to reveal hidden rivers in the heart of the city, such as Freiburg im Breisgau did already in the 70ies en more recently London and Zurich. According to the World Economic Forum (WEF) the reasons to uncover hidden rivers are the “social, environmental and economic benefits” like “public desire to recapture lost spaces and improve quality of life in the city”. The economic advantage of having clean water flowing through the city instead of jamming sewage works is the reduction of wastewater treatment costs.
The 2005 Cheonggyecheon stream project in Seoul is an almost 11km-long artificial water corridor that diverts water from an underground river, that is a flood relief channel and touristic attraction. In addition, the WEF states that these daylighted waterways can help cool cities and reduce the Urban Heat Island effect, and bring benefits for urban wildlife. In the Dutch city of Apeldoorn the urban stream of the Grift has been daylighted successively from 2002 and the inner city segment will be finalized in 2020 as last piece.
Read more in an article of the WEF and see the detailed plans of Apeldoorn (Dutch only).
