Global Seminar | Resilient, Regenerative, Responsive: Sponge Cities in Times of Climate Change

It is my greatest pleasure to introduce her, Bettina and Raymond. I've known them for more than 12 years now. I first met him when I was on the way to the office and we were working on the ABC guidelines. I think a lot of you know him.

Water and nature based solutions in Singapore and also in parts of the world, in Australia. He's also a Loeb fellow at the gsb. All that information can be found on their website. But what I want to point out is something that cannot be found on their website, which is that from all this time that I know Harvard, it's been somebody who's really interested in, in the community. Whatever he does, he always involves. Even when we're working on Bishop, he would make sure that all the stakeholders come to the table together, talk together and we figure out an in between solution that is satisfactory for everybody involved. Which is why I'm really, really happy to see the setup for him today. And Bettina herself has been working in the region of Austria, Germany and she's been looking at rivers in that region and coming up with again working with the communities, working with stakeholders, with governments. So as a team I would say the pack a punch. So without further ado, let me welcome her.

At the beginning. I would actually even start with some water experiments.

And Ray to help me on that.

It's an honor. It's a great pleasure that we are doing this afternoon with you and we were thinking a little bit typical mindset how we do things. We don't want to sit only top down on tutors and be passive and just be equally up here. I'm also an artist and we try very much in our 3D hats, deeper experience on something. I will talk because I will talk a lot about water and resiliency solutions, water solutions. But actually the best feature for me is always really to look on water phenomena and just understand how water is moving, what is happening and so on. So we would like to start maybe with two, two little experiments. One is I hope it works. We have no time to test it out. But what we will do here is.

We have just a glass plate here. Basically.

There'S no twig behind, right. It's just completely flat thing and I just let water run down and the Tina will help put a little bit more in if we have not enough water. And we will just see what happens when the water goes down here, right. Of course water follows gravity so usually it takes straight shortest way but then we can see what happens to the water when it runs down.

Down just this Way I will just open it here a little bit and then we can see what will happen.

Yeah, you can get maybe a little bit closer.

Yeah. If you're interested actually also come here.

You can actually see already that it's going downhill. But it makes all kinds of oxbows, all kinds of curves. And what you can actually see very clear here is that even the beginning of that was a.

A little bit more. You can see how the water actually is shaking forms. This always goes out here, this goes out here. This one goes here. Now see what is happening. It's a permanent change of process. You can see how this is actually going up, how this starts again. Another. It always creates kind of curves, meander forms, forms you will find all around the.

And I will put some color also into this. Now it goes a little bit off, but I think we have. It's only water, so no problem. And well, now you can see of course it's from the water side. It could also maybe be a little bit more stable or even less water. So.

That'S good. And you can see how actually the forms are now shaping even more. And when the curve is too strong, then of course it cuts through. But it's very, very interesting. So maybe we could just look a little bit what is happening on something like this.

Can you see that for example here the water is standing still here. While the oxbow is the curve. The outer curve is speed. It's a lot of speed. The inner curve is slow. And this is actually what we see here. What we see down here is the process of resiliency, of change process. What we have in nature with water all the time. When we look at flow and river systems, they are actually in a permanent process of change. Something we actually have difficulties to accept with our cities. We always try to make everything straight, narrow and keep it everything all the time there. So flexibility in our seas, at least for water, not something we actually have adapted already, but learning from water. We can see change process. Also that suddenly a lot of water comes or very little water is going. So the things always is kind of reacting to this frame conditions, how much water slope. If I change the slope a little bit, then you will see actually get already different. I think that's very nice, that's stable here. So I just put some.

In an ideal way. If I would do that, you would see that the inner curve is even sometimes going upstream. That is what a lot of aquatic life, like fishes or different species are using the different speed zones in rivers. And it's very good we know this also from kayaking, that coming up a stream, you always have basically to go in the inner side where the water isn't. The speed of water is much slower. And then you jump over to this side and then you go up here. So very, very nice.

Here you see how long the water is standing. You can also see how inside there is a twist. Sometimes it turns around like this, sometimes it turns around like this. It's like a secondary movement in the water though. Isn't that interesting and quite fascinating that even such a very simple experiment, just a slope, just a plate letting water go down, is showing already all types of phenomena. Maybe let it one more time and take a little bit.

When we do experiments, we always like to risk.

Something which is not normally Singapore. Everything is safe, but without some risks, innovation is not possible. Look at this kind of inner structures of the river also down here, how it's going back. So actually water systems and river systems is a very nice part. They are full of complexity, full of change process, full of different ways of transformation, building up destroying, building up destroying, which is a very basic principle in nature. And we need also these forces to weave something out to restart, to bring new forms of evolution, new types of plants, new types of animals. So this kind of change process which is always needed in nature, in life, something we still have to learn in our cities. How can we actually make our cities more adaptable to change process? And I think just to look at these water phenomena, we can actually see a lot what is going on. Look at this here now. It's very nice to see.

I think with this very first experiment, little earlier.

I think that's fine. I think that's. That's already. You have seen a lot, right? And let's go to a little other experiment. There's small experiment here.

Actually here this is also. I mean, this is no rocket science. It's all. There's a lot of research done on that.

People who discovered this kind of phenomena of vortics, for example.

And what I do is here I have basically this is water. I did put some glycerine in because it's actually the viscosity is a little bit kind of the speed of water is reduced. You have phones extend a little bit out so that you can use the camera. And I just actually this little experiment would always happen. I just go with a brush through here. I put it in here in this liquid and I go through that one.

And you would maybe say, so what? Nothing to see. And that's also a very typical Thing of water. It doesn't show up all the time in secrets. You know, we have really to kind of be very sensitive and find ways how to make it visible. But if I put a powder on top, you will see what happens. Because now no one has seen it, right. But if I just put a little bit powder on that. You see this is a very sensitive powder. It's called nicopolium powder, which is basically from a little moss from a plant. And this powder I only use because.

It stays on the surface of the goat. Use sugar, oil, something else. It would already suck it in. So it's just standing on the surface. And what I do, I do the same thing like before. I just go with a straight line through that.

Now this is actually what happened before as well. Isn't it fascinating? And of course it has. You can explain it also from flow dynamics. There is a certain mathematical form behind that that this comes up.

I just want to look at the phenomena of design. So what we see here is a very sort of organized rhythmical structure of vortex.

When you look into some of the details, maybe we could have. Let's zoom in a little bit on that. You can always find shapes which are very similar to primitive early life forms, like jellyfish forms or even in a very early stage of an embryo, you find very similar forms and shapes. So I just take it out and I put another little experiment on this. Everyone can do it. It's very simple. So you just need something dock a basin, you put this liquidium powder on top, mix your liquid with some glycerine. If I would have only water, it would also work, but it would just continue and then you did not see it. What I do now is maybe I. Maybe I make two lines.

Sometimes it's always.

Then I just go through this in the middle and you see just how these two spaces. So what normally we would think is if we have like this brush and I put it in and I go straight through this one. I could even take a.

Kind of wooden stick and go along this wooden stick so it's perfect. Will also happen all the time. So what you would normally think, you divide this water and it comes together and we stick. But the way how these two sides come together and actually what happens in front and on behind of this little.

Brush which I put through there is already the beginning of a left and right sided, a turbulence which creates this vortex which is then creating bigger and bigger forms and structures. Let's just go through this one more time.

It's pretty clear. It's a bit bigger. Wow, look at this.

It's not always like this.

Idea is a different cheese. It's always different, always different. But you find these kind of shapes and forms actually not only in water. You find it also in the air, and you find it everywhere, but we cannot see it. For example, if I do with my finger like this here.

You can be sure I need this water extreme. Or if you walk, you have. You create a vortic streak behind your body.

Or if there's wind and you have something sticking out, like a tree or like a mass, behind that you have a voltage stream. So the world is full of such forms and such phenomenons. And it's quite fascinating. It needs to come up with its forms, the right speed, the right time. If it's too fast, it falls apart. It's too slow, it cannot develop. It's also something which I find very fascinating on water, what we can learn and see that process needs always a kind of rhythm, needs the kind of time and space. And it has to be the right balance on that which I will come back later on. So I just take it away.

If any one of you wants to do it, do this test. Because otherwise you would say.

You have a volunteer hut.

Okay. And some wallet here.

So how many lights?

Yeah, you can just do this here. Like.

Yeah, you have just one. One. You can. One, like.

Okay.

You can go really deep in.

Yeah.

Wow. Nice.

Very nice. Okay, great. So I think we could go on and do much more experiments. Maybe I'll leave it here for this moment. You can later actually test it out. And I think it's always a kind of a mind opener about really what is happening. We say it as just as an example of an exercise that we can see in processes of water, of life, that there is a kind of.

Enormous response because when we bring movement into that, the water is responding to your speed, to your movement, and it actually is trying to balance out the speed, the space. And you can see that this space is sucked in. This space is sucked in. There's a kind of language between, you know, this side and this side where we divided it, and it comes together and it creates a very, very interesting interaction. So maybe I just take that one out.

And then we will start with it.

Good. All right, then I think we can start with.

It.

Today. From all these projects, what you can see different. Different time zones. You have art projects. You have bigger things like Vision Mochio park or Tennis Springs Park. I never did this alone. I mean, this has always been a fantastic team. And I have to say some of them are here. And if he was also one of.

I'm so proud that you are.

My entire team which was called RTA ISIL was then transformed to another group because I wanted to re engineering design workflows together. It's called Ramble. Here in Singapore it was called Bramble Student Dry Zyle. And I've been trying to. Now it's called Henny Bars. So just that, you know, I'm not member of this because I let the next generation really continue. I focus more consulting work with Tina, with Ray. And I will also show you this a little bit some more on teaching level. How can we actually bring this whole movement. But there are a lot of people still working in this field and continue.

Some of the older projects are there. I have to go just maybe this. The click. I don't know, it goes a bit fast forward. I cannot go backwards, right?

Oh, okay. All right. So I was. Yeah, okay. But I. You have seen also in between very quickly from slides on artwork, art installations also all around planet and different scales. So what we have seen with these experiments is something which really is interesting. If we look at water structures in different scales, small scale, large scale, you find this kind of fluctuate, this kind of permanent transition form of space and of process in water. And that is really very, very fascinating in a way I really a little bit lost to this.

Which one is.

I think this one.

All right, so okay, so let's try maybe I talk a little bit about this. What we just have seen in very small experiments, you can also see in very large scale. So landscape forms, landscape transition is actually shaped by that. And that's actually.

All the forms you see also the leftovers of some structures which were there before. The same thing when we had the small experiment we can see here on non scale. Well, what is interesting is also the way how water always tries to balance. Where we have no water. For example, in desert regions, we have extreme hot temperatures during daytime, extreme cold temperatures at nighttime. The water is kind of balancing a lot of things also balancing forms. And the interaction actually between water and land is most interesting, most dramatic, which I think is very important for this one. When we look at native landscapes, there is still this kind of ongoing form and ongoing transition. What we can see by the way, the experiment we just did here, you can also see them very big scale. This is for example a volcano reaching out in the ocean. And this is about 3-400km long. Also Vortex tree like the same what we have seen. So this kind of things you find in many, many different scales. And what of course I like very much is also to do drawings, sketching and to really work with water in a more creative way. And also to come up with engineering solutions. It's always a starting point to look more careful at water. And for me, people like Leonardo were very, very heroes because they somehow connected science, engineering, architecture, philosophy, and they really studied water. Very, very intense, very interesting books. What Leonardo did actually write. What have we done today? And how did we change landforms and water systems? I'd just also like to point out some examples here very quickly, what we did all around the world. This is just an example of North America. This kind of, maybe we can call it a bit romantic. Forms are more and more transformed or over. There's an over layer, by the way, how we economically try to make things more efficient. So the Jefferson grid in North America was basically to give equal sizes to each immigrant so that they can start farming and so on. And it was easier, it was faster, it was more compact. So we have made this kind of grid structure. The grid structure was then also implemented for cities and it was successful in a certain way, but it's certainly not that what actually water structures are doing. We transformed the urban landscape, this, for example, in the rural valley, by getting very, very quick A to B, straight lines for traffic and for other things. And actually the future, when we look at cities, and I think here we are, I'm talking to you because you are the future city lab here from eth@nos is of course the question, how do density and more and more people who live in cities, and how can actually the seas be so that they are also somehow in connection with the environment, especially with water. So what kind of forms, what kind of shapes do we need to bring natural process and human needs of density together? That's a very important question.

And of course, every action when we create, when we transform nature, it will come back like a boomerang to us with a lot of challenges. One of the challenges is more urbanization, more intense use of petrol, of gas and so on is changing, the atmosphere is changing. We know this all about the problem we have on heat island effects. And we have suddenly extreme strong downpours, for example, in Germany, not long ago, in a country where you think this would never happen, we had similar pictures. We have this brutal flooding in the Arthal. You can see bridges are destroyed, you see that.

Land was taken away, stuck again here, look at this. This is Germany, you know, a village. And this is actually a Crater and goes down and all water actually is washing out. So there's something we can see that we are not able to handle really the change process. This is in my city actually in Uberlingen. This is a train station. At 2019, the whole train station was flooded and a very small stream was bringing enormous amount of water. Luckily no train was there. Luckily no people were there. But you see we have this extreme conditions more and more coming up. The other part is heat, long periods, no rain, no water. We had this year already enormous fires because of dry forests in Europe. Whole islands were burned down like Greece. And we can see that this global temperature and this change of the water regime, which is basically the, the whole climate crisis is very much related to the water question. It's really coming up more and more dramatic. I know probably, you know, a lot of these figures and these data. What I just like to point out this is in just some data of Germany that 10, 15 years ago we were thinking the scenario of change and of heat island effects and more and more warmer temperatures.

Are going this way. And the worst case scenario was that it really is very dramatic. But we didn't think that today the worst case scenario, what we had 10, 15 years ago as estimation is today the normal. So the change was going faster and much, much quicker than we were thinking. Singapore also has very, very interesting data on heat island effects. And you see where the city is most dense. In this part we have the red zone where it's very hot, while where we have forests and water here on this region and in the central part of Singapore, the temperature is relatively moderate. So this is actually also very interesting to see. Then just to mention this very quickly in Europe and also all around the world, we have seen that the change process is going much faster. And if we don't react, this will go up more and more. The kid and I, we were actually present at the Globe 21 in Paris. And I know how difficult it is to find an agreement between the governments to come up with somehow action plans. And we failed completely, to be honest. I mean, today we even cannot hold the 2 degrees Celsius. Probably it will be more dramatic in the future for the next generations. I was also interested to look a little bit, you know, is that new that we are talking about climate questions or climate change? What I figured out is really not new because and I just take only some people out actually already in the fourth century, before Christ, they knew that when you take the hottest, when you take the forest out and when you dry out marshlands you will have higher temperatures. That was discovered already.

In the fourth century before Christ. Then of course a lot of science was done shown up. Very important. Also this curved how CO2 emission and global warming is actually connected here in America was presented actually to the government. It was known from a lot of the companies. And actually we are somehow too slow with reacting. And that's a very interesting question. Why is it like this here? In this presentation I just put in some aspects which I think is very, very important. And one of them is of course the question of how do we change our systems to be more flexible and more better sustainable for this change process. And I think a very important part is that we think the existing cities have often canal systems, either a separated system of sewer and rainwater or combined in some of the older city centers. And still we think that we can handle it. But because of this extreme storm events, we have to come up more and more to this kind of sponge idea that we hold the water in the sea and use it and recycle it, evaporate, have cooling effects. And I will talk more about this in a moment. Well, I cannot go too deep into that. But every opportunity on the very early catchment, when it starts to rain, we have to hold it back. That's what we could do often much better. Also here in Singapore, for example, HDP housing, a lot of the water is actually drained in concrete canals and just goes away. If we would hold it back, we would do much more clever. There are many ways we were looking actually in lots of examples, how to suck in, how to hold back, how to clean, how to do certain things and how to implement it. And this presentation is going very fast. Sorry for that. It's maybe just if I touch a little bit and goes already forward. And the question is really how to bring this blue green water structures in our cities. Well, I would like to share with you because this is Singapore and Switzerland a bit how actually in different continents this topic was taken up. And a very early one which I like to show is actually in Switzerland. In Switzerland, we started early with the.

It was already 1981, 82, 83. I had the opportunity to work in Switzerland for little villages like this one is called Echelon in the French part of Switzerland, where every water drop is actually kept on the surface, is running on little swales. It's getting into a constructed wetlands where we actually hold the water back, clean it up and use it and finally release clean water out into the little stream.

Some other European examples using dry and wet situations Having multifunctional use in places is important and I just like to stay on some Swiss examples. This is done also very, very nice. Not by me. It's another architecture group, you probably know this one, very famous, the one of the Torbin flats in Zurich. All trying to actually bring water features and filters and vegetation as blue green infrastructure into the city. Another one, I would like to share this before we go then to other continents, large scale solutions were found like for new cities. This is the Nelling Barrack, Nelling barracks army base from the Americans, which is now a new housing estate.

Actually on this project I did work with my team to come up with lots of green roofs to hold back, to filter, slow it down. Then we have also some open spaces, like terraces, where we can actually bring water in and actually filter it. The other example, Hanover World Exhibition, World Expo 2000. Already here we worked for an entire part of a new city to collect water, to hold it back. And there's no sewer line which is going under. The underground is actually intact, all on site. So the nature based solutions in the city actually is dealing with the water, is trying to keep it and capture it. There's of course a lot of things you have to think about how to work with polluted grounds and maybe you have to seal some of this, some other parts you can infiltrate. So Kronsberg Estate is a very interesting example. This is actually just stepping stones where you can cross over. When it starts to rain, then this can actually all be flooded and we have like a cascade of a treatment drain of folding the water. This principle can be done all around the world basically, then also later transformed to Singapore as EHC Warning Islands. But I'd just like to show you a little bit the.

Starting point of that at the moment. Actually there are also a lot of interesting things going on, especially also in Switzerland and Zurich and the here in Basel. Basel is trying to work on new concepts and we were working actually here for an area where the heavy industry of Switzerland was actually taking place, which is actually.

Down here, a region called Volta Nord. Volta Nord had all this high Sandos and Bayer and also a lot of other companies who always change the names, but these are the big giants for chemistry. Now this is actually becoming a new housing area and we have to deal with all these questions about what is in the ground. But the city was really interested to come up with kind of new ways of master plants to hold back the water on different sides. And we use any opportunity, any small rain gardens or swales to hold it back. From rooftops. And we organized basically here in Waltam Loren, a kind of strategic plan to hold the water completely back, even on roads. This is actually what we're trying to come up with, is to have filtration, to have collection swales, and also to have some areas where different planners actually are working on different sites. This is just basically the principle of collecting water and creating kind of a sponge park where you collect the water here on Lusspigelplatz in Basel. And maybe in future this whole thing, whoops, go back here will look like this. So that we have vegetation, we have evaporation, we have cooling effects, we have trees to shelter this place. And there's even in the middle, a kind of pavilion which is taking also the water from the ground and is reusing it in a very interesting way. Going back now to some European or German examples here, 2000, we did with Renzo Piano the work on Postsever Platz, which was a very interesting experience, to also harvest water on huge buffer cisterns to recycle, to use the water for plants, for toilet flashing. And that still exists today. That's very, very interesting to see it, because that's how it looks like today. There's even a highway going.

Below the park, below the lake. The lake has different also water features. And remember this, only rainwater. It's collected rainwater, nothing else. And the overflow of that is then also going here into a stream called Lantier Canal. What is interesting is actually that it really is very, very good for the climate, but also it can save energy costs. It brings more resiliency into that and a lot of these points. Next one, I will just go a bit faster. This is actually the industrial zone for McLaren in London project with Norman Foster and his team. And what we try to do here is to collect also the water from all the different car parkings here and from the rooftops. And we bring this water into a kind of.

Formal lake. And then we have a treatment, which you see up there, where we have filtration and we clean out the water. So. So that we actually can have a kind of system using rainwater and recycling it. The main trick here is. Cannot be done so well in Singapore, because we have different humidity. But London has very good opportunities here to work. Oops. It's probably this one before. What we do here with this lake water, we have a circulation and we spread the water out like a cooling tower on a big cascade. So the water is actually dripping down this cascade. And by this the temperature is going down and Then this temperature change, the Delta often of 2 or 3 degrees cooling by bringing it out that didn't go to its cascade and risk and bringing the water in is enough to cool the entire drum. That's really fascinating. So added values and things you can actually add on. Okay. It's really a bit fast. It's okay. Now I would like to go a bit to other countries. America for example. America had very early on like the low impact development program. Many cities came up with better solutions working with water. And what in America was done very early on to find how can we get rid of the pipe solutions and how can we get nature based solutions with more soft engineering into that. One of the pilot projects I was able to do with my team and also with the company called Greenworks is to collect water from the different sites, bring it into a part. This actually the Pearl District in Portland, Oregon. So what we do here, we actually collect the water. We bring it into this park, filter it. We go through different zones of filtration. Then we finally have a kind of lake system which can also handle and buffer the water. We circulate part of that and then finally we get clean water out into the river, into the stream.

Now what is here important is that you have to involve the people and losses of project for me was always important. And also for Bettina and for Rain. How can we actually involve the local people? Because it's open, it's a public realm. Right. And that's very, very important. So stakeholder involvement workshops how the future could look like. What can we use for example recycling some of the material 100-year-old steel tracks. We recycle and we did reuse it for an art installation. Here it's all about creating kind of ownership identity and relating people actually to this place. So you can actually have less maintenance costs, less vandalism. People take care. Even here we have volunteers who actually take care of this part. This whole question about maintenance and about having ownership to places is extremely important and probably will something we have to discuss much more in the future. So that's I think a very big point. Just go through that one. Okay. Now it actually goes a little fast. Again I go to look here at Australia. Australia also started early on come up with solutions. They call it water sensitive urban design. That is a frame which was created in Australia. I remember this very well, how we started this frame, this. And there is of course lots of people working on this. Tony Wong for example and his wife and others China. Again I make this a little bit shorter Is now very much also speeding up, coming up with better solutions. Working on big large projects like Tournscape or other companies do this quite well with very good examples. Really harvesting rainwater, treating it on a large scale. I think that's also kind of waking up call because lots of problems in China will be have to handle now going to Singapore. See what have we done here, what is actually going on. Singapore also early on started to come up with the ABC guidelines. But even before we had the programs like the water body design panel, then I think it was 2006, 7 when we started the ABC1 timeline, baby, I think it was that time. So our team, we made basically the very first principles and it was adapted and taken over. We made brochures. The brochure was actually I think it's now the 4th or 5th edition already on that, which is basically dealing with this question. How could we bring blue green more efficient in the city center? And I think if it is where some of the graphics actually also remember this very well. So we looked at different opportunities here in city Singapore. One about thinking about controlling the quality and controlling the quantity because both is needed.

How to avoid that you have suddenly a lot of water at one spot and then you have odd road flooding. You know such things from other places. So how to hold it back. And the other way is how can we control the quality so that we have filtration, sedimentation, that we have different principles. This is kind of a toolkit which can be combined with lots of solutions and they need decentralized forms. So. And then again we can learn what is happening in nature. In a natural forest like we have also here in Singapore. A lot of the water is actually like a sponge. So the forest is taking the water, it's is filtering, it's cleaning it. There's a lot of evaporation. Again, it changes already in agriculture and when we go to cities, most of the water what is there is going into drains in monsoon drains is going out as fast as possible. We lose it in the ocean. Very little recharge of groundwater, very little reuse. So that was basically the question how to come up with a better water balance. And that is actually what Singapore is now doing.

It's always important that you cannot do the solution somewhere here. And you can also not do it just to make the canals a bit nicer with some decoration on both sides and still keep the canal. There's often a misunderstanding what ABC actually should be. The real solutions and the real jobs are done very early on in the periphery when you have a catchment area where the water actually goes to the Marina Bay, we should do much more in the HDB housing areas where the water is landing and actually where the things start where we can clean up, slow down, filter and so on. There's still a discussion, I think I have tomorrow discussion with pov and it's a learning process which is very, very important. Well, what we have here, we capture the water. I mean, you know, this Marina sands building and.

Also the entire Central park, which is basically now a Reservoir. But 10 years ago, 15 years ago, all this was ocean water. It came all in here. And by building this dam now, we can collect the rain and we can recycle and reuse it. So a lot of these canals have looked like this and are now in process of transforming. And one of the really breakthrough pilot projects was this one vision and Moqyopard and I just have to tell you, it looks so easy now, but it was a hell of work. Basically convince the different bureaus here to convince the different directors, they were very skeptical at the beginning. They said, no, no, no, we cannot do this. We have to keep the concrete. This is the concrete canal, how it was before. And they wanted to keep it and make it maybe a little bit landscape, but still to keep the concrete down there.

And then we were really fighting very hard. We said, we will show it. We will actually convince you by a test reach that you don't need concrete here. You can do it really with very soft engineering, with plants, with material, with different soil structures, with aviance with machine problem, nature based solution technology, bioengineering. What we did, we recycled the material. We used all the concrete because it's very expensive in Singapore to get natural gravel, right? We don't have it here, so but we can recycle material. We can scramble this. We can recycle even some of the concrete and use it. What we had leftovers, we did build a kind of recycling mill. When you go there, you see all this kind of concrete glaze are the old canal, right? So people don't know this and we actually use it. There was also a very nice art installation from art competition for young artists. And I was, we were really happy that we had this competition for Bicheland Wukie park and have that interesting sculpture. Now I need to drink a little bit water.

Well, to make the story short, you can go to Bishop Mokje park. You can see the result. There are lots of details and just to figure out all the different side drains, like how water actually goes down here you can find everywhere little swales which normally are done in concrete. Here you will see all this open. It's just a natural swale. And when it starts to rain, water is flowing there and it works perfectly. So we don't need this kind of old hard brain engineering. It can be done much better. And by that we have a lot of side effects. What is I think also interesting in Singapore is that we have much more biodiversity coming back. We have dragonflies, we have species of animals which were on the red list. They are spotted again in patient of porcupine. Of course we have also a lot of beavers of fish, otters coming into that, sometimes too many. So we have to control that because they don't have predators or what is called.

Okay, so that's actually a lot of the learning things. Now another smaller Singaporean project is the Cambridge Road agreeing Cambridge Road also as part of the abc. And I think this involvement process in Singapore can be done much more agile. Actually here on Cambridge Road we were working on a kind of.

Involvement strategic plan. We prepared it and then COVID 19 came up. So we had no chance to physically meet. And we did it online. We used a special online tool to talk to all the people who were actually involved. Young people, old people, all citizens who live in the surrounding. And so these are just some pictures of this online thing. We made sketches actually they were working on tablets live and sending over and I could actually. Or we were able to look in and give advice. And we use test online tool. So the whole participation project was an online project in the time of COVID It worked pretty well and it's just a very interesting thing. The outcome were little sketches, a lot of ideas of recreating displays and some of that really, you can see it happened for example here. I'll just go back.

Oh, sorry.

Here. This is how it looked first. This is how it looks now. This another one here. I think we have to go this one. This one. This is a video pain. So let's just run for a moment.

I think it only works this time.

Okay.

Sure.

Another one?

Yeah. Oh, this one? Yeah.

Let's try the good one.

Okay. So this is the video, right? Yeah, this is very, very good. Ready to put the slides very quickly together. Thank you so, so much. Yeah, this is good. This really is showing the channel change before and after. Look this how. Yeah, you could see before the concrete canal. That's how it is today.

There was also a very nice way of involving also NPARTS in that. So NPARTS is giving Advice is delivering the plants. But all the maintenance, all the time of putting the plants in was done by local after the participation process. What's the benefit for that benefit is really that local people connect to this. They say we are taking care of our environment, we are taking care also of our water catchment system. And I think that's. We are just in the beginning of this kind of development and I think we can do a lot.

Just let me know.

Okay. Now I would like to actually go a bit in other countries, Asia. And one is actually. Yeah, I just mentioned the thing.

Singapore is actually on a very much on a journey to figuring out, you know, how could we bring more the city within nature. And Singapore actually is doing a lot of steps. I don't need to repeat this because you find a lot on that in the Internet. And there's new parts came up, very successful. For example, Sungai Bulo, that was also several years back where we designed a kind of observation platforms. In this part, actually we even have crocodiles in Songhai Bulo. But all this is a bit higher. They are bird watching cocos where you can look out. And I think this is very, very beautifully done and I'm very happy. And also at the moment there was just this year a new park opened up here, the River Bridge Nature park in Singapore. I'm very proud really because a lot of my old colleagues have done fantastic work creating this kind of new landscape in old industrial sites or in this prairie and creating a kind of very, very beautiful park.

Maybe I just go to another.

On another project which is hard to see at the moment, but this is actually on Jurong island, this one pond, Jurong island, you know, is an industrial site. And normally you can not go to the island. A lot of kind of secret things which are in development and they keep this. You have to have a special performance to go on this island. But what happened here with jtc? We were working together on a concept to harvest all the rainwater from the buildings, from roads, bring it into a kind of pond or lake system. And what we actually do here is we have different openings. These are the early sketches in a workshop together with jtc. And you see when water comes in, actually it goes into this kind of lake. And when the water is high enough, it will infiltrate in certain areas into the ground, refill the aquifer. It's a completely artificial reclaimed land. But we store fresh water and we make this freshwater lint in this part bigger. And it works very well. I'm happy. Next week I will make A visit just to see it, how it works. And this is just some of the pictures I have got. So again, even industrial science, we can do such things. Now at the end I would just like to share some impressions of maybe areas where people are not so rich like in Singapore. Can we actually work in areas which are also able to come up with solutions.

Where you work more on nature based solutions. This is actually coastal protection.

We had two studios here at NOS to work on special areas. And I was very impressed how actually in the region of Jakarta they started to use mangoes and they have all nurseries of mangoes. We had a very nice contact to these people who did this. And within actually a very short time these nurseries for mangroves and this reassessed new mangroves had a side effect that a lot of tourism ecotourism is happening there. It's amazing how many people actually now go there. They have started little restaurants. They have places where you can just sit and hang out. This is actually pictures of my students. This is one of the guys who are running this program. So there's hope. There's a lot of things going on around Singapore which I think is very important to recognize especially here. This kind of coastal protection or new ways of employment. And I would like to share one example here from also a former colleague of ours.

And this is Anton Siura with his wife. They have a small company here in Singapore and also in Jakarta. And they actually were focusing on a very interesting project in the park right in the middle of Jakarta. And actually what is happening here is it was a very sort of kind of rundown park. Not really interesting. I think I have some pictures to share this how that looked like. I mean this is actually how Jakarta looks often. You're probably aware about this traffic, terrible pollution, rivers you cannot see sometimes water. The Chiliung is chilliung. It's basically having trash on the surface. Cannot see it in the water. It's a floating to work in these conditions to do something out that's quite amazing. Just under in brackets, Singapore look the same. I'm In Singapore about 40 years, 50 years back, the same pictures. But I've taken the same photos actually at that time. So I think there is always possibilities of whole power to change things. So what Anton and his team did, he used a lot of the techniques. This is the existing one of bioengineering. He used recycled material, collected everything he had. Then he started to really come up with nature based solutions. So before and after he created a kind of strategic plan how to work in this entire central part to make some areas for water, but also for people. And this I think is very important. When there's a lot of rain and this whole thing can build up and then the water can go down. I haven't seen it myself, but just from the pictures. It's very convincing and I think it was very, very well received from developers. Real estate development was going up in the surrounding and it was also recognized in Singapore. I think he got also the president design award this year, which is very nice.

Geodic styles, different techniques of that, how to use it. And this is actually today a very, very beautiful, vibrant park. Very good design.

Well, I end my presentation with also going in industrial zone. Very ugly. And how can you actually create in such a rundown place like Milwaukee in America? How can you actually bring water features in and make this thing more attractive? This will be my last project I would like to share with you.

Actually, we're working on that. It's still work in progress. It's not built. We came up with an idea how to have here Main street at the end with a water feature which is working with seasons. So it's called seasonal water.

This is actually how it looks right now. This is what we might envision. We want to work with light, with sound. And we will work with a structure where you make the whole city really livable and vibrant. And using this water feature at the end. At the moment, it's a very boring design. It's very much run down. And we try to actually make this whole thing more interesting. And the idea was actually to have the four seasons, Spring, summer, fall and winter, which is in Milwaukee, very present, not like in Singapore where you have almost everything all year same temperature. Here we have very different temperatures and very dramatic changes. And we are actually working here.

For such a project. We work with computer technology, but also with real scale models. So this project is done full scale in a big factory hall. And I just share with you this a little bit. This was actually just not even a half a year ago we started this structure. We used clay, 9 tons of clay here. We modeled it actually, we built it up here and we made water tests. Finally, when everything was working, we used 3D data with different techniques. You can even use it with your, with your mobile, your mobile phone. And then we have a computer program where we get the whole 3D modeling of this and we optimize it. So these are just some of the four, some of the impressions of the team. Actually. This is Ray, you can see him here. He is but you were extremely happy. I think the gear must also be somewhere, right? Maybe you took. I was in the background, you.

Okay. And actually, it's probably just for a short moment, maybe.

See how it actually, like.

Change has filled up.

How the water is running. And we make all kinds of water tests and figure out finally and how to make it. Sometimes see that we have to make it higher or make it lower. And then we see how we correct it, how to correct it. And then finally we build it to optimize the form and the flow dynamic on this. And when we have that, the right form, then we use it. They take digital data from that. So some of the structures just to see. And then, of course, we had families, kids, my grandchildren here. Very, very proud of the test.

To see what is happening, how is it working? Even.

Flow form here, the English guy.

And then actually we scanned it in here in.

That's still a project in progress. So we are hoping that we can build it. We're still in the process of fundraising because America obviously can.

Every footlong.

Market.

That's prodigy.

So we are at the beginning. Okay. All right. I think I. I stopped here and I would be happy if you have questions.

We have a couple of questions online, but I want to open up to the floor first so that I can pull it up, not waste everybody's name. Does anybody have any questions?

Adam Sora, thank you for the lecture.

And I have a question about the temporal decentralized water storage systems in the urban context. Do you see there's any practicality of applying that into, like, a regional scale for flood control or like, water management? You mean temporary storing in the water? Yeah, and many, like infiltrating capacifiers and then, like, mix up the groundwater. And like, a lot of those projects are at an early scale. So I was just wondering, like, the.

Practicality of that at, like, a regional scale, river scale?

Yeah, I mean, well, there are some interesting aspects. You know, you can actually this kind of using temporary spaces to hold water back and to filter it. You can do this on all kinds of scales. Can do it actually in a small scale, even for buildings. Like, for some of us, you have seen cisterns in the basement, basically, water bank. You can also do it larger, like what Theopore is doing with the Red Horse. And I think your question is more going entire river systems. And the entire river systems can also have more landscapes which can be periodically flooded. That's something we are trying to do in Europe quite a lot on river systems. It's always very hard to negotiate with farmers to get the land. I think the China can tell a lot of that. For the river of Danube, for example, where we had big floodings and we started with systems for the entire river, for example, in Bavaria and also in Austria, when the water comes up, when we have a lot of water.

How can we do it so that we have landscape parts, we call it polar, which can be flooded for a certain time, then the water goes down the river Rhine. Also we have a lot of master plan strategic plans in Europe or the Water Framework Directive to try out to have really more resilient systems on a large scale. I think that can also be done. What is always tricky is who has ownership, who is giving away land, what allows this. And you know, it's very, very interesting if you look, nature really has not very much rights in our advocates because we have taken this space away from rivers and basically all around the world the rivers had much more space to flood, to be wider. And then when normal times the water is water, but it needs this kind of breathing system. And what we did, we just filled it up, used it all, make it more narrow.

And now to give the water back some space is a huge burden to negotiate it, to work it out. And it's very tricky. It's a political question, it's a financial question, it's an ownership question. And I think this debate is still ongoing in many, many countries, but it's very important.

Mostly Switzerland.

Okay.

Have you ever conducted more.

Rigorous studies on how micro planning is affected by these projects context that work for the police Inventor project?

So I'm very interested, I'm actually we are very interested to know more about it. I know there is data available on evaporation and cooling effects from trees, for example, water features, probably the water feature itself, like the surface of water, it's probably not doing so much of.

Because you need a big surface of where aberration to take place, which trees are doing much better. But this combination of, you know, having humidity holding water back, bringing it to class so that they can actually breeze out and have this cooling effect, I think that's a very efficient way. I know some studies, but actually on a larger scale, how other like the ABC would have a cooling effect in the city? I'm not aware that there is really a very significant research.

And I think there's a big chance because I think that's for climate resiliency and to stabilize climate change. I'm absolutely convinced the water story is very, very important.

But yes, actually there is a research module Here at FCL called Comparative Ecologies of Cities they're looking exactly at how the water is creating micro climates and looking at that as far as.

Greener.

Trees essentially in parallel.

What's their approach? Are they doing this based modeling or are they doing this based on projects.

That are actually being realized?

No, they're actually calculating, they're creating calculations based on. I know that they're using some sort of computer software, maybe even digital. I'm not sure if it's digital twins. It could be, but part of the politics of Slack may help.

These are the right people.

So yeah, the context again for this is we often get questions regarding real world demonstrations of our modern applications to reduce urban climate. I think projects like the Mohio park here for example would be great. A great kind of first start where you could actually compare the two situations before and after construction to have a solid argument for why these changes meant.

That's absolutely true. I mean one vision of Occupy.

I know some research or also what we did with Empire is looking at more on two things. Biodiversity.

What about species of insects, birds? There's an enormous increase with exchange. And the other part is of course the interaction of people at the moment. It's very interesting that the number of visitors which are in vision of occupied are locals. They are not tourists like.

Marina Barrage, like the super trees or so these are mostly tourists. Regional Monkey park is really a local park for local people and they love it. It's amazing. I mean if you go there, I very often have a chance to. To make a little walk when I got there early morning or evening. It's amazing. So I think all these things could be a very interesting research.

We did some research here with nos about psychological effect on a straight canal or on making it more natural about biopharma effect. One research was psychologically how much people trust to others. If you are in a healthy environment, people feel more trustful to others. If it's more inconcrete and everything, people are more afraid about it. That's very interesting.

I'm going to read out some of the questions. I have three. I'll go to the easiest one. In your experience, what is the frequency of flood event that we need to shut everything? 1 in 5 or 1 in 21.

Is there a maximum?

Yeah, we did. We had actually both. We had one to. I can't remember exactly. I mean this is. I think 1 to 5 is very little, but is often required. 1 to 21 to 25 is I think what you should actually count in and the worst case scenario, 1 to 100. But 1 to 100 is today different than 10 years ago because the extreme flood events are actually much higher. And in my opinion, I think on digital multipart we did one to one.

And basically on lots of projects, the important thing is that you calculate it on. You can actually calculate it also on 1 to 2, 20 or 1 to 25. And you should then know if a worse case scenario would happen, where would the water go? So I'm more a fan about, you know, finding flat.

Corridors or.

Exactly. That's what we did, for example, in Copenhagen with a cloudburst project, so we can even have a road. Or in Hamburg with VISA project, where we have roads which can actually have maybe 20cm of water and bring the water out if there's really an extreme storm.

Second question, in practice, how do you ensure that installing blue green infrastructure is not just purification and somehow greenwashing?

Well, there's always, I think. I mean, we try to maybe not read wash in a lot of the projects. I think I could prove that it really does really function. The problem is that.

This is actually a warning. It's not a criticism, but it's a kind of warning. We should be careful when we say abc, that we see only the beauty fine. And then this can be rewatched. And that's why I'm often saying that you have to look in the periphery and really act there before it gets into. Because what we have a little bit as danger is that we reduce the ABC program now only for beautifying the canals. And that's greenwashing.

And maybe if I could add to that, when you're working with you in the firm, there is the bread and butter and then there is the big project that gives you the marketing cloud.

Right.

You do this, you shall come up, everybody knows you're there. But then it's doing the supposedly boring projects like the roadside projects and do these roadside swales. People are not interested, but those are actually the real projects. When you do it multiple times over throughout the entire city, that's exactly what holds the flood radiation possibilities.

Last, I'm going to open up to the floor before I come back to the answer. Yes, please.

Thank you.

And for most of the projects where you allow for planning, could you share some of the challenges that you face when convincing the people staying around and authorities and how you overcame those, convincing.

Them for funding or for accepting? Yeah, more for accepting.

Yeah.

Maybe a good example is I just pick one which is very good to explain. Probably the one you Also have seen in America, right.

In Pearl District in Portland, Oregon because it's right in the middle, surrounded by lots of schools and housing. This new housing estate in this area.

I think very important is actually that you involve the people into the building. So they have to know why is this design? Why does it matter? What's the performance, what's the reason? And I think that's very, very important that we actually involve the stakeholders and but also the local people are living here that they really know what is actually why are we doing these projects to help the environment or also to stabilize our climate and what kind of contribution is it? Of course a single project actually is like a drop on a hot stone. But many jobs make a change and I think that's very, very important. The other aspect is probably that you also have to see that you involve people who work on real estate developing financial capital.

If you create a really good blueprint infrastructure, the value, the added value is going up. For example additional multiplier. Some of the new big buildings, you know, they came new big buildings in they used the image of Bijan of Bukit Margin before it was built and did rise the price for the condos which is not always a good thing for people but it shows how much value.

In the interest of time. If there is no other question, I'm going to be the last question. Water system design requires a lot of simulation and calculations and anticipation of future transportation under climate change. But landscape architects are not usually indirect access to such data. What do you think in your working experience are the important data sets at which skills we need to be establishing and integrating to develop effective water design?

Yeah, it's a very long but important question. I mean if you notice we were always trying to combine good landscape architecture with very good hydraulic engineering. So these things have to come together. So you need to make all these projects, they look beautiful. They are by the way not more expensive than normal projects. It's just the engagement to be flat. But they're all based on data, they're all based on hydraulic engineering. We can calculations, we can use computer models about how much water we will have. What's the flow rate, what's the viscosity by having different surfaces, what's the resistance? All that has to be worked out especially on large projects. We often even do sometimes on very complex things to make a nomadic flow simulations on computers. So all that I think is database and that should not be taken out. The professional landscape architects I think has to probably develop much more forward that because landscape architects in Europe for example, Switzerland or Germany are more and more taking leadership for really good projects, because everything is in the open space. It's not billions. So about how to use the corridors, reconnectors, open space, that's where actually you can do a lot. That means that landscape architecture has to go a step forward and do more than just using plants and bringing that here or here, or here. You really have to make a very integrated thing. Good teams and good companies always include with landscape architecture, good engineering, traffic systems.

Pumping involvement, stakeholder involvement. All these things actually have to come together, and that makes it so interesting. And the best is, of course, an interdisciplinary team to work on.

Hopefully.

That's.

Yes, that was very, very helpful. Should we give her another round of applause?