What are the tools to make our #cities more #resilient, #livable and #regenerative? What #sustainable perspectives and solutions do we have and can we offer today and for future generations? Today, one of the central approaches in answering this question is through the incorporation of water and green with public space. This has been touted as as possible medicine for cities, to make them work, for people and the climate, in better ways.
How can such a Blue-Green Resilient Architecture become more mainstream? On 23 October 2023, Visiting Professor Herbert Dreiseitl, Founder and CEO of DREISEITLconsulting, gave the 6th NUS Cities Public Lecture on this issue. Going beyond theoretical discourse, he discussed practical experiences through examples from around the world that work in reality, and which he was involved in, such as Potsdamer Platz in Berlin, Cloudburst Resilient Copenhagen, the ABC program, and pilot projects such as Bishan Ang-Mo Kio Park, JTC Green Tech Park in Singapore, Tanner Springs in Portland Oregon, Cloudburst Resilient Design for Queens in New York City, and others.
Professor Dreiseitl’s lecture is just one installment in the NUS Cities Lecture Series. The NUS Cities Lecture Series investigates ideas, policies and projects developed by urban experts, which aspire to create sustainable, resilient, and liveable cities.Stay tuned through our social media platforms to find out about upcoming lectures:
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Good evening everyone and welcome to the sixth N US City’s public lecture series um before we start the event a kind request kindly either switch off your phones or put them on silent thank you for those of you who don’t know about n cities we are a university-wide multi-disciplinary open and inclusing
Collaborative platform hosted within the College of design and Engineering otherwise known as CDE through our collab cations with our local and international institutions we hope to create synergies that extend within as well as outside n us the N US City’s public lecture series will investigate policies ideas and projects developed by
Urban experts which aspire to create sustainable resilient and livable cities through the lecture series we hope to create a platform for discussion retrospection and conversation to give momentum to the ongoing research and exploration regarding issues concerning cities I would now like to introduce our speaker of the evening Herbert Rital is
An urban designer landscape architect water artist interdisciplinary planner and professor in practice his focus is on creating livable cities and urban Landscapes around the world with a special Hallmark on the inspiring and Innovative use of water he’s an international Renown expert and has realized groundbreaking contemporary projects in the field of climate
Resiliency storm water management urban planning and Landscape architecture like Tanner Springs Portland Park in sorry Tanner Springs Park in Portland OR Bish amoko Park in Singapore he had founded at earlier dry cyle in 1980 now known as RSD or rambol Studio dry cyle and developed the livable cities lab today
Herbert is an independent consultant for many cities and initiative around the globe his work integrates regenerated processes demonstrating a portfolio of site responsive interventions of community-based urban planning and environmental sensitive engineering through a collaborative Network as Howard GSD L fellow and regular visiting professor at the National University of
Singapore herard and his wife beta created dry SLE Consulting and are currently giving workshops advice to many initiatives and cities to improve their projects with resiliency and regeneration ative frame conditions please join me in welcoming him on stage we have to start yeah okay can you hear me clear enough
Thank you and I just need this one well it’s a great honor for me to be here to be invited uh to see so many friends and uh people I know from uh from many many meetings and I’m really happy to be here invited um to uh this program which is
For me very very interesting the uh noos cities um a new program here which I really enjoy very much the time I’m here because it’s a very connecting combining very different disciplines uh in a very interesting way including uh the questions how to do projects how to do
Policy making how to integrate different disciplines in a in a very smart and intelligent way which I think is extremely important uh if we want to do things more sustainable but also to include uh to to include people into the whole thing so um without some delay I
Would just like to uh today uh to make a bit a journey uh with you uh what it is about talking about water and working with water and also on different continents how do actually people work in different climate zones uh and I’m just trying to now I have to see if it
Works or not doesn’t work at the moment okay now it should work okay so um I myself I had always uh a very very nice colleagues and uh I was very very lucky to have a lot of young people who joined my teams and just to make it very
Clear I’m uh here just as a person not as a company or so because I refused I wanted to say when I’m getting 70 I want to get rid of all these things about managing big teams because it’s so tiring and it’s so demanding so I said I
Want to be really more uh coming back to my roots to work more on questions on philosophy to work on really important questions with some pilot projects and to help also young people to go forward and I’m I also know that I have lots of my colleagues who actually were working
Uh with me together which have new companies coming up new Enterprises and they bring the the movement out and I’m so so proud about this because I often see them and I’m really very happy so we have done together many many projects around the world which are all connected
To water they’re connected to questions on climate questions on resiliency but they’re also connected uh to people uh how can you include humans the human question uh really toward work on oh wonderful my wife is just coming from Germany she just landed uh and that is wonderful that Bina
Welcome so uh it’s really a kind of question how can you include a lot of things because water is actually teaching that I’m also uh I started my work 1980 as an artist so I had my art studio and I still go back to artwork
And that’s why I will at the end show you one project we are just doing uh which is really back to the roots and I’m working on art projects because I think um design really matters you know we are so often just focusing on engineering and Technical Solutions
Which are important that’s no matter there’s no no doubt I’m very very sort of precise on questions on when it comes to details when it comes to the question how to how to work on on engineering topics but we are here also at the school of of environment and design so
How do we bring good design and good Technical Solutions together that is a very very important uh question and actually it’s interesting that when we look at water water is actually showing this because uh when we start and when that’s why I put this question up uh why
Do we start with art and not with science or engineering or water in architecture it really comes to the point when we look at water when we look at Water structure structures uh here in Singapore on the coastline on History it is all about an enormous way of form of
Creativity of transformation of change process there is never something where we can say this is it there is always water shows us that we have to be resilient that we have to be flexible that we have to be that we have to adapt to new situations which is by the way
Something we also need in our life you know as humans we always have to we can never say something for granted we always have to actually ReDiscover new relationships with even people we know very well because they also change and we change so it’s a permanent process of development which
Actually water is showing us in many many ways so we can learn a lot of that and of course that is very important that we see this so art is much more than just you know making something nice or having decoration I think it’s very important I often do little experiments
And I just have that one um we just did it actually but this is an old film where um actually Baron Chau who was also a student of mine did made this film to see the inner movements of water structures where you can see even a water which is going downhill on a
Plexiglass plate is starting to make curves left and right shaped curves it’s all kinds of Rhythm um phenomenas you can see uh in this structure and we find them again in nature we find these structures of um oxos of Curves in many many Landscapes on all planets yeah if
We if we are looking down from the airplane and we see um the desert of the Sahara or if we see the desert in Australia we find all water forms very very interesting because when it comes to water then it is enormous Rich of creativity of course we have a lot of
Problems also with water it is a challenging element where we have to deal with and it’s really the question how to balance things water can also show this very well because it balances extremes like temperatures when we have no water we have extreme hot and extreme
Cold uh day and night times right you you probably noce when you go to a desert a place where there’s no water there is actually no resiliency there is no balance so water is actually showing this and it shows this always in very beautiful ways and very Artful so I
Often do also Clay modeling this is actually all done here at noos you know this is actually where we still had the fun Cliff uh building so we did several times we made this kind of modeling and it was only maybe uh 3 hours but students learned so much it was
Absolutely surprising and if you look at the eyes of these guys I mean they were they’re still telling me now they said you know Professor this was for us an eye opener and a mind opener and so I think it’s very important to see that you know what kind of inner structures
Inner forms are there because then we can understand how actually nature works we can see how structures come up we can see even that little experiments if you make a little uh just take a stick and you uh pull it through a kind of a kind of a water
Um Bas and you just see what happens behind very very interesting very rich different scales by the way this one is small scale this is large scale this is about 400 kilometers this is a volcano stacking out of this Cloud Fields because water and air is very very
Similar in the way how it fluidly sort of make movements so the world is Rich of these kind of very very interesting structures and that’s why we have actually to learn from it there are lots of people who are actually scientists on the max flan Institute for example in
Germany but also Leonard dainy we were always saying well we have to look very carefully to understand nature from a different point not just from our head but also with our emotions with our uh we have to go into this we have really to see what are the sort of inner
Qualities of movements of forces we have in nature and I think that’s very important that when we come to cities when we see uh what we did on this planet and with lots of reasons of course of being more econom more efficient more focused how to handle
Nature how to handle risks and all these questions we create a a kind of transformation of landscape and we can see this in some countries very clear for example in the US with the Jefferson grid which is slowly moving over it was actually taking over power and ownership
In design of fragile landscape forms and they were more and more structured to to give Fair plots to everyone where everyone can have the same size for agriculture for example when we look at cities and this is just in Germany a typical example we made everything very
Straight quick from A to B our waterways our streets our train systems our infrastructure uh and we lost somehow the fra fragile flexibility what water actually can show us urbanization is even asking more for that and when you look pictures like this what we have a
Lot in Asia but we also have it in Europe we have it in us we have it in different parts of the world in China we have it in India more and more coming up blue and green is more and more disappearing because that’s actually has
No advocat it has somehow we think it has no value right real estate development can be done with buildings but not with the green space is maybe nice to have but if we can afford it if not we take it away so that’s what we did for many many
Generations now it comes back like a boomerang to us and I think this is very important to see that uh every actions has also a consequence and the consequences we feel today is that we see that the change of our planet actually is coming in reverse that we have suddenly different structures for
Example on how water reacts to this we have suddenly particular very strong Cloud burst on one spot where very close by you have no rain coming down we have and I just don’t want to show you too many slides on that because you can find
This all on TV you have seen it just a couple of days now we had this flood terrible floodings in um uh in Ireland um and this is just my country in Germany you know Germany is supposed to be a very civilized High engineering country but this was actually not long
Ago it was just actually two years ago is right two or three years ago we had this Aral situation beautiful lovely Valley here’s the the river this was what happening after we had an extreme thunderstorm which we never had in this intensity look at this the bridge gone
Here the whole whole thing flooded people were dying houses were destroyed and big questions came up how to do it again can we learn to make it different I have to say we only learned a little bit but we still were not consequent enough in Germany to make a real big
Change that’s my personal opinion when you look at these pictures here I mean this is really shocking I mean this is actually that you can see here’s the village here’s a farm this is all gone this is like a canyon actually starting in the middle of Germany where the land
Is just taken away uh in actually one night right one night uh of of of a thunderstorm coming down this is not a far away now I really go very close to my heart this is actually my city I’m living uh in a small City very very cozy
Kind of Swiss style small City Old City 1,200 years old um and this is our train station uh one night there was so much water from a little stream uh by a cloud burst that the whole uh the whole train station was completely flooded and for one week no
Train could go in and out was completely luckily we had at that night no trains and no people there so water can be really extremely uh dangerous in the way how how actually the climate change affects the water and I think another point which we also can see this other side of
The of the coin is that we have long periods where we have no water so it’s getting more and more dry it’s more and more hot we have more and more for example you have seen that what we had on forest fires in Canada in Europe in
Greece fires that the whole island where I was actually with my wife in in in rodos um all these places where we have been uh last year they are all gone they’re all burned down so the the change of of the water system and of the water balance by that that the climate
Is reacting to this is dramatic we can feel it already now and we can see it and I want you to talk a little bit about it not too long uh what are the what are the effects and I think what is somehow also the question I mean this is
A big scale thing but it also comes to the question how can we actually make our cities more resilient and our lifestyle better so that we can adapt ourselves to these changing conditions and I think it is just for example to see in Germany in Germany we had the for
Forecast an old one here but not so long ago actually maybe 15 years ago we were thinking it’s warming up worst case scenario here now the new Ford cars is showing it’s much faster so what we were thinking in the year 2000 is absolutely what we were thinking as worst case
Scenario are now even not the medium the middle what we have so that is really a situation which is scary and I think when we see where the heat is the most of the hot zones are always there where the city is dense where there’s little green there’s little evaporation little
Uh little green shelters like trees and so on these are just some uh some pictures we collected together to see the the uh termal uh environmental or the the the surface uh temperatures and you can see immediately that the surface temperatures where we have uh areas
Where we have Forest where we have green areas like here uh the temperature is lower and also at night the temperature can drop down in other places not but this is something you probably all know so I don’t have to go too deep into the details interesting is that global
Warming as a trend this is actually in Germany um from uh the uh Research Institute I I’m very always interested working with these guys together and it’s very interesting to see you know what is actually happening and what are our opportunities with um um Globe 21 with the conference in Paris where my
Wife and I were actually present and we were also giving presentations we had still the hope to say well maybe if we act now quick enough we can stabilize our temperature temp to just 1 and a half to 2° Cel higher and actually to be honest when I see how we how difficulty
Politics are or is because I’m also in uh in in in one of the small parliaments in in in Germany my city as um as a municip as as a political person just simple decisions are so difficult already that I think we will more go to a tendency which is if we
Don’t do anything actually will be even very very bad but actually we have somehow to find a way everyone has to contribute in a way that we EX at least make the planet so that our next Generations can somehow live on this planet and that has a lot to do with
Water it’s actually not new because we know a long time already that uh Water Systems environment green forests uh CO2 emission warming up all these things are not new they are KN known actually I did a little bit research on before having this talk and it’s actually very
Interesting that even already in the fourth Century before Christ there were people saying when we take Marsh and Forest away the temperature will go up and then later on I mean we have different interesting uh figures and very interesting thing is for example um this lady Newton she said uh warming
Will be exposed because um certain gases like CO2 will certainly warm up the temperature uh by that the sunlight as is reacting to this and we know then later of course of a lot of research this was actually an interesting person who actually presented it also to the
The United States to the um to the government uh and he got the gold medal from from the president at that time and he said well the CO2 is going up the temperature is going up and we can see that there is really a kind of absolutely um uh scary uh situation
Where we have somehow to find better Solutions so I don’t want to see too black but uh because I think there’s always hope and that is very important uh where are where especially For You students you know I mean I know a lot of students are listening here and uh it’s
Very important that we actually use any opportunity we have in our profession in our influence we have to friends to others to actually make a change or to make things better and working on architecture working on engineering working on policymaking working on finance questions what to finance and
What not and where do we see value coming up that is an extremely important part where you can make a change so I I think very important is to look a little bit on different continents how uh water management was done uh as blue green infrastructure in different uh areas I
Just take first uh Europe and I do it very much from a person personal experience because I started my work 1980 with these questions we had a lot going on in Switzerland where if you imagine in Switzerland and also many other countries rainwater was seen as waste water and it was always combined
With sewer and out of s side and out of mind and we slowly started by some projects and will share one very soon that we had to change actually the way how we see capturing rainwater we were seeing aha wait a while the only water we have
We get is rain rain is creating actually drinking water everything we have in lakes and rivers in the groundwater is first strain so it’s not waste it’s not something we have actually to take care of it even in a city we have to take care of that so we have to change all
Our reg our our regulations Germany started also very soon to come up with new regulations and the European uh water framework directive also followed and made very clear conditions in Europe we look very much on catchment um areas so we say for example the denu has different structures
Than the river of R so each has a different type of hydraulic and also Li liol limnology that’s the microorganism in the water sorry I’m always mixing up German and English uh and that has actually to be very much focused on on every system so every system needs
According to that the right regulations and that’s a a way how we actually work there very early um things came out in Switzerland 1980 I did write with with Wan Gyer already very earlier book called new ways of rainwater and it was very very important I just like to share
You one small project what I did try out very naive I I Tred to work on villages in Switzerland this is in the French part of Switzerland ealon swis Rond and I I started to say let’s not waste water in canals let’s keep it on the surface as
Far as we can go we keep it we collect it we make slopes we we have hundreds of such little um drain open drain systems and we reach this water we bring it into kind of little uh green spots we have we filter it through here we hold it back
When it rains the water can go up and down it was more like a bringing landscape architecture and water engineering and art somehow together that was the point at this point I was not doing actually any hydraulic complicated calculations you know I was not looking at certain uh qpi or
Guidelines or so it was not known at that time it’s just common sense and and actually I would like your students also to encourage you when you start to work on things use your common sense what is a natural process what is needed what is the logic don’t look only on books what
Is describing you or when you give a uh when you when someone brings brings an idea start with your common sense does it make sense is it is it right is it in harmony with a natural with a natural process and then you come with come up
With good Solutions well out of that of course a lot of other things came up how to use water in dry or wet Seasons we did it in Germany then later on we did it also in in uh Singapore uh on different areas I started later to make
Very large projects for like a an army base from the American nailing Barracks to change them completely uh make a new city with green roofs every drop of rainwater in this project is actually collected is slowing down is treated is filtering is uh even going into a little
Small River and you know what we had 2002 we had an extreme storm event it was just finished in stutgart in the city of stutgart and a lot of floodings in the city no flooding here because we could keep it all back we could hold it
Back and when it is very dry we still have water in our streams because this is like a sponge the the city is like a sponge and is reacting uh keeping water letting it out slowly also when it’s dry still a little bit water so all the
Little animals we have in our river systems can survive because if they dry fall dry dry and this ecosystems actually collapses completely and when there’s a lot of water it can suck in it can hold back so that’s a very very important principle uh and of course
That can be done large scales I was very lucky that I could work for the world exhibition 2000 in Hanover um and I had to work of course with basic structures and principles and Engineering details working out on on large corridors to hold it back sometimes even to protect
The groundwater because we had some places also with pollution or there are snow infiltration opportunities so you have to do it different there’s a lot of kind of things you need to think about it looks so easy right but there is a lot of uh thinking behind to make
Projects in this scale work so again here A whole city dealing with it I go to a very last uh European example uh modern city uh or old city which is uh in a transition um at the moment is the city of Basel this area was the big region for
Chemistry so all these big companies at time buyer Sandos and so on they were actually having there the headquarter and a lot of pollution actually was going into here Basel decided we want to make this the most green possible City we can have there in this in this city
So we want to treat all the water on site we want to keep it we want to clean it we want to recycle some of the buildings we look for any opportunity on buildings to hold back even small whes and this um ladies and gentlemen is so
Important uh very often we think uh also in Singapore too much we get the water together and then we make our drains better no we lost you know the thing where you have to start to think is the catchment area in the very first beginning where the water the rainwater
Is actually hitting or touching the surface rooftops uh Gardens htb buildings or areas there is where action needs to be done that’s very very important as a message you have to look also for streets so we were looking a lot in what how can we actually make the SE streets
More um with uh with swes and and holding the water back what can we do to actually have uh little pocket parks where collect water where we have maybe even a sponge uh in the underground where in dry periods we still have humidity so we have different trees we
Can hold back so that the trees can survive also in dry periods so so that we have actually a climate uh resilient Park uh where neighbors can go out and can meet and I think we know this in Singapore very very well you know when
When it’s so hot uh when you have a shelter and you have some trees it’s it’s still okay to walk outside but if that is missing uh no one wants to go out then we use our airons we use our cars and then we of course create this
Kind of spiral that CO2 emission and all this is going higher and higher and higher and then we come to all the problems we have seen before so it’s a very important part and I just skipped that one that’s is Berlin po plus uh large scale where I learned a lot on
This project the last one even industry I mean this is not a very environmental friendly thing but I just wanted to share this quickly this is because um Singapore has these Formula 1 cars and this is McLaren so uh on this Factory actually I was uh very interested or I
Did work here for for McLaren with Norman Foster and and his team um and it was very interesting to collect here uh water from the entire Factory from this building from this building but also from all the car park parking lots and we filter the water we bring it into a
Lake system and we circulate this water actually through a kind of cascade where there is a temperature drop and we use this temperature difference the Delta of the uh in and outgoing water to have a cooling system for the entire plant and it works pretty well um this is of
Course close to London or is in the bigger part of London it would not work in this way in Singapore that’s also very important to know where can you use what yeah uh but I just wanted to to share this uh just from a from a point
Of that it’s also interesting the design and the structure of this and it’s very very interesting I go to North America North America did start very early also to think about better Solutions because they were aware about uh the Water problems they had made the Clean Water
Act uh they had low impact development the L ldp the green infrastructure came up cities like Portland Oregon cities like um New York Philadelphia especially started early on to think about ways how can we work more smart more resilient with water in our cities so I was very happy
To also be in America very early on uh work on that so the low impact development was actually starting with very good graphics this is the oldfashioned way this is the new way how we could do it this has so many uh added values and side effects like filtration
Like purification of water where this is only a mechanical solution right uh and uh we could actually see that so I was happy to work especially in Portland on one park with my team at that time um also with with a local uh landscape architectural and engineering company
Called Greenworks and we collected water from different sides we had we created a kind of sponge um it was a wetland there in the past and we recreated this Wetland and collected it and it’s actually part of this Pearl District uh so we where we collect water where we
Bring it in the park where we actually let it uh filter through the landscape with a special layers uh we collect it and recycle part of that and clean water then finally goes out into the river and of course to do such things and this is another important uh tool and uh and
Point I would like to address to you students this is not just an engineering solution or an architectural solution this is something where you need to get the local people on board because it’s a public realm it’s their home it’s their place where they play is it’s their
Living living room yeah how can you come as an designer and an engineer and say I don’t care about you and about your needs you have to include them absolutely so workshops uh participation involvement very very important extremely important point so my wife and I we do this very very often
Around the world we whenever we can we try to convince our client you will be much better off if we invest in a workshop because you will be much faster much easier that’s actually also happened in this city because of just the the people were so much behind and
When we had a financial crisis this project was not taken down others were but we had so much support by the public that we were able to even hold on this project and do it recycle material work on it work it out and today it’s a
Beautiful Park uh it’s it’s uh very much well-kept well cared we have art things going on there there are even friends of the park which do the maintenance so the maintenance cost for the city is low just by involving people so that is a very very important part I think which
Um I think you can do in different cultures and different areas and it’s very much important let’s make a step to Australia Australia also has started early on I remember I was um on conferences like the H hydropolis um in purse uh Mike Morris uh we did discuss
How could we call it and actually I think on a glass of beer we said water sensitive Urban Design and actually with um uh with some other friends uh this was getting a kind of term which was more and more actually established uh in
In uh in Australia and um we had lots of friends actually who who developed it or brought it up very great colleagues who are working on this in Australia and I think different guidelines also came out in in Australia where where you can actually see how that really works and
Um Tony Wong for example did really develop a lot with with his wife on this point uh to come up with water VI cities and to say it’s more than just engineering it needs to have a kind of wisdom what we have to bring in which I
Think is very very important China I don’t want to go too deep into that because there are lots of interesting uh topics but interesting was that this kind of tendency to come up with Solutions which use water more sensitive more smart more clever more intelligent was really going around the world but I
Think the sponge City word was really established in China they use this word then very strong it’s very easy and then it was going back to to Germany to to Europe and we use it now also everywhere so it’s interesting how Innovation you know goes from one continent to the
Other and then comes back that’s and that’s so important I mean I think on this planet we have to exchange we have to learn from each other also learn from different cultures Singapore now is also for me a very very interesting um country and city and I think you are
Really I have to say that on many places on the Forefront but you also have to be careful that you don’t rest and that you don’t stop and that you don’t really see that there is more to to be done uh so I think I would like just to mention that
Um the ABC water guidelines uh which really started um in in a in a very interesting way that was actually how I was introduced and Cen chai was puv at at um uh was CEO from po was coming up with we have to find better Solutions
How to collect water how to treat water how to recycle it and so on so the this word active beautiful and clean very smart very clever and I was happy at that time with my team to help several times to come up with the guidelines for
That today it’s a whole process which is developed further and I think it has also has not to forget a whole development behind that uh there was uh different panels already trying to find out and um I’m always impressed if I just think back about lianu how he
Actually had this vision of 1977 to say um the Singapore River once will be clean if we do it we can do it and uh it will be so that people can swim we can see Fish all that we have all that we have and when we look to other countries
You know like the chili Wong in uh in uh Jakarta no one can imagine but we can also say that why not I mean that’s really the way how I think uh Pioneer uh thinking and and Innovation actually has come come about and that’s what I would like to encourage you students also
Never give up there’s always something you can do so uh um well Singapore did of course a lot and I think a very important part was density how to deal with density how to bring blue green in uh gray cities cities which are very narrow and I think with the ABC uh
Guidelines we developed a lot of different tool sets toolkits what to do uh on the quantity and on the quality side how to treat water I don’t want to go too deep into that and the the underlying question is always to be able to use nature-based Solutions because if
We go away from nature we have more and more the problem that we have enormous amounts of water which we just lose they just go away well if we look at natural natural systems they are more holding back slowing down treating water and it’s very important that we learn from
That and use this intelligence and bring it into our cities and that’s a big trick and this is actually what I would like now to say very clear it is not just to make the canal nice or to make on both sides uh you know like a little
Bit more I mean this is great and it’s I know how difficult it is I’m not criticizing here it’s not my um I I don’t have the right to criticize because I think there are lots of conditions which are difficult I was working with our team actually on one of
The rivers where I was not so proud I said I wanted to do more and when I look at it I say ah lost opportunity but it is very important that we really think about the very early starting point where are the catchment what can we do
To slow down the process to clean it before it gets into the drains before it gets into the rivers so that we have already clean water coming down and then we can keep keep the water recycle it reuse it and and do something for that one of the first pilot projects and I
Don’t want to go too deep into that is of course banok park at that time it was only Ban Park and and the Kong River was this it was a profile very clear defined somehow a little bit crumbling and falling apart so it had to be done new
And one plan was of course to make it just a bit wider and bit deeper and still use concrete then we said no we should actually bring nature back to this what can we do to make this which is actually with two fences what it like a prison can we make it
Open can we free it up can we make a seamless transition between people landscape and water that was a big discussion there was really a big discussion uh with a lot of criticism it cannot be done and then we said okay let’s do a test reach let’s make a a try
And so we made a test reach and I know there are some people actually even here who were actually very very supportive of that and we helping with we were also actually thinking we should do it here with uh noos but no was sorry to say that so complicated that they said we
Need three years for all the process to get the final Improvement I said forget it I can’t wait for three years to make my pest R I need to do it within one year because I I need to know what kind of plants can I
Use what kind of soil can I use what kind of techniques can I use how to stabilize it I have to see how quick the pl PL grow um if there is a flood coming up you know what how is the plants reacting to this what kind of
Interaction is so we did it our own out of our own pocket money uh and then we created actually a test R but the result now is very beautiful because it’s much wider so it’s a it’s a it’s a valley um we recycled a lot of the material we
Brought it in here uh today it’s a very very sort of open thing sear thing it can of course the water can go up we have Warning Systems security was a big discussion and it’s all over the world a big discussion um and just to say this also
In Brackets in in just just in between the lines and I think it’s important also for you uh students um we I think we have to start to think different about security and about safety because often we have something in our head where we think is dangerous but what is
Really dangerous if we don’t educate the society to learn how to work with risks and how and life is always risky and you know we learned for example how to cross the street we learned our kids to wait when there’s red we cannot go actually with the environment we have also to
Learn more and more that we have to behave in the right way with the environment it’s not up to the government to make everything uh okay okay it is also important that actually children can learn when there’s a rain and their water comes up I have to stand
Away and have like people did in the past as well I mean this is there is there is no someone who can actually we can flame all the time I think this whole discussion about safety is something we have to start to rethink it in Germany it’s a very big discussion
How to change this behavior for example about Playgrounds uh security comp companies cannnot or or no one can always come and say I’m blaming this because there was a stone to hire so uh all these things have to we have to reconsider this question what is safety
Yeah well that’s just a a side effect and then actually today I think banok Park is very beautiful it is uh has lots of added values It’s a Wonderful bird paradise it has it has also of course challenges because uh we have a lot of
Uh ERS coming in we have nature uh which is sometime not so behaving always like people wants to see it so we have to find also a kind of learning for that and this whole question how to work with wild and with human life and how to bring that together that’s probably for
The future I think a very big topic where we have to learn because often we try to see that nature is kind of very decorative very controlled how we imagine Nature has to be but that’s not true nature is actually for itself has its own its own life its own regulation
And we have to be very actually respectful that we cannot bring our human perspective and our human mindset and to say Nature has to be like this and that’s an interesting process I think for the future which is coming up well and that brings me to this point uh
Of uh of the probably the next year’s discussion the city in nature and the the City nature targets what Singapore brought up here’s the whole discussion we just mentioned already in and that will be very very interesting you know what can we learn step by step and I’m
So proud to see what is happening in Singapore right now I mean I just uh mention some points we had sunai buulo as a very important uh Milestone um uh we we did work actually my team did work on this and I was very happy to come up with the first design
Con Concepts and ideas on this and then it was carried out with sabana and uh this is actually a lot of people actually go there we even have on some parts some crocodiles even I’ve seen them uh so it’s a it’s a very interesting way how we get more close to
It we can see what we can do what is risky where where do we have to work with it but it’s a step it’s a m big milestone I think another is recycled Landscapes you know like this query I think this is just uh just open this wonderful Park of the ripples range
Nature Park which I think is fantastic and it was also learning uh uh curve to say we can also have some foot pathes with stones where we have to balance it’s not all smooth and two hand rails uh it’s May no handrail we have to you
Know find ways how we walk that’s great that’s a good step forward and I think in the in the uh in little streams which are running down so beautiful project beautiful examples and I think this uh this whole steps forward in Singapore I think is fantastic I would like as a
Last one here from Singapore to show this one here this is actually the zurong Island Pond um which is not accessible for people because it’s the island uh which is really high industry and you need a special permission but um uh we were so happy actually to help on
On this uh with JTC was the was here our client and I was more or less Consulting in workshops what they can do uh this is actually uh maybe not even the last photo I’m I’m happy I will see this in very very soon and and see it we tried
To do the following we take all this is a this is basically a reclaimed land it’s a it’s filled up sand and it has streets it has different plots where industry is coming more and more in rainwater run off on the surface is coming out over there on one of the
Spots so it’s actually brought in here these are some of the early sketches of that so when water comes in we can bring it in here it can can go up it can start to infiltrate because islands always need fresh water so that the freshwater lens is pushing out the salt water right
And this is actually also what is happening here so when there’s even more water coming up we have special zones where ill filtration can go can come in we also protect some of the existing buildings with spms and so on and uh actually when there’s a lot of water
Coming then there will be an overflow yeah but most of the water will actually be kept on the island and will refill the qu groundwater aquair these were some early sketches and actually it starts to look very much like this already it it’s really coming up and
This is I I think very beautiful to see you know how then also l landcape design landscape architecture the right plants the right biology uh birds can come in and I think there is lots of ways how to bring industry and environment more close together and really to find better
Solutions I mean the durong uh EO Park uh is one another example which I don’t show pictures here but I think this is also coming up uh very well now finally I I would like to show at the end two uh things one is um uh can we actually also
Do this in less I can’t say it very simple rich countries which have not so much money like Singapore has or my country has or Switzerland has can we do it there as well and I think yes we can but we probably have to do it different
We have to do different methods we cannot over regulate everything workers need also maybe some other advice and I was very happy that one of my former colleagues and U team member um now started his own office now actually this is a slide before this is um actually
Studios we did um we did two studios here at noos uh with with uh suburbs of of um jakata uh what can we do to work here to develop uh the city and uh to make it so that it is water sensitive um and Raymond is actually sitting here he
Was part of that my who is also part of my team and is helping and supporting me I I want to talk about this park um the T Echo Park right in the center which was actually done um by Anton Sora and his team Sora Studio got also the
President design award this year and I think it’s a very beautiful case that’s why I want to show it because it’s really a very very nice example of almost a Boku Park broken down to more uh Simple Solutions also and it was actually done much faster because all the process of of you
Know getting building permissions and all this was was not needed it was more it was more important to find people who can do it and and Aon told me you know Herbert it was so actually exciting to work with the local people because they had still a lot of skills they knew from
From the past so it was really impressive well this is uh jakata you know all the problems of jakata of course that uh the land is going down and so on there’s discussion about removing the entire city and so on but still uh I want to focus just a bit on
On that what it is in in the region we have of course all these problems we are we are aware of the chilung chilong is a very clear example about how the sea was more and more squeezing the the the river and then uh there’s only trash
Going down and when there’s suddenly a lot of water it was just flooding the entire city and very very difficult to deal with that but this was his actually area where he said okay I want to make a change actually in this in this uh uh in
In this part of the canal and I want to create a kind of Park a lot of skepticism he told me was also there um it cannot be done people will not behave in the right way they will still liter everything and will will be damaged very
Soon and he said no let’s try let’s let’s go for that that were the the uh the preexisting par conditions there and and actually honestly um when we look back and see uh pictures of Singapore uh like 40 years back it was also like that
You know I mean uh yeah and why not I mean that that’s also reality and then they started really to come up with doing a lot of things uh collecting uh the materials the trees taking things out making things wider recycling material same what we did here on Vision
M par reuse recycle um replant uh come up with gabian very simple and uh but very effective so of course there were maybe not everything perfect you could maybe have done this maybe a bit wider the profile is but you have to work with the conditions you have there but today
This actually looks completely different so he brought in some um ideas about about how to bring the community in boardwalks Pavilion and so on the whole program he made a very nice uh Bridge construction to walk over um and this is a constructed Wetland and the whole
Thing can be flooded here it can really the water can go up then can you cannot use it and then the water goes down then you can use it again and it’s even more radical that what we have often in Singapore and it’s really interesting how how that here starts to work see
Here the water is here coming up it can be even higher there’s a detention Basin in this in the Middle where here is the foot path a bit higher going over and you see this are some of the Impressions um I haven’t seen it myself but I just
Wanted to share this with you because I think it’s it’s really um a very well done uh work of course he also used a lot of the uh bioengineering techniques we we tested out um and uh I think he made very very good use of that so I’m
I’m very proud about to see you know how people uh have been learning and and recreating this and even learn more and bring this forward and and really do do things there’s a of um wonderful places where people can collect beside uh bioengineering Solutions this is the way
How people can walk and cross over and I have seen pictures on weekends where it’s packed full packed full and it’s so successful that of course now this is a a pilot project for Jakarta and they say it works we didn’t think it would work but then developers start okay I want
Also to have that because it brings our Real Estate Value up yeah okay so so so this is actually what you can do all right I don’t want to go over time um too much I want to come to the end and I come back to the art and I I just like
To share you one project again in um in more temperature zones this is an art experience erience in the city of Milwaukee North America I’m actually working there for uh for an industrial uh area called um for the um for the district um in in in
Pers and uh actually the the district at the moment looks really very much rundown so this is actually Main Street and the end of the main street in this area goes into an industrial Zone and it’s like an ending here and you can see this is winter time here
Um Milwaukee has has uh Seasons very humid and hot summer very cold and windy Winters and short spring short uh fall but the seasons are very important for the entire atmosphere of the city and the water actually reacts to this Four Seasons so um the third W um District
Which is this area which is actually very a very important District because for example companies like um the uh motorbikes um can you help me harav Harley Davidson right they I’m not I’m not a an expert in this but but their Factory is very close to this for
Example and and other things um and actually at the end they uh then we started with very simple sketches and by the way also students when you have ideas use hand sketches don’t only only think you need perfect perfect renderings you know first IDE is just
Take a stick draw all the people I know around the world who are doing great design they all do hand sketches you can even have a little Sketchbook and you might have an deer sitting here sketching it down and you hold it yeah so uh that’s very important then you can
Of course do all kinds of renderings this is how it looks at the moment moment um this is how we want to see it we want to bring more life into that also very simple sketches and then of course you can also do a rendering later
On to to convince the client maybe I’m I’m not a big fan of all these overdesigned renderings you know it it can actually be much simpler and and actually also for for you uh as a school of uh design and environment don’t overdo things all the time because the expectations will go
Higher and higher and higher and higher you know but uh it’s not getting better the project is not getting better it’s often getting worse um so this is actually the place this is how we want to see it and now we started to construct it full scale so in my uh
Hometown I had a I have a big place big Factory and I started to work on that uh I did Build It Up full scale I made the under construction and this was actually this spring it was um March April May I think right and Ray was one of the team
Members working on this project so um actually we started here to build it up then uh we brought clay nine tons of clay and we modeled all this clay by hand and made actually the forms to optimize the forms we made it all on different scales and made all water
Kinds of tests and then when we have done this and we made the water flow we will see this at the at the end on the film we scan it in uh with different methods we use all the 3D points uh on computer on computer um um digit we
Digitalized uh all the all the different scales and measurements we optimized it and uh we did the water test with real water and I think it’s very interesting uh that’s what I also want to bring uh to you uh because we are always using more and more computers but I think it’s
Very important to have a kind of relationship to the real uh materials yeah and you can actually bring it together like this is a good example how how actually to bring the real sort of physical stuff and the computer technology together you see here my team
Who who were young men strong mens here from from they were so happy to work on this and actually I think Ray Raymond was taking the photo right okay and then I think I will end with a small film on that I will end
With uh with art um on that and I hope it will work um so is it working oh yeah okay so maybe we could take the sound a little bit louder so you can see how how that comes because then we see also the water movement so this Was yeah so real scale water experiments and then finally out of that uh the form comes POS play or nine tons of clay modeled and it looks crazy but it’s is fun and it is really result actually is faster than using huge computer models because uh you can see it and you can
Test it out and you can make Corrections very quickly and you see how the water is running you can see okay how can I make it I can see all kinds of flow structures and I put some color in see what is what is happening um test it we you know we
Carve it out shape it build up take material from here to here that’s and the teacher is water teacher water is teaching Us by each test how to do it how to change it where to build it up where to take it down um actually one of my dreams is
That I could do something like this for Singapore in some places I don’t know how this could work but but I think it’s really fantastic to work on this kind of not making jumping chests but really letting the water really uh be as it is
You know and so here you see that we are now testing out a bit more and I think the film will soon show that at the end how we take them the final measurements here we’ll we we work on different details uh even cut off and take in and
We did test it actually then also with people coming in even my grandchildren were then finally testing this and they were really happy to to work on this so uh here we see also the forms different shapes um and always water was then running telling us what was okay what
Did we had to change we even had such a rcal form called flow form uh what English guide did uh did um work out and here we work with the students of um milwa University of Wisconsin Milwaukee um and now they scan everything take it in feels the pump installations
Here uh and here we we are just starting to uh then build it up then the interim space showcase ah this is actually do uh yeah this was actually at the end we had a kind of party uh every such a work needs a celebration at the end right uh
And I think it’s so important also maybe a little bit in Brackets when you students have done a great work celebrate your work know I think uh work needs to be celebrated and often here in at NOS we take it for granted and things are ready and then we jump
Into the next thing take a break and say we have done a great job and we celebrate maybe for one hour and then we go to the next so this kind of moments these kind of moments you know of of really taking taking a stop you can know
St more than an hour but uh well don’t overdo it right that’s that’s also it has to have the right balance okay so I think with this U last film uh we come and this was some of the team of people uh who were working on on the big scales
And here the guys are very happy and I think that’s that’s the end right that’s the end okay thank you so much thank you thank you Prof for that very inspiring lecture like it it was beautiful um before we go ahead we sincerely want to apologize for the
Issue with the airon uh there was an issue with the central electrical system so it’s now resolved so really apologetic for that um now I would like to invite on stage the moderator for the evening Professor Dorothy Tang uh Prof Tang is a landscape architect and assistant Prof in the department of
Architecture at an us where she directs the master of landscape architecture program her research and practice is concerned with the intersections of infrastructure and everyday life especially in communities confronting large scale environmental change her current research explores the urban and environmental impacts of Chinese overseas investments in Southeast Asia
And Africa and the GE politics of transnational waterers Shar management please join me in welcoming her on [Applause] stage okay so I’m on have a seat please um I think Herbert needs to rest a little bit so I will start by rambling a little um I was I really appreciated
This talk so just so you know when I was a student I had literally checked out wcape and new wcape from the library almost permanently I think the library had to purchase more copies because they always had to recall it from me um so it’s really such a pleasure to be here
And I hope for students that are out there that when I get you to do the clay thing next week that you don’t kill me um anyway so I I just wanted to summarize a few thoughts and since I’m the moderator I have the privilege of going for first before everybody else
Gets to go um we have a little bit of feedback but we’ll just keep going all right so um I I really appreciated how Herbert you talked about the evolution of how nature-based solution went from something that was not accepted to something that is I mean I if I dare say
A little bit mainstream at the moment right so I remember 15 20 years ago whenever I spoke to an ecologist they would be like oh you’re going to put a wetland in a city just I was like yeah so how big does the Wetland need to be
And they’re always like oh just get as much as you can like there’s no like anything is better than nothing I think this was the kind of attitude about 20 years ago when it came to nature-based Solutions thinking of water management and storm water in cities and now we
Have evolved into regulations and standards where in China for example 80% of the Cities need to be converted in well in five years um in into this incredible sponge if it works um and so we have really really come a long way uh in the past 15 to 20 years but I mean
The beginning of your talk you really are asking for much more radical change right which is really difficult with water systems with water catchment systems basins that are territorial I work on the geopolitics of hydrop I work on hydropolitics right so how Nations and and these large scale water basins
Operate right and so they they’re territorial they’re at multiple scales there’s way too many stakeholders and communities that are involved and yet climate change is real and we’ve experienced it and it’s accelerating much faster than we expected what is the next step now in all of our studios here
At n us you know ABC water is a standard we teach it like if our student I tell my students if the only thing you came up with is a wetland you kind of fail because it’s so part of what we do here in Singapore what needs to happen next
In order for us to address these really pressing issues yeah it’s a that’s a very very interesting and I think a very important question also I mean just maybe before I go to the final point of your question the starting point is very interesting already what you mentioned
Uh is that let’s see 20 well I have been working now more more for more than 40 years in this field and I remember that before 2000 and and actually with some of the projects even you have seen here for example the one in in America in Portland in Portland I
Was criticized by this project uh in in the uh I think it was the landscape magazine big American Magazine for landscape architecture there was one of the most important um editors writing an article and said this is not sustainable this is Boutique ecology and what he meant by this and it was really
Interesting he his opinion was and that was actually many people were thinking so nature is something which is out there and it needs to be very big large ecosystems like big forest and sorry we don’t have that so we cannot deal with it and the city is something different
Right so the city is completely artificial uh is manicured as everything and we should not think about ecology in the city so so it was Radical to say this was actually Nature has nothing to do in the city that was actually I think before 2000 very much uh the way how people
Were thinking and also educating uh in in in high schools and when I think you know about discussions and when I look very few people were starting to make the link to say actually there is no um such separation and then later on in the discussion came out that this is a
Completely negative term to say Boutique ecology because they it was always thinking about kind of uh small kitchy things right uh and then later we learned especially about for example birds or bees or lots of other animals that there is a network what they need in the city so so ecology is actually
Not working that only one big thing is here but there are green corridors there are green networks actually something we we tried to do in Singapore uh with the green Network and the green corridors and the uh Park connectors and so on that was not seen before 2000 I I I
Think that was really and that’s why such a criticism was uh was possible to be made and a lot of people were agreeing to that and and and I found it amazing I did talk to this guy later on and said he said no I you’re right it
Changed uh and and I think the same is um second part of your question what can we do um and that’s probably this part is not so easy to answer for me because I’m not in a position to say you know this is this will be what the Next Generation
Has to do or so I can just guess a little bit and and I think I try to make it clear in my speech that the way how we understand nature or how we think nature is often I wouldn’t call it um Boutique ecology but I would maybe call it it is
A kind of um nature we like to see which is nice which is good to handle which is good to control which is something we can actually add on here and here and we kind of making kind of this kind of um mental nature yeah it’s a it’s a kind of
Programming you know we program here here here and we don’t see it as something where nature in cities is actually there’s no separation between the city and nature because we are completely depending on the environment on nature that’s what we can see with climate question with with food systems
And so on and we have to learn how human interaction with nature actually is goes hand in hand and we have probably to change also a lot of our Behavior because that’s for example what I think will be a learning process about safety about Mobility about what we eat we eat
Much too much uh meat uh if the whole population would eat like what we do in Singapore or in Germany we would destroy our our planet completely so we have to learn more to eat more with vegetarian things we have to change our food system which is actually also more healthy
It creates better environments it creates better uh National systems better ecosystems and so on I mean it’s it’s not up to me to say you’re not allowed to eat anymore nice Winer schnitzel for example or or this or that but it’s the it’s the
Amount I mean if I think back even in in my country um it’s not so long ago before World War II people had only once a week meet the rest was actually other things you know and this is very very interesting and actually also in China or in other countries uh it was
Different we eat we we take it for granted that we have everyday meet and that’s just one example I so so I think it’s it’s also our Behavior has to change our perspective our aesthetic approach has also to change I think that’s also what we think Nature has
Look so and so we have a kind of aesthetic approach um which also has to change in that especially difficult if you work in Arabian countries because they all want to have this lush green and then you say no your nature cannot be lush green your nature is beautiful
With silver with this very fragile U desert plants take that as Beauty so the whole question about Aesthetics and about beauty is also something we probably have to rethink it takes takes some training I guess we have to train ourselves to do that thank you um I’m
Gonna open up the floor um to questions from the audience maybe what we can do is we can collect two or three let’s collect three and then we’ll direct it to you please tell us who you are um hello hi my name is Eric Eric Basco and I’m wondering how much science is
Involved in your designs to better understand their effect in the uran equ ology climate biochemical cycles for instance how much science is is involed in is in there yeah I think um well there I I think there’s a lot of science what you have to include or what you can
Include I’m I’m very interested for example on effects I mean it’s different things actually I have to say I’m very interested in you know what is what are the effects if you do things for example of P I give you one example bishoku Park I would be so interested to find out
What is the effect to psychology of people you know how do they behave how how do actually how what’s the influence on their on their well-being uh if you have a better uh environment what about um how to fight depressions how to Def fight diabetes
How to Def fight how to fight um for example Alzheimer or such things can we do this through a better way of encouraging people that they move more outside does it has an effect that’s just one side and I think we need to do more research to find out how is nature
Affecting our well-being and our health system you know I I think Singapore is doing already things in this direction I think that there there needs so much more research on this it’s very very difficult to find out which effect goes to what but I think much more is needed
Because then we would change uh our behavior in a way that we say we know how important that is and we have to invest much more in these things because often it’s only an add-on other things I me I think on science of course a lot
Probably has to be done um in I mean you can do a lot for example what kind of Bio biological processes are going on in soil we know very little about soil conditions yeah what kind of how is water and microorganism and the chemistry in good soil
Working uh soil is very much ignored often uh or is only taken out what we can for for for agriculture but phosphorus nitrates and all this um is not just the only thing so soil is full of Life full of of organisms we know very little about this kind of uh
Qualities also for food systems for food security uh for the symbiotic elements to to uh to plants and to and to anim uh to animals it’s just two Fields I like just to mention so research and science is extremely important that we learn more to know about uh what is there and
And I think maybe another one is the danger is often in research that we only focus on one point and I think what is extremely important is how these things play together how they come together what kind of uh what kind of Interlink is between different disciplines how is
This affecting this and how is this affecting that and that’s why I think for example on a university like here um more complex research programs where different disciplines come together like we have and um and N cities are what we try to do in this field I think that’s very very important
I hope I answered a little bit hi hello can you hear me okay so my question is this most part of the Cities uh can you speak a little louder because I I have my hearing a doesn’t work very good it’s working now better okay I’ll
Just speak louder okay so most parts of the city you need to hold it okay it’s working no I think hello oh yeah hello now okay so most part of our cities are uh the surface is uh used for roads and walkways how to fight or how to think about the per
Permeability that we can create on cities if we change them material on the way that we do all the roads on the walkways like I’m also very interested and passionate about the water flow in the cities in all types of scales and I have always wondered why are we doing
The streets and the walkways in the same impermeable way if we do a minimal change on it we can affect huge so yeah my question is I don’t know if you have thought about it or or you have done any research on it yeah very good point it’s it’s
Um I think where we are just you’re you’re just coming your question just comes to the right moment because tomorrow we will have a meeting especially on this topic about uh walkways and roads here at Enos campus because uh when you um honestly when you
Look at at noos campus and you see and some of my students started to make a research comparing to other campus um universities how much is asphal how much is concrete how actually um boring this engineering is only focusing on traffic uh how our waterways are actually limited to very small canals to
Get the water very quickly down to to a to ey a ye a uh and then a canal which is going there and then bringing this water very quickly out yeah uh it’s it’s totally the opposite to that what I was just showing on this talk so um we we
Are actually thinking now at NOS uh can there be better ways more like a future plan a future scenario Vision plan or master plan for the entire Compass to change it to make this uh but that me means also that we cannot just only redesign it we also have to change our
Behavior that means um you cannot just come with the car and go to your car car parking place very close to your um Studio or uh you may maybe you have to leave your car out um of the campus we we are thinking of solutions where the
Campus is free of any motor uh motorized uh individual vehicles uh thinking about totally different ways of Mobility thinking about new ways of maybe having certain distances which are nice to walk because it can be done you can see it already at University Town at UT toown
That people can use it when it’s done right but of course on this side we have still a situation where it is boring to walk and it’s also not comfortable so that’s one thing and if we have that solution we can totally redesign the question how to collect water how to
Slow it down how to have maybe um areas where we have a treatment train or a cleansing uh ways so my students are we have just a group of students who are just doing a kind of vision plan testing it out and tomorrow we will have a meeting to this
I hope it works because I agree with you um and no further comments for me because I might get fired but anyway any other comments from the audience questions from the audience oh there’s questions on Zoom all right maybe I can are we gonna okay so um there are a few questions in
Zoom which I’ll read them aloud um so first question is by uh Nathan how can we incentivize blue green infrastructure given the associated cost in a step towards making such design Universal the norm or will this be limited to government initiated projects did I get it didn’t get infrastructure or are they just
Going to be government initiative ah okay yeah good good point point I I think that’s um that’s very interesting we made a research here um at noos looking at successful projects that was actually some years back but it’s a very interesting paper you might be interested it was actually uh done by um
NOS together with Harvard GSD with with um yeah chrisan was part of that and uh no I don’t know if Christian was there but I I think we did four universities we had uh we had um the SE univ University in Germany we had uh NOS we
Had the uh MIT and we had Harvard GSD right and looking at successful projects and it’s very interesting that it is important to have a kind of leadership and it’s often important to have uh policy makers or people who are are on a leadership from the government side to enable this kind of
Things so it is very important to have kind of programs or or a Clear Vision where the city wants to go that’s one side So Clear Vision clear direction is a very very important tool um having said this it needs also some other aspects as well we we figured out about
Five Points uh which are all important for successful projects uh by the way leadership means also it’s not just Anonymous it is also persons we need a very charismatic person who can be a leader because it the only work the work can only be done by humans and you know
If a strong personality is there and saying I want to see that and that can be someone from the government it can be someone I mean these are very important people they take leadership they take they take it as an ownership thing which is their personal thing and so we have
To support them uh but then there are other components now I just mentioned only very very quickly uh some others you can read this paper is quite interesting um is for example you need to create some capacity uh knowledge in the society to be accepted so it’s both top down bottom
Up you have to involve this the people in this and actually it’s very important that a society is ready for change by being convinced and saying yes we will have a win-win effect from that and that’s so it’s you can never do it just overloading it you have to bring it up
And then of course you have to train um the professional World um that’s also I think what Singapore is doing and you have to take any opportunities also to think different about money I think financing uh has to be more smarter and more long-term Visions to create value
And we have to think also about money in a different way that’s also I mean that I cannot go too deep into that it’s it’s very complex but all these things matter great um I’m going to ask another question question on Zoom uh by lean hang having worked with both
Nature-based Solutions in both temperate and tropical climates what are the unique observations in the outcome of landscape design from your experience in climate tropical temp you work in Milwaukee and Singapore yeah it is I think every climate zone has certain conditions where you have to
Be very sensitive I mean I was I was really lucky I think I’m one of the very few people on this planet who had also bigger projects really on very different climate zones and I was for example doing projects in uh in Finland on the
Uh polar Circle and uh I give you this example because um a lot of people there were saying your system will fail because you cannot infiltrate you can hold back water uh in our in in our climate because we it will ice it will be dangerous it will be all this and you
Have to be of course very much aware about climate zones and you have to figure out how can you do it what what how can you manage water in this kind of area and you have to listen very carefully also as a planner to understand this and I’m I’m very often I
Try to live there also at a certain time I was for example Bish prer was living one week uh in a little ched with my team uh without air condition by the way uh to see how is the situation in bokio and what is a big storm when it
When when it range how does it work how do people behave so observations and being sensitive to the conditions not only on climate but also on social behavior of people and cultural uh behavior is it extremely important beside this facts but everywhere in the in in on the world there are ways to
Find better Solutions and especially on water I mean in Finland we have a wonderful project harvesting snow holding it back melting the snow in the spring the water is clean released into the East Sea OST sea and it’s a wonderful project actually is working since 20 years now and and it’s also a
Pilot project for many many other projects which did follow so each climate zone has different conditions but it’s possible to work in each climate zone if you adapt yourself to this I’m going to direct I think there’s a few questions from the audience right this gentleman over
Here thank you hello hi can you hear me awesome um hi Prof Herbert it’s a pleasure to hear you speak and my name is maharan I study philosophy in anthropology architecture at eln Us nearby um I was really interested to hear what you had to say about bioinspired design and biomimicry but in
The concept of um not Citywide but like within departments and within spaces and um not only I think is like nature a part of the city but rooms and rooms and like City spaces within within our environment have to be interconnected so the outdoor and the indoor as well have
To be interl in some way where um for example if the air conditioning goes off we are not stumped with the heat or if it is raining like crazy it’s not either full rain on us or no rain at all because we’re indoors it seems like trees provide a really interesting
Solution where they layer the water droplets so that we are not attacked by the harshness of it and I’d like to ask you if you um have worked in that space of integrating the indoor and the outdoor and your your experiences within that very good point um yeah I think
There there’s also oh sounds here terrible I I think there there also there’s a very good point uh about uh the transition zones between inside and outside and uh also the transition zones between inside living for humans and outdoor or outside nature and how that actually can be more seamless and um and
Also I think I cannot give a a general answer to this because there is no General answer it can only be done so and so there are many ways to do it and but I think also that uh especially here in Singapore we have uh just the last
Couple of years um uh manam for example from BHA uh was really testing out things which were by the way very very much appreciated around the world I mean it’s quite amazing how many people you know uh react to to these kind of examples uh
In Europe or in America to see that okay there could be um Greening structures on different Heights or there could be hotels where you have no air condition uh only in the rooms but the corridors are actually outside and you walk there there’s just some shade and there are
Some trees and you suddenly accept it that’s the interesting thing even it’s you can measure it’s warm but when I walk there and I’m in this environment I think wow and actually we have even a word for that we say it’s cool right but
It’s still warm but it’s cool uh so so I mean these kind of things you know human behavior and design and environment really matters and I think there’s lots of things what we can learn how to bring this together and and I think I mean the other point was really about where I
Think we have to really find out much more how NE can nature Come To Shoot To Us and how can we get to Nature I mean we just had um I was just joining here an interesting conference on Tigers how to save tigers in Malaysia and and and
You know how how can actually is the wildlife actually working with humans together I mean I cannot give the answers but I think it’s great that these questions are coming up and it’s just the last chance because there are only 100 Tigers left over in Malaysia uh
20 30 years ago it was uh was more than thousands yeah so they are soon distinct if we don’t have better ways so it’s a very interesting question I think that the question comes up and we find to new ways and I think your generation will be
The ones who have to work on it we cannot we can only give some impulses and you have to really find the the answers any other questions from the audience before we move on to zoom questions there one more Miss behind hello yes I I’m Clemens uh I’m on
Exchange from Germany and I have a question I think uh we all agree that these uh super high density Urban conditions are not really livable and now uh you and your colleagues develop solutions that make them more livable and my question would be um isn’t that a bit avoiding the
General question if these Urban conditions should even exist that’s a very German question because we can afford to have you know to spread out still but here in Singapore you cannot I mean that’s really I I think that’s really interesting I mean that that if you if
You have density and you have lots of people and uh we need this uh uh we need to live in a in a relative ly dense situation the question is really how to how to BU find new forms of even having density but still to bring green and
Blue together and that’s that’s I think a very big challenge uh but I think again to say that what um I mean there there is some literature you probably also know some books you just Singapore has for example den and green what um the book from um H is it
No no it was UMAS from Thomas thas Sher also a German guy by the way he did write a book about uh you know about summer uh collecting collecting these kind of ideas um and and I think it is something we uh we cannot say that um cities should not be
Dense because then what would happen we would spread out it’s by the way a discussion we also have in Germany quite quite a lot how much density can we actually should we have and for example in our city where my wife and and I we are also part of the parliament we are
Often discussing um uh shouldn’t we bring more density also in our city so that we don’t spread out and uh actually take more land uh for the city so it’s a good question but I think the answer cannot be density should not be I think density is is also
Important thank you um okay um just uh to continue with the topic of density my name is nit I’m um um a student here a PhD student but I’ve been living in Singapore for more than 20 years so I think the concept of density uh could be understood in
Different ways from at different parts of the world maybe as you come from Germany I don’t know which part but I think one of the thing that we see in this part of the world in this region is that we start to see density as a
Positive value and we can start to see how density brings um more I would say um qualities of living to so it’s a matter of perception I just want to give you some examples from my own research um uh from the neighborhoods in Singapore so um you can see nature in
Different scales I believe for example what I hear from the residents uh even in a carpac in a very dense um hdb neighborhood 45 47 stories um development uh trees in the carak becomes a piece of nature to them and people from all over the island bird
Watchers they come and there is a great excitement uh residents talk to me about uh the joy of having Birds Landing in their um um um common Corridor and visiting them and they will prepare a place for them to to Nest so I think
Maybe we can start to see it not in we can start to break the density topic into um um human scale thank you you have any thoughts on no I think that’s fully agree um the the the real question is uh I mean that will be also
The future future question how can we bring quality and density together because density also has I mean that’s always a discussion where when people are more close together The Social Network the um I mean the culture we can create you know if we have if we if uh
If we socialize more we have more culture we have some people were even saying that I had this I heard on conferences why did people come together in cities one was of course to make easy life uh easier infrastructures food health and so but another important part is it is more
Fun you have more uh enjoyment with other people sometimes you can also be getting angry of your neighbor but but uh it’s actually someone cares of you and and we can see this also very very strong in our City I’m happy that I live in a
House with lots of families I don’t want to have my own single house because I would feel lonely and I just love and if something happens to one family like one part of the family is is maybe of a couple is dying and you live alone in a
House that’s happening so often in America for example or in other cities also in in in Germany can happen then it’s much better if you are in a community because then you have resilience you have a social network which is helping you so there are lots of arguments why density is also
Good okay we have one last question because I’m supposed to shut this place down any other questions okay there’s a question here hi hi hobit I was a student from years ago I don’t know if you recognize me but anyway so because your topic today is talking about uh climate
Resident cities and I was wondering now that rising sea levels and climate change is such a big issue uh in Singapore and all over the world I wonder if you’ve done any work to I don’t know mitigate rising sea levels or anything that’s related remotely related to seawater to seawat you mean Coastal
Coast ction and such things yeah that’s a very very uh very important point I mean I was I’m very interested in this topic I had actually the the studios I had here from for um before coid was actually I had two Studios on Coastal protection also on I mean part of the
Studio was also the coastal thing in uh in a part of jakata where they have mangroves and they actually create whole Forest they they um cultivate mangr for Coastal protection and that was absolutely fascinating for me uh you know how that can actually work together and maybe you know this place also I
Mean that’s or I can share with you because it’s it’s fantastic to go there I mean that that was that’s mind-blowing uh so so this these things for example are very very important and um I’m not an expert on on Coastal um protection but I think a lot more can be done uh
Between hard engineering and soft engineering and bringing also letting nature do a certain job to we know from we know that for example where we have plants or we have we have vegetation where when when the tsunami was there the coastal areas which had mangroves there was not so much damage
Than the places where we had nothing and the whole energy was actually getting to the coast so so I think it’s a important topic but uh I’m not solely expert on that but it’s very important topic all right I’m on right okay well thank you so much for that question more
Work you can’t retire now you have to keep going um thank you so much Herbert for I’ll sit down thank you so much Herbert for being here with us tonight and sharing your work and this sort of long trajectory and and hard fights I know it’s it’s hard work to get what you
Have accomplished completed so thank you to the audience and on that note I’ll pass it back to thank you Prof Herbert and Prof that’s the problem of having too many mics in a lecture theater um thank you Prof Herbert and Prof Dorothy for giving us your valuable time and having
This very interesting lecture as well as this very um well exciting Q&A sessions um uh I’m sure we’ve all learned a lot from the lecture um thank you everyone for attending this event and also participating with your questions um for the upcoming events um you can follow us
On Instagram and Linkedin and we will keep updating you about future events yeah thank you and we hope you have a good [Applause] evening