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0:04
Thank you everyone and thank you for joining us this morning. My name is Laura Narvaez Zertuche, just to introduce myself. I'm a partner in the data-driven urban design team, I've got Farah Caswell. Thank you very much, nice to meet you all. I'm from sustainability in the environmental engineering group. Both of us is just going to give you a little small talk around what we're doing in our practice. Surrounding, master planning, urban, we're going to talk a little bit about cities,
0:42
not necessarily too much about interior design but hopefully it's of interest to many of you. Foster + Partners', we are a studio a very multi-disciplinary, very interdisciplinary studio that has a worldwide reputation. We're a very diverse studio, a very diverse company across our studios, very much culturally diverse. We have over five decades of design excellence, from buildings to infrastructure to interior design
1:19
to masterplan and structural engineering so I think we started from the 1970s all the way back to the present and as I said part of the core of the practice is that it's not only about architecture, it's really about integrating different disciplines in order to get to an integrated approach in all of our designs in our projects, this is part of a little bit of our specialist teams, we are part of those specialist teams so Farah is part
1:52
of sustainability and environmental design, I'm part of the urban design and landscape but at the same time we have people who work on spatial planning, workplace consultancy from materials research to apply research and development modelshop, interior design and so on and so forth, so all of these are part of the core of the practice. Onto the next, at the heart of it, it's all about collaboration and collaboration is
2:22
always centered around the people and it's really our core basis of the practice. In the top row you have very much on what we innovate towards the digital design and all our thinking around how does technology can input into our process and at the bottom row it's really the sense of what we call the old school, the analog, the workshops and the exchange of ideas around all of our design. On that note, in everything what we do of course the core of it
2:57
is how to be in the most sustainable way in our design, in our way of building and our way of planning. We pretty much have been covering that over the last 50 years on sustainability in all of our projects and this is just a glimpse of what we've done so far starting from the Sainsbury Centre for the Visual Arts if you haven't been there this is around the UK, around internationally and obviously some of these projects we will touch base on a few of them
3:28
but just to give you a glimpse of what we've done in London, I think you all know Trafalgar Square as a regenerative transformation project that started since 1996 and ended in 2003.
3:46
So from the before and after that you have...
3:55
So from the before and after that was very much driven by cars, it has turned into what you know now today a space for the people and for the public for different events and I think this is pretty much on what we always promote as places for people and in a very quick manner, we've got crossrail praise, which is in Canary Wharf, I think most of you know this that what started as a train station, it really evolved around that is going beyond a station itself, it's really putting
4:34
that something that is also a destination but something that it brings biophilic design, something to make spaces to dwell and to be and that made a catalyst for the rest of the development but to give something special now we were involved into the actual rooftop of that project itself and this is just one of the the spaces that we covered back then. This is obviously the projects that you know at this point so we're going
5:07
to give you a little bit of a glance of what regenerative design is on our future projects and starting with sustainability. Sure, thank you very much so before that, just a little bit of an intro into sustainability technically so many of you may be aware of some of the material I'll go through it quite quickly but just a bit of refresher for those that don't so evolution of sustainability and what this means for us so intuitive design back when sort of the 1960s,1970s
5:32
it was what was intuitive, what meant better design that's gone forward to more around the '90s which was quantifiable we started to see a lot more certifications, understanding of BREEAM, LEED, HQE, these are all rating systems that are used for buildings and then now you may see the change which is a lot more holistic so it's more about wellness in design as well as maybe the more environmental performance. In terms of our projects what does that mean so you can see here as Laura
6:02
nicely showed you on the 50 years of evolution of sustainability slide, the projects have also gone through that process so where we were maybe more intuitive, now more quantifiable and then more holistic now wellness is a lot more spoken about in terms of the project credibility. Taking that step further we also discuss the future of sustainability, so looking at how does that mean for 2030 and 2050, we're seeing a lot more about regenerative design so you're going to hear us
6:30
say that quite a lot it's the main theme that will run through our slides and this is where now building upon that thought. Just to show you a little bit of intro, we have also been at each of the conferences so this is where we've been speaking about regenerative design, sustainability targets, frameworks and how does this impact our projects. What I wanted to show you here is the sustainable development goals, so many of you may be aware,
7:01
we've all seen it many times, we use this on all of our projects and the beauty of which I'm going to go to the next slide because I think this is where it gets a bit more interesting. We have 10 themes of sustainability call it whatever you want 10 themes, 10 topics and this is where the beauty of which can be applied for any scale of project, now it can be for a carpet, lighting products, it can apply to buildings in terms of their whole performance and how
7:32
they are performing or it can apply to cities which is where Laura and I have a lot more experience in and have some projects to show you. They are holistic so I spoke earlier about the kind of the intuitive moving to holistic, they cover all aspects of sustainability and it's what we use as a gap analysis on all projects to make sure we're covering the right topics. Just to give that a bit of gravitas here is how they link to all those UN SDG goals and if you ever seen
8:01
any of our colleagues in any of the conferences or other talks we refer to this a lot so you may, you'll see this around. What does that mean for regenerative design just to give you a bit of a cheat sheet of what we're going to kind of go into a little bit more. Mitigation hierarchy talking about impact environmental, impact biodiversity of whether it's a product, manufacturing, whether it's a building or a city and what does that mean. Nature-based solutions,
8:28
I'm sure you're all aware how does the nature come into the design and then net gain, how do we then become regenerative is the main takeaway. It can also mean the same thing for materials so I dropped this in here just to show kind of what it means for a material selection again the beauty of which can be for a product, a building or at city scale in terms of manufacturing and what does that mean across procurement, local content something
8:54
that is referred to a lot and I'm sure we've all heard lots about, health and well-being. I've touched on raw material optimisation so really understanding the supply chain and that whole cradle to grave and then product life cycles. The main takeaway being efficiency and consumption, do more with less again the beauty of which can apply to a product, a building or a city. So that's kind of the big thing to take away. Urban design maybe I passed back.
9:27
To give you a hint of that sustainability as far as I was saying goes beyond through scales. The scale that I particularly work on is all the space between the buildings, this is all London everything that you see in orange is what we kind of contribute to all the design projects in the practice and as I mentioned before at the heart of that is really about the people, how to make this very successful for all generations and for future generations as well.
10:01
Within that integrated team, obviously this is not about architects or urban designers this is about everyone else contributing so within a very integrated team to have mobility planners, to have ecologists, to have anthropologists, environmental psychologists in fact, city planners etc all of this contributes to the rest of the collaborative team in the practice and that gives us a little bit around certain approaches
10:30
that is very analytical, qualitative research and obviously design proposals around that.
10:38
Within that, we have had the opportunity to work across different cities, different climates, different cultures at the same time and therefore different needs and this is where the sustainability goals goes across all the scales, across any kind of approaches that we do and the beauty of that is that we can work in different all the scales from rooftop on London terrace to whole new cities at the region in South Saba pretty much three
11:12
or four times the area of the Borough of Islington, just to give you a sense of scale. Things are becoming very datadriven, I don't I also wish to say AI-driven but mostly datadriven and therefore we tried to combine the two things. One is to really understand places, on all its dimensions and how we use data more effectively and how to inform our design. This is Borough of Islington, this is Southwark and how do you understand all these different components,
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the lessons learned and therefore how to inform our design process. Within that, there's also the qualitative aspects, the social aspects into it what are the users needs, what are they looking for. On site, there are interviews and there is that understanding of the culture indeed. Within that in mind is obviously trying to come up with that solution of all any kind of project, doesn't matter the scale and try to come up with that sort of a layer cake of the project.
12:13
What are those elements that we need to combine to make a very active vibrant city but most importantly more sustainable aspects of the project so it's very much an integrated approach and within that in mind that regenerative approach comes into the different scales that we're going to give you, we're going to give you examples of a small medium and large scale projects which are a little bit more up to the present of design proposals so we're starting with a small scale.
12:46
We've had kind of the lesson and the more technical side we've got the good stuff now, just to slow down so to introduce you to Ombú in Madrid it was a project that the office worked on a fantastic example of kind of regenerative design. The reason being, this old building here, it used to be supply energy to the neighborhood it was disused I think about 1970, Acciona eventually bought it and were had used it,
13:21
it was completely in disrepair and the idea was what could we do with it now they were looking at their assets and trying to understand. So retrofitting the building to the utmost sustainable action. Acciona is a energy company, their ethos is understanding sustainability and what does that mean for them in terms of the energy world and we worked with them to basically retrofit the building.
13:46
They knew and we knew that current building standards are insufficient so targets such as for the UK BREEAM very gold we believe tracks to about a 4 degree global warming, it's not good enough, Paris agreement as you all know is around 2 degrees -1.5 to 2 the point being that we needed to go beyond current building standards just saying BREEAM outstanding lead platinum was no longer good enough and embodied carbon had to be spoken about. In terms of embodied carbon,
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everyone often refers to operational carbon only the running of the building and we wanted to make the client aware that embodied carbon was about the making of the building, now we were reusing this disused building effectively banking all of that construction material, embodied energy and how could we build on that so hopefully this works. A very nice image here to show all of the calculations that we did in terms of a new building benchmark what the reuse of that
14:51
building meant and therefore what the reuse plus therefore extension that the client required. It is for Acciona, it's offices now we reused the building all of the steel work on the trusses and the bricks in the next video apologies and there you can see here just as I was explaining. The 12 trusses were retained, a huge amount of carbon through the new timber structure that was internal and I have a couple of photos to show you next and 10,000 tons of bricks retained and
15:22
restored to their original condition. Shown here is some of the photos from previous to what is up to date and you can see there a very nice story of regenerative design. What does this mean for a building you can see the interior here the timber that I referred to and the external and it had a very positive effect on the master plan around the building as well. We saw rental values increased, we saw a lot more people interested in the area and it became
15:51
a destination and people wanted to go there. You can see here the embodied carbon reduction looking at the glue lamb demountable, I didn't mention that, but yes prefabricated and demountable and a bit more pictures of the public access to the park so the external around the outside and here I just wanted to read this so net zero historic building refurbishment but an interesting question is how did this then contribute to Madrid what did that mean for
16:23
the environmental sustainability, why was it also regenerative so a few thoughts here just to take away from a couple of those slides, one I mentioned here increased value of the existing asset increased rental values understanding the area around, reduced hard surfaces yes, reduce resource use, reduced climate change yes, lots of benefits there and all about urban regeneration and regenerative design in the case of an old building what can we do.
16:56
Second one for you Maldives, so moving from Madrid now to the Maldives, a very interesting conceptual vision master plan that we worked on very recently, it's called Gaafaru. It's an atole around, you can see here in in the Maldives, it's a single resort experience, but it is about a resilient master plan so the existing master plan current island is this small part here very small section and as you know or may be aware local
17:32
challenges for the Maldives certain things that we had to be aware of. The biggest one is sea level rise, quite a very important one. Environmental destruction yes, loss of habitat pollution issues like this, lack of economic return yes, social inequalities that's a big one and high dependence on imports obviously the Maldives needs lots of imports they have energy water issues, waste is then also traveled removed so for us we knew that they wanted to expand their island
18:04
they wanted to build if I just go back, so they wanted to expand the island and expand the existing as well so in terms of reclamation, reclamation is not necessarily a sustainable activity but it was about how can we build this master plan with resilience in mind knowing that sea level rise is an issue, knowing that the Maldives need to continue developing so it's a big sustainability question and how to deal with that. So three things in terms of the sea level rise,
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specifically here so resiliency for a hundred years within a hundred years we were looking at the flood maps lots of the Maldives will have inundation issues, coastal protection a big one. No surprises there, formation level so this is where we really discussed the buildup and the level that we were building to and changing and what is current practice, looking at best practice how can we make that better and then environmental protection so you may remember
18:59
I had some of the sort of pollution issues and marine issues on the challenges slide. I just want to stop and show you this so what did we do, the main takeaway here is these main five items at the bottom in terms of regenerative design what was our framework that we set up. Climate adaptive, we know the climate is changing no surprises here how can we design for this in mind. Minimised dredging and reclamation so we minimise the areas that needed to be reclaimed,
19:28
we looked at floating structures so what could be floating that maybe had a shorter lifespan or we knew needed to be changed for example infrastructure and utilities, nurturing the ecology, pretty self-explanatory, prosperity for all so how could we include the existing island within it and and they're part of the design unifying communities exactly the same and then net zero energy water and waste the regenerative part.
19:58
In terms of the coastal protection, just a few examples here of what we did and what we meant by that. Here you have some of the hard edges, stilted floating structures, I spoke about the idea is there was a hierarchy in terms of what needed to be reclaimed land, what could be floating and that's kind of the main takeaway.
20:16
All of it resulted in kind of some examples here and some example pictures of kind of floating islands and the island expansion that I just explained. Very nice example of kind of the middle scale that we spoke about what does regenerative design mean and the example of a climate adaptive resilient masterline in the Maldives
20:44
Going from Madrid, the Maldives, now I'm going to take you to the desert a little bit. This is the large scale, let's put it this way of an example of a project. This is in Bahrain and this is called Bilaj Al Jazayer master plan, it's been recently published and we were commissioned by the clients' real estate company in a real estate development to try to create a new city, the typical buzzwords are create a smart and sustainable city. 'What does that really mean?'
21:21
Of course there's an entire brief behind it but most importantly is what Farah just described is the importance and the light touch let's say on how to design a city that was actually a coastal city, how do you deal with a sea level rise and how do you bring development in a more sensitive way and how to work around obviously with the future resiliency of that place. At the core of that, there were three main components of the project that
21:51
really becomes the sustainability aspects of it but also the resiliency aspects of it. It is about if we want to regenerate or to think about regenerative design and regenerative master planning, how do we conserve and restore ecosystems to begin with so I think that was one of the main aspects of the project. The second one is how can we support the biodiversity how can we bring that in and therefore how the can we enhance the social and economic vitality because in the end of
22:24
the day you want a place to live, to work and also to create a destination at the same time. It all started with the big ideas as usual, working with the client, with other collaborators as well and how to bring to this place experiences how do you bring experience into a project but most importantly how to bring a design that can be sensitive to its environment and also very importantly how to deal with a very harsh climate at the same time and it all starts believe it
23:00
or not with a little bit of research how do you understand the culture of the place, the DNA of such aspects of the project and this is just to give you an overview, it might seem very very academic but is in fact quite important to actually start from the very initial process try to inform the design of our streets, the design of our public spaces and this is us really getting into the place or the aspects of the place. That is really about the urban spaces,
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it's really about dimensions of widths of streets how do you experience the space that you move around? How do you connect places? This is also in collaboration with the environmental design to say what is the best orientation of streets and spaces and therefore how does that inform the grid of the city and within that then we actually create approaches that are very much based on a passive solutions. From what is the failed temperature if you're in a desert as opposed to
24:03
central Manama is obviously in Bahrain and these were related to the width of the spaces as well and as you have the felt temperature do you actually create arcades that could provide the shading or do you use the green garments so all of these aspects were actually design strategies and therefore how can you translate that into passive solutions into the design do you create something that is more nature-driven within
24:34
their environment, the use of TV's for instance which is a very typically made kinds of proportions of elevations and width and heights of the proportion of the spaces. Use of materials shading and of course the use of landscape. As I said before is very much a project that is very driven by solar and wind analysis so that was part of the design process that we had to bring into the project and these analytical tools or analytical
25:05
approaches let's say it's also trying to give us the best proportions of the plan itself. Having said that, create an experience is also part of that regenerative design approach, It's creating experiences because that is what you see in the everyday, that is what you enjoy the spaces around, the way you move so just to give you a glimpse of around the what we called 'the beach experience' and the different aspects of the project from the
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more natural beaches to the ones that are related to more urban aspects of the project. We started off with the beach itself because it is a very well-known beach in Bahrain so how do you reaffirm the beachfront as one of the main core design drivers and I'm going to take you through let's say a day in the life of our of that vision. If we start with a resort, a lot of people ask: 'You always talk about smart cities and sustainable city but what does that really mean?'
26:14
And somehow, behind the whole design process, I'm just gonna show you what that means in terms of all the metrics and how just we put that into a vision of the visuals. The whole work behind it, has a lot of meaning to it so we start with the ideas naturally of what kind of materiality, what kind of visuals, what kind of sense of views for example to take best places and for what and obviously this is a part of the result
26:46
of that beach experience to say well you can have higher recycle contact materials, you can have more cooling effects of the surfaces and what kind of materials do you use, the type of planting as well do you actually make those streets more walkable and fully pedestrianized or not etc. Those were the kind of metrics if you go around towards the more beach front or the beach experience then you would have something that are a little bit more with elements of smart infrastructure to
27:17
have social links elements of how much of the pollution is counted for instance, alongside with the different kinds of activities that were part of the program. If you go to the main boulevard which is the more urban side of the element of the project by your noon that you're going to have the towards your lunch it's all about how you move around the city, what sort of elements can we try to input for future mobility, the client wanted to think something that
27:49
was very future thinking, they wanted electric vehicles, they won't pushing very much for electric vehicles but most importantly for more collective vehicles, autonomous vehicles that will get rid of the private vehicles and have more public transport which in Bahrain is quite uncommon. And therefore what would be the smart infrastructure within that environment. Whether you have certain destinations or charging pots those of us it already exist
28:23
here in London in fact but in Bahrain it's quite new to them and the living and experience is all about well-being, they really wanted to encourage the well-being of living and at the same time preserve the local life and how do you do that within a new design so if you're living in your apartment by 2:00 p.m which is quite your most intense sunlight of the day. Do you have spaces with shade? Do you have the timings of the shade and the temperature and the felt of humidity?
29:02
We're talking about a climate that is very humid as well. Sometimes the air quality or having a vision of CO2 emissions that can be avoided etc within the elements of building that sort of smart building component into the apartments or other typologies that are more for the villas that is more lowrise and therefore having the element of biophilia design embedded into it. The use of water and how we can actually count that
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within the system of the development as well and again part of the design of the villas is within the architecture and the very traditional architecture of of Bahrain and therefore how do you create destinations, very recognizable spaces in the project. Now the client wanted to have some sort of a unique destination and they were very pushing towards a surf park or recreate a surfing park, so that's the surfing park
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amongst a kind of like a main avenue their main point of reference was actually La Ramblas in Barcelona, but they wanted something that would recreate a pedestrianised environment with a destination. Within that, the aspect of the landscape came into place very importantly they call this the green spine and again what were the elements of native local plants in order to try to bring that solution into the project but at the same time having the
30:35
lower cost of development as well within the development of the project and the phasing of the project. Aspects of a beach club and aquarium, were part of the destinations as well and again elements of the rooftops and and solar shades were part of embedded into it. Finally how do you move around having a sustainable transport but can you power that with newer technologies or advanced technologies that are coming into place in the future.
31:09
Most of that we say, well you can reduce a little bit on the mobility side but then having more pedestrianized routes that takes you to your main local destination that were very important to them one of them was the souk and even within souks is trying to create that elements of shades and air quality, felt temperatures at the same time which were not the typical to recreate the arcades but something different and one more let's say aspect of the street is the
31:41
beach boulevard and again this is all part of the experience on how do you live, sort of the reference of your Miami Beach kind of kind of a way but more localized in Bahrein. I think the overall aspects of the projects to be intelligent, what sort of technologies you can embed it into it but most importantly how can you build that resiliency for the future because this is an in concept master plan and from vision to concept into the
32:15
development phase, we need to make sure that resiliency and that sustainable aspects of the projects are from the get-go, from the starting point and as we mentioned before is putting the those sort of layers of the project that we do and at the heart of it, the main purposes was about minimising the environmental impact it is about lowering the low carbon infrastructure and how you can build that up with its own ways and creating those resilient systems within each of
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your energy and waste and water infrastructure, your mobility infrastructure and how do you create all these elements across the different networks or let's say the different kinds of infrastructure that the city needs and within that in mind it really creates a very holistic approach to regenerative design and I think regenerative design really means that goes beyond sustainability actually, it's really about creating systems that can give you a sense of what is the
33:23
best living for people but also planet at the same time so we're not just building for one entire place. Some food for thoughts that we thought it was important and I know we went through different scales is that regenerative design is also the importance of context, doesn't matter the scale and the importance of context is that in the past Farah showed a very nice image of embodied carbon and operational but I think within that in
34:00
mind you we always need to think about context so two different projects that we have one of them is a very high-rise tower that really implies very high embodied carbon with low operational carbon. You really need a very high to make the building run but operationally you it implies a lower demand. If you talk about building a little bit of like a mini piece of a district piece of city then it's a lower embodied carbon but a higher operational carbon what this means is.
34:37
The context actually plays quite an important role because it takes you longer to do actually this within an operational carbon higher carbon emissions as well but the embodied or the running of the building is lower as opposed to this so I think there's a there has to be a balancing act, in how we build, where we build it and the ways to build as well when it comes to the important to the net zero energy and those aspects in cities so that's why we think in
35:15
the importance of context and the reason for that, I'll end with this image because this is usually everybody that talks about the future, electric vehicles electric pods, autonomous vehicles, walkability, having activities, active frontages, less shade greenery, green infrastructure, balconies, views and so on and so forth. We leave you with this thought: The future of regenerative design for cities moves beyond something that is sustainable,
35:50
it's really about transforming from your building to all cities, it's really a living system I think and how can you contribute in the most positive way and sometimes the smaller steps have bigger impact and at the same time is not just for a place is for everyone and I think that's becoming even more and more important as we move on. And at the heart of it, it's for people and our well-being, so thank you very much for that.
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