At the very beginning of the pandemic, some experts started talking about the decline of urbanism fashion and a change in the urban planning agenda. A year has passed and, as a kind of result of these conversations, the annual conference of the Moskomarkhitektura "Comfortable City" took place, which was once created precisely in order to broadcast the urban agenda, among other things, to promote the idea of creating spaces for walking, rest and communication in the city …
All of her remote sessions dealt with covid in one way or another - the architects told how their bureau had adapted, how the urban environment reacted. There was even a new term - post-comfortable, that is, something from a different reality, outside the usual comfort zone, recent values and ideas that we put into the concept of a comfortable environment. It became obvious that the covid launched, well, or at least sharpened some changes in global urban planning trends. What - the conference participants tried to find out.
Fulcrum 2020-2021 - healthy lifestyle
It would not be a big stretch to say that almost all the trends that the speakers talked about in connection with covid lie in the plane of ecology in the broadest sense of the word. Foreign colleagues like to start their speeches with global things - climate change, poverty problems, gradually narrowing the topic down to the responsibility of a single architect. In this they are, of course, right, since the resistance of the individual - the city - of the world to all kinds of cataclysms is an integral system. It is equally important for sustainable human behavior and lifestyles, the ecology of urban development and the "green" approach to resources. Striving for stability in an unstable environment is probably the most important thing that can be captured in the current agenda, which once again sharpens the topic of sustainability.
The role of the individual architect in this global quest for sustainability is not so small. According to Jacob van Reiss, a partner at MVRDV, architects can make a tangible contribution to areas such as climate, landscape, migration, healthcare, and digitalization. They are constantly looking for ways to influence the city, change the environment, provide people with more opportunities for a healthy lifestyle, using a variety of tools. How architects can work, for example, with information, Jacob van Reiss told using the example of the German actionist artist Simon Weckert: he drives a cart with smartphones along the streets, fooling Google maps and creating traffic jams where there are none. So, with the help of information, the artist gives the opportunity to "rest" the whole street.
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zooming © MVRDV
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zooming © MVRDV
MVRDV themselves are transmitting green awareness to the urban space literally outside their office in Rotterdam. Together, they achieved a narrowing of the roadway, installed pre-fabricated structures for cafes and landscaping on it, so that people in a pandemic could spend more time outdoors.
In general, a healthy lifestyle could be called the main fulcrum in times of crisis. Only the well-forgotten old has now acquired the status of a global idea and has become a concern not only for the healthcare industry, but also for urban planners. As Marina Lepeshkina, general director of RTDA, said, according to WHO statistics, half of the success in terms of human longevity is not genetics, and not the level of air pollution, but the way of life - the system of movement, the system of nutrition and the system of human mental reactions. And today, sustainable urban development means direct management of these systems. Speaking of "urban ecology", advanced developers of master plans do not think by the yardsticks of landscaping and paving areas in landscaping projects: rather, this concept summarizes the desire to create conditions for a healthy lifestyle, based on an analysis of the daily life cycles of people. Architects and city planners can encourage citizens to move more and experience less stress.
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zooming 1/6 © RTDA
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zooming 2/6 © RTDA
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zooming 3/6 © RTDA
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zooming 4/6 © RTDA
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zooming 5/6 © RTDA
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zooming 6/6 © RTDA
However, it so happens that there are sneakers nearby the stadium, but this does not mean that a person will go out and use the infrastructure. Fortunately, urban planning trends go hand in hand with social changes, in particular, the fashion for healthy lifestyle among the townspeople, the chief architect of Moscow Sergey Kuznetsov is sure. In his opinion, this is not a "merit" of the covid: everything to which cities evolve in their development existed even before the crisis.
The pandemic has spawned many ideas related to the city of the future. I think it's just some kind of entertainment for now. It seems to me that everything that has been done in recent years is caused by civilizational development and the movement of people towards common values. Behind the veil of these temporary measures and fears that will dissipate when the pandemic subsides, it is important to endure the best that reinforces the right trends and disrupts the wrong ones. For example, good habits such as traveling less unnecessarily around the city will make it possible to be more resistant to such crises in the future.
Resilient cities against disasters
What is this sustainability formula that will help, as a seismically resistant architecture, survive the next earthquake in the form of a new lockdown? Summing up the speeches of the Comfort City participants, we can single out four such global trends: flexible use of territories, correct programming, a healthy approach to architecture, and rational resource management.
Flexibility is probably the most frequently used word in the context of crises. This is what gives all kinds of systems, from the city to the individual city dweller, the vital ability to adapt to new conditions. We know the example of an empty New York, where cafes and offices were closed during the pandemic, the streets were empty, but people have left and continue to work from home, as some experts say, even with an increase in labor productivity. According to the architect Nikolai Lyzlov, cities are facing a global transformational task, born of the new economic order.
With the removal of large industries in the cities, there are almost no large labor collectives left. The main motivation of large megacities has been lost - the need to solve large social problems that require gathering in crowds. Now everything can be done differently. However, the construction complex cannot afford to maneuver, but must only go forward. This is now the last redoubt of agglomerations as a phenomenon. There are probably no other reasons for such urban growth …
What will make urban areas flexible? It's not enough just an image drawn by even the most talented architect, the founder of Citymakers Petr Kudryavtsev is sure. The place should have, first of all, a socio-cultural program, and it should be to a certain extent predictive, focused on users in 5-10 years, when buildings appear, and with it new functions. This is the “sustainable” use of urban spaces, with reasonable scenarios that are both quite variable and not oversaturated with activities. Programming is at the core of master plans, and programming itself is based on interdisciplinary research with data collection and mapping of the structures and layers of urban tissue, which is carried out by companies such as Habidatum.
The “healthy” approach to architecture, which Andrei Asadov spoke about in his speech, is another interpretation of the same eco-friendly approach to the environment. Asadov's architectural bureau has built many iconic medical facilities, which, according to the architect, represent "healthy architecture in a square." Like all know-how, the "therapeutic" principles of the environment are tested primarily in exclusive formats - hospitals and medical centers, where the space itself must "enhance immunity and work at the molecular level." However, they are quite versatile and can be scaled to the city as well. The creation of a friendly, welcoming space starts with the appearance of buildings and a "green" design scheme, and ends with islands of greenery and comfortable acoustics inside.
Finally, another very important topic - resource management - is much less active on the Russian agenda than, for example, on the European one. Markus Apenzeller and Jacob van Reiss are already talking about the prospects for the transformation of the entire construction industry. An interesting remark, for his part, was made by the architect Sergei Tchoban about 99 percent of modern buildings. He recalled that the "layer cake" of the shell of houses always has a vulnerable core, the durability of which is highly controversial. It is worth remembering that facades, born of modern technology, have a limited lifespan.
Today technologies work with the "sandwiches" of facades: there is a more durable load-bearing part, there is a heat-insulating part that is least studied in terms of durability - all the foam rubber that is under the cladding. When modern architecture came to the point that it broke the load-bearing part and the outer one, this weak, vulnerable spot began to arise between them. But we can also live in order to change facades every 30-40 years. The main thing is to preserve the diversity set by the design code, so as not to return to the panel city of one large facade.
Post architects
Traditionally, for the conference, Moskomarkhitektura made a survey - this time, of course, it was a pro-covid, more precisely, about what allowed architects to keep themselves and their business afloat, who what positive tendencies in the form of new forms of interaction, managing their time and resources I discovered myself this year. [The poll was conducted by Petr Kudryavtsev's Citymakers company, which also acted as the program directorate of the festival].
It turned out that despite the fact that two-thirds of companies went online, the values and principles of work have not changed: 50 percent of success is still professionalism, slightly less - adequate leadership. The performance has not changed, and for some it has slightly decreased. Most Russian and foreign colleagues consider family and friends to be the main point of support. Well, the most intriguing point is probably the opinion of 60 percent of respondents about changes in design tasks in connection with a possible era of pandemics. However, it was not specified exactly how they will change.
In conclusion, the main thesis of the conference could be formulated as follows: only a healthy person in a healthy environment has a greater chance of resisting cataclysms. Most speakers are not inclined to believe in a significant outflow of population from cities, de-urbanization and post-apocalypse. On the contrary, according to the UN forecast, the population of cities will only increase, as a result of which two-thirds of the earth will soon be exactly city dwellers. Despite the costs of an aggressive environment, there are advantages: they lie in meeting the need for development and implementation, in choosing a way of life, creating healthy conditions for which is a task for architects and urban planners of the future.
