Time Team Special 31 (2007) - Britain's Drowned World

How Britain became an island.

Tredje Natur flood design for Saint Kjelds

Flemming Rafn Thomsen and Ole Schrøder from Tredje Natur won a competition to re-design Saint Kjelds as part of the Europan architecture competition in 2011, after which the city of Copenhagen signed them up to advise on the strategic development of the area.

They are redesigning the Copenhagen neighbourhood to better handle the floods expected as climate change leads to fewer but heavier rain storms. When heavy rainfall strikes in Saint Kjelds, the water will be collected above ground in parks and squares to simultaneously relieve the sewer systems and create new recreational areas around the pools. A giant ring in the main square will spray out a cooling mist on hot days, while excess water will be channelled along new cycle lanes that will double as storm drains, leading to canals and out to the harbour rather than into people’s basements.

“Only last year, three cloud bursts cost the society over 5 billion DKK in damage to the buildings and infrastructure,” says Flemming Rafn Thomsen, partner at Tredje Natur. “The climate adaptive plans in Copenhagen, and whole of Denmark really, are humongous and will probably have a time frame longer than 20 years, but the political will to get something done soon is pretty strong.”

The climate is changing behavior. The Copenhageners can look forward to fewer but heavier rain showers, as the city has already been experiencing over the last two summers. In Saint Kjeld’s Neighborhood a comprehensive urban development project seeks to demonstrate how the city can be arranged so rainwater can be managed in the streets in a more natural and effective way. The project was designed by the newly established architectural firm TREDJE NATUR, and promotes new solutions for how we adapt to the climate changes and develop our cities.

“The increase in rainfall is a major challenge for our city. But by tackling the challenge the right way, we can secure the city from cloudbursts while also bringing the city new recreational values. The ideas in Saint Kjeld’s Neighborhood are a really good example of this,” says Technical and Environmental Mayor of Copenhagen, Ayfer Baykal (SF).

Mor information can be found here on the project

Manchester School of Art MA Show Manchester 2012

The MA student exhibition show has been a great success. It opened on 27 September and runs until 5 October 2012. If you haven't had chance to visit it yet then you have 3 more days! Well worth a visit. It is at CUBE gallery on Portland Street 12-5pm.

Gehl architects work for the Avon River front in Christchurch, New Zealand.

An Article from Gehl Architects blog:

"In Copenhagen it is possible to buy an organic kiwifruit from New Zealand. These are displayed in the supermarket alongside non-organic Italian varieties. Which one should I choose? Should I buy the ethically farmed NZ kiwi, or should I buy the Italian one with fewer air miles? What is the most sustainable decision? And is it possible for the most sustainable decision to also give me the highest quality of life?

Decisions regarding sustainability are increasingly affecting how we build cities. This is especially true in Christchurch as it embarks on the single largest infrastructure investment in its history – that of rebuilding.

Debate around sustainable cities has historically centred on individual buildings. In this regard, it is very easy to get caught-up discussing the merit of a five-star versus six-star green star certification, or green roofs, or solar power, without considering other factors. This is evidenced in Melbourne, where the majority of new 6-star green certified homes have been built on the urban fringe. With limited access to public transport and cycling infrastructure, occupants require cars for most journeys. Just like the organic kiwi, a large amount of high-carbon transport is required to make these ‘sustainable’ homes accessible. Is it right to buy an organic kiwi on the other side of the world to where it grew? Can a ‘green’ house have a three-car garage?

What the Melbourne case highlights is that we must consider end-user behaviour if we want to make the most sustainable city. A recycling bin is no good if nobody uses it, or if its contents are contaminated and so taken to landfill. The most modern green workplace accessed by car produces more emissions than an older workplace accessed by public transport. A green building potentially isn’t green if its inhabitants use it differently than expected. A sustainable city is not simply a collection of green buildings, it is the infrastructure for a collection of people to enjoy sustainable lifestyles because they offer a higher quality of life.

A major factor in a sustainable lifestyle is transport choice. In 2009, 91% of trips were made by car in the Greater Christchurch Region. In Copenhagen the figure is 30%. Copenhagen has a long history of cycling which it has researched extensively. In 2010, 37% of people cycled to work in Copenhagen, with 70% continuing through winter. When asked their reason for choosing to cycle, the overwhelming reason respondents gave was convenience. Cycling in Copenhagen has nothing to do with ethical choices, it has to do with finding the easiest way to get from a to b. It is the result not of a ‘special Scandinavian mentality’, but of ongoing investment in cycling infrastructure by the City of Copenhagen, as well as the development of urban forms that create short enough distances for cycling to be viable. Copenhagen is internationally celebrated for the high quality of life cycling affords its citizens including health and accessibility benefits.

This identifies the issue at the heart of building a sustainable city. The central challenge is to make it easy and even desirable to be green – to create the infrastructure that will allow inhabitants to make sustainable decisions because they are in their own best interest. The challenge is for a city to be ‘Good for me’ and ‘Good for the planet’. This sometimes involves trade-offs such as weighing an isolated green building against integrated green transport. It will involve having an open mind.

In May last year, we asked you: ‘What kind of city do you want?’ Many of the most popular responses related both to a better lifestyle and sustainability. When debating your new sustainable city I encourage you to consider not ‘Is this city sustainable?’ but instead ‘How can this city make a sustainable lifestyle attractive for me?’ The answer to the latter question will illuminate the path to an enduringly sustainable city.

But back to the supermarket: Which kiwifruit did I buy – the organic New Zealand variety, or the lower-transport Italian? I bought the organic Danish apple.

Welcome to my exhibition

Thank you for taking the time to review the blog and visit the exhibition. this blog is a work in progress and should be up to date with the exhibition information by the end of the weekend, so please come back and visit and comment on any of the blog postings. It is hoped that over the next week there will be some interactive blog postings and discussions on issues on landscape architecture and crisis landscapes.

Extreme tourism in the ghost town of Prypiat

A fairground wheel in the abandoned town of Prypiat. On the 26 April 1986 there was a catastrophic nuclear disaster at the Chernobyl Nuclear power plant. in Ukraine. Prypiat was founded in 1970 to house workers for the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. It was officially proclaimed a city in 1979 but was abandoned in 1986. The city was home to 50,000 people who where all evacuated in 2 days following the disaster. In 1986 the city of Slavutich was constructed to replace Prypiat. 

Many of the building interiors in Prypiat have been vandalised and ransacked over the years. Because the buildings have not been maintained since 1986, the roofs leak, and in the springtime the rooms are flooded with water. Trees can be seen growing on roofs and even inside the buildings. All this adds to the deterioration process; a four-story school collapsed in July 2005.  

There are concerns about visiting Prypiat and the surrounding areas and you can now find companies to give you a guided tour, extreme tourism. The radiation levels have since dropped and in certain areas the radiation levels are very low. The city and surrounding zone are boarded with guards and police but it is apparently relatively easy to get the documentation to visit the site. 

Frequency of disasters

There appears to be an increase in the frequency with which disasters are occurring. According to statistics from the International Centre of Interdisciplinary and Advanced Research (ICIAR), disasters were about 100 per decade in 1900-1940, which rose to 650 per decade in the 1960s, 2000 per decade in the 1980s, and it reached 2800 per decade in the 1990s. Further to this the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) and the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR) stated that by 2010, natural disasters alone have caused the death of more than 780,000 people over the past ten years and destroyed a minimum of US $ 960 billion worth of property and infrastructure (Amaratunga et al 2011)

They further discuss that it is hard to establish whether this growing number of crisis is due to an increase in events or an increase in vulnerability. Vulnerability could be increasing due to a rise in the global population, effects of climate change, the regions economic status, urbanisation, war, poverty or other underlying development issues (Blaikie, Cannon & Davies 2004). ICIAR believe that urban regions have complex infrastructures that support human activities, deliver services and facilitate economic growth which the population are increasingly dependent on and that dependence increases vulnerability.