good evening,everyone, and welcome. i'm ali malkawi onbehalf of the harvard center for greenbuildings and cities and the harvardschool of design. i am truly honored to introduceour distinguished guest, lord foster, to deliver the inaugurallecture as we commemorate the center's first anniversary. our mission is to transformthe global building industry through a designcentric strategy that
links in-depth research to thedevelopment of new processes, systems, and products. we are proud ofthe fact that this is the only center of its kind,pursuing long term objectives through an integrated approachthat focuses on design, and promotes the innovativeuse of materials and systems to support sustainability. it's our firm belief that thereare few, if any, initiatives that would do more to enhanceour planet's environment
and improve thequality of daily life than to bring greendesign and construction into the mainstream. if we are successful, andwe are designed to do so, the impact will be measurableand experienced worldwide. toward that end,the center tonight begins its sponsorshipof an annual lecture within the prestigiousharvard graduate school of design lecture series.
our goal is to inform andinspire students, faculty, and the public, regarding theimportance of green design, building, and planning. we hope that thisevening becomes another cherishedharvard tradition, and lord foster isappropriately the first speaker in our series. when it comes to the subjectof green buildings and cities, you may be awareof the fact that he
was a very, very early adopter. in fact, he has beenworldwide leader in green sustainable design andplanning for almost 50 years. lord foster is a pioneeringbritish architect, and the founder and chairmanof foster and partners, an internationally acclaimedfirm known for its signature design philosophy that combineshigh level of innovations with environmental sensitivity. his list of honorsand those of his firm
are simply too long to recite. instead we includedthem in your program. as most of you know,among those honors is a pritzker prize, whichis appropriately known as the nobel prizeof architecture. i can think of noone better suited to give voice to members of theglobal design profession who embody the intentionsof the center, and whose work is consistentwith our principles we espouse.
in addition, lord foster'sexperiences, philosophies, projects, and practicesresonate with our students and future generationsof architects, designers, and planners of theurban landscape. he and his work are well knownin virtually every corner of the world, and ourarea is no exception. we have a lot to learn from him. and i know that all of us arelooking forward to his talk. we'll hear from lordfoster in a moment.
but first, i wouldlike to invite my dean, mohsen mostafavi,dean of the graduate school of design, to speakabout foster for a few minutes. [applause] thank you, thank you ali. and congratulationsto you, the center, and really thank youall for being here. it's a wonderful evening. i think norman, thereis no pressure, right?
i mean you have to, you haveto now cover everything. it's really an incredibleopportunity for us to have lord andlady foster here. they are friends of the school. they're friends of this area. and i think it's greatfor us to have them here. just because this isnow a very formal event, perhaps it would be appropriatefor me to be very informal, and to speak just alittle bit personally
about my own experience. because i think, youknow, it's very, very easy for us to think about thesignificant number of projects and buildings. if you think about stanstedand the importance of that for airport design. if you think about thehsbc building in hong kong, and the importance ofthat for office buildings, and the creationof public spaces.
there's building afterbuilding, project after project that has reallymade significant contribution, and that is absolutely certain. and that is very exciting,and very important. but i want to tell youthat when i was a student, i used to walk along a streetcalled great portland street, and that is a place wherenorman and his practice had one of their first offices. and they had takenan existing building,
and they had converted theground floor of this building. and it was in a way, like a verybig shop, with a shop front. except that this was avery special glass facade on the street, andone got to have a little peek inside theoffice, because they had also venetian blindsbehind the glass. so you could just get asense of the interior. and the way in which theflatness of that glass related to the kindof existing context
of that traditionalstreet was really something very inspiring. to see how this practicehad really just, with very few moves,very simple things, try to make their presencefelt in this city. but actually you also got tosee the inside of the office, and you started dreamingabout the kinds of things that they were doing. and they were doing lotsand lots of great things.
and this was also aboutthe sort of period where i think the willisfaber building got built. and for those of you whodon't know this building, i would really recommendthat you have a look at it, because i think it's one ofthe early important buildings of lord foster. a building that sits in themiddle of a site in ipswich and is, again, glass reflectivebut with curved corners. very special, veryunusual building.
for me, now, today,when i was actually thinking about--welcome-- and when i was thinkingabout lord foster, i realized that this actually--this period, this moment, the facade of theoffice, the willis faber, it actually was very importantin terms of the creation, the formation of an aesthetic. of a kind of lookof an appearance. which was very particular.
there are lots ofother architects of the time who are alsointerested in the relationship of technology to architecture. but i think there was somethingvery specific in the-- really the attention to thesimplicity of the pieces that was created during this time. so when i look at the iphone,or look at this smartphone, i feel in some ways thatthere's a lot of sympathy in terms of what jonathan ivesis doing today with the apple
computers, with theiphone, and really the aesthetic that normanwas thinking about in the 60s and 70s. the other tiny thingthat i say, because i-- we all want tohear from norman-- the other tiny thing is really,over the years just getting to find out about lord foster'srelationship with buckminster fuller, and really how the ideaof each one of his buildings was also somethingthat represented
the idea of a conditionthat transcended the individual building, thatthe individual building stood for something that was about adifferent sense of the future of the role of architecture,for the built environment. and of course, the sensitivitiestowards the whole set of environmentalconcerns and conditions, and the very nature ofhow things are made. so i think the combination ofbeing the person who really thought up this ideaof a kind of aesthetic
that is so prevalenttoday, and that we feel so close to, and really for alsodeveloping an architecture that is so relevant in terms of itslink to the built environment. i think we have awonderful inaugural speaker for the center for greenbuildings and cities. so please welcome lordfoster of thames bank. i think green isprobably a shorthand for environmental awareness. and the green movement probablystarted around 50 years ago.
and it was about 50years ago that i started practicing as an architect. and the issue of sustainabilityhas been a guiding principle ever since then, rightfrom the beginning. and i remember sayingat one point, when quizzed on the subject, thatit wasn't about fashion, it was about survival. the one thing that, perhaps,stating the obvious, what green is not.
it's not some kindof magic powder that you can sprinkleon a project afterwards. stick a windmill ontop, kind of retrofit. it is right at thevery core of design. and that green threadis one of many. and if i talk about that,and i emphasize that, then it should perhapsbe a warning before that, that it's critically importantissue, but it's one of many. the social agenda,the technology
as a means to the end,the role of structure, the constraints ofresources, of cost and time. they're all woven in. another thing tostate the obvious is that it's not somekind of medicine that's going to be goodfor you, but you're going to have to sufferas a consequence. i suggest quite the reverse. that a true greenbuilding actually
heightens your awarenessof the elements of nature. it's rather like theluxury of a picnic where you choose theview, dappled shade, and you have thechanges of the seasons. and perhaps in a way, thebirth of the green movement was related to anescape to nature. a sense of rediscovery. and perhaps the pioneerssuch as rachel carson who drew attention to thedangers of chemicals of ddt
to the environment, bucky withhis spaceship earth, and that time when perhapsfor the first time, human beings saw theplanet from a distance. so this awareness of thefragility of the planet, and bucky, who i wasprivileged to work with to collaborate for thelast 12 years of his life, was arguably thefirst green architect, although green asa coined word was to come one decadelater in the 70s.
if this is sort ofintuitive awareness as a first stage of the greenmovement, then 30 years later, there is an attemptto quantify that in terms of the environment. and it's interesting thatthere are 28 different rating systems around the globe. and perhaps the earliest one wasbreeam, in the united kingdom. but the one that hasreally penetrated deeper than any other, andglobal acceptance,
is undoubtedly theamerican leed standard. and it's quite interestingjust to see the way in which, from the early mid90s, that proliferated. and you can just see the sort ofticker tape at the bottom left, of the year, and then theway in which that has become a kind of standard, globally. and finally, where we areat this point in time, and the red being the mostsustainable of the rating. but the criteria isessentially environmental.
so it is about the building. and these are the kind ofheadlines of the criteria. and important thoughthese are, they measure the performanceof the building and i would suggest thatthey've been long overtaken by far more important criteria. and that's not to underestimatethe environmental impact, use of energy, decreaseof pollution. but really, thetrue green building
is about a much wider, moreholistic view of design. and what is interestingnow is that you can quantify thoseaspects which, hitherto, have been much more intuitive. and the criteria of leed isvery much about a steady state of the environment. and you can measure thatin terms of the blood flow in the zone of the brainthat relates to it. and if you move into anenvironment which has change,
then it's quiteinteresting that you can measure distinctly increasedpatterns of blood flow. in other words, the sky asan inspiration, which for me, from earliest sketchesas an architect, always looms largein the picture. and that intuitive feelingof capturing the sky, of the qualitiesof changing light, now is much more quantifiable. and that humanistic,that poetic,
that spiritualdimension of design is, for me, completely wrappedup with all the technology of how the building eventuallybreathes and communes with nature. in terms of thehealth of a building, that is also inseparablefrom the use of energy. and it's interesting that, ifyou just look at these charts, then those societies whichare heavy consumers of energy have the lowest infantmortality, the highest
rate of life expectancy,and also in terms of mental, spiritual, theyoffer the greatest potential for development,political, and sexual freedom. so if we talk alittle about energy, it's interestingjust to analyze, what are the consumers of energy? and in an industrializedsociety their buildings probably account for between35% to 40% of the energy produced and consumed.
and a similar amount isconsumed in the infrastructure. if we think ofthe infrastructure as a kind of urban gluethat binds together the individual buildings, andthe communities, the cities, the connections, the publictransport, the bridges, the flights between continents. so that totals in anindustrialized society, probably around75% of the energy. but if i then move tothe less developed,
the emerging economies,that perhaps is summed up by thisimage of caracas. and the infrastructureof that highway separates theordered world as we know it, the worldwe've been talking about with the previous images,and on the left hand side is the informalsettlements which account for a hugenumber of people, a huge proportion of humanity.
and perhaps it's justinteresting to contemplate that in that less developed,emerging world, the amount of energy that we, in this room,individually consume annually is the equivalent of two peoplein japan, six people in mexico, 13 people in china,31 people in india, and 370 people in ethiopia. and if we talk about theneed-- the moral imperative, if you like-- toproduce more energy, then we come rightback to bucky's dictum.
the imperative is todo more with less. and if there are 1.6 billionwho don't have access to power, to electricity,and we have the need to produce moreenergy, then it's how cleanly weproduce that energy. because there's adirect relationship between that pollutionand climate change. and arguably, the strongestthreat to global society, to the planet.
and if we talk aboutpollution, then we're likely to think of china,a city like beijing. but it's also easy toforget that it wasn't that long ago that london wasexactly the same circumstances. so in 1952, therewas the great smog, and the newspaperheadlines talked about this 30 mile beltthat brought the capital city to a standstill. and it's interestingto look back
over 50 years in termsof london as one city, and just see the way inwhich the level of pollution, as measured by particles,with the blue line-- excuse me, with thegreen line, and sulfur dioxide with the red line. and the big change cameabout through an act of parliament, which was calledthe united kingdom clean air act. and you can see that point.
and you see that dramaticdrop, and the slight rise in the green linethere, we reckon, is the result of the verypowerful encouragement in europe towards diesel. and that, of course, linksback into the whole vw scandal and so on, but we won'tgo off in that diversion. i would say thatin terms of energy the blue line above, whenit comes to buildings, i've learned over time that thehigh tech element symbolized
here by those fighters,that if you really want to make use ofthe high technology, then you've got to getthe low technology right. and the low technology issymbolized by the pyramid. and remember, thosefighters in 10 years' time will be obsolete, and thattechnology will move on. so in buildings therehas to be the flexibility to be able to accommodatethose changes of technology. the pyramid is quiteuseful in terms of trying
to convey a principle. and that is that thebase of the pyramid is about the shape, the volumeof the building, its form. and you get the maximumenvironmental gain with a minimum investment. and that as you move towardsthe peak of the pyramid, and you're seeing elementslike the degree of insulation, the ventilation, theorientation, the shading. and it is, at thetop of the pinnacle,
that is the hightechnology element. every year there's aprize in switzerland in my name for solarenergy, to encourage clean, green buildings. and i thought it mightjust be interesting to look at this year's winner. there are two winners. one for new buildings,and others for recycled, converted buildings.
so just looking at thenew one, and applying some of those principles, thisis essentially a compact form. it's a three story officebuilding, small office building. and that compactform, very efficient, and closes the maximum volumewith the minimum amount of surface area. and it's heavily insulated. it's triple glazedand it's shaded.
that is the equivalentof the lower part of the pyramid, which enablesthose photovoltaic cells on the roof to, for thebuilding, to generate nearly 2 and 1/2 times the amountof energy that it needs. so it's feeding 1 and1/2 times the energy back into the national grid, theelectrical grid of switzerland. for many, manyyears, as a pilot, flight has been an inspirationin all kinds of ways. and this is one of the manydifferent types of aircraft
that i have flown. for me, it's highly symbolic. it's a caproni two seater. and in 1975 with another pilot,we set a uk speed record. we went 300 kilometersat an average speed of 90 kilometers an hour. and that machine ispurely driven by solar. it has no engine, no propeller. and it raises the thought ofthe prospect of a building being
essentially, formost of the year, perhaps driven bythe forces of nature. and when we cometo-- for me the tree is inspirational, not justas the ultimate structure, but also symbolic of thechanges of the season, and the way in whichthe building breathes, absorbs carbon dioxide. rather in the way thetraditional shallow plan building breathes.
and this going back50 years was the start of the practice in a residentialapartment in hampstead. and you open the building,you open the window for the building to breathe. it was hot you opened it, ifit was cold you closed it. and the challenges of a smallteam in a small apartment, what happens when you magnify that? and you want spaces whichare large open deep. here, our main studioin london 50 years later
captures the view. sunshine, north-facing, and theinspiration for that, the model goes back some years earlier. and it was interesting with thefirst project of the practice. and it was a small amenitycenter in london docks for a norwegiancompany called olsen's. and that was portrayedby the artist ben johnson in this painting. and if you peeledback that facade,
which was the first examplein the united kingdom of high performance glass,heat and light reflecting, and the deep plan,highly efficient. so this had a very, verypowerful energy agenda. the light fittings werecoupled to the extract for the ventilation system wouldtake the heat away at source. and if you pulled it backthis would be the kind of anatomy of the building. other agendas here,the social agenda,
was very muchabout breaking down the barriers between theworkers, the doctors, and management, all underone roof, which was pretty revolutionary at that time. and we talk about buildingsthat breathe and that sit lightly and don'tdisturb the landscape. and an unbuilt project, buthugely influential at that time was for olsen's, in a forestjust outside oslo, a place called vestby.
very beautiful forest. and although theproject didn't happen, it would have relocatedfred olsen's enterprise from downtown oslo out tothis kind of bucolic setting. and the proposition was thatthe buildings would sit lightly, almost like aninsect in the forest. just touching the ground. and very much aboutthe theme of light, lightness, touchingthe ground gently.
and here, the model. but the drawing at that timewas also quite interesting, because it wasabout these themes of taking the air fromthe cool forest floor, pulling it through thebuilding, and having this contact with nature,with the elements reducing the energy, and using mirrorsto bounce sun into the building, and to give that dimension. and i mentioned thatthe sketches which
recur from when i was a studentwere also very, very much about the sky and the humanizingqualities of sunshine, and the way in which thatmight infuse a building. and again, the buildingvery much about a lifestyle ascending to the roof,and at the lower level a kind of communalswimming pool. so a building literallycolored green, and promoting this ideaof energy and lifestyle, and the fact that they couldbe a harmonious relationship
between them. and the literally landscapegreen roof, highly insulating. and the deep plan. so a very, veryefficient building. and this is in the 1970s. mohsen referred to it earlier. this is the curved--the glass that is highly reflective duringthe day, but very transparent in the night.
and perhaps interestingly toshow the way in which we have developed a practice withgreater and greater investment in research. i thought it might beinteresting to show the equivalent of that buildingtoday, which is a project, very advanced stage of construction. it was topped outa few weeks ago. it's the headquartersenclosed here by the red line for bloomberg.
and the heart ofthe main building, which is the one onthe left, there's a public arcade, aroute that cuts right through the building, and isa continuation of an old roman road. so again, a lotof these buildings are also inspired and informedby the history of the site, the history of the institution,the company, the museum, whatever.
at the heart of thatbuilding is an atrium. and that atrium is the conduitthat pulls the air through. and this is abreathing building. and here you can seethe movement of the air through to the center. and in terms of anticipating theperformance of this building, we've gone aboutit in four ways. and i just thought it might beinteresting on this one project just to look at a little moredepth the research behind it.
one of the four different waysof exploring how air will move is to use a water tank model. and this is thetesting facility. that is the per specs modelof a very, very large model that we made with electricalfilaments, to add some heat and excite themovement of the water, and a very, very shortfilm just to show how the dye in thewater will simulate the movement of the air,and pull it through.
and for some reason thatanimation didn't seem to work, give it another try. yes, finally. it was quick. now you see it, now you don't. the reality of thatin that atrium, which is very much aboutthe environmental systems, the pulling of fresh airthrough the building, is also the ramp that allowsa pedestrian connection
at the heart of the building,and encourages the flow and the communicationout from this flow. the social dimension is--this is the pantry floor. everybody goes to that floor. and then they disperseto the other floors through the building. the element on the facade thatenables the building to breathe started off originallyas a device that would reduce theamount of glass,
and provide shading toreduce the solar gain. and in the earlystages of design, the idea of abreathing building, with a degree ofnatural ventilation, a high degree ofnatural ventilation, emerged relativelylate in the process. and the one on theextreme left is the one that doesn't breathe. it's just a fixed fin.
and then thisexploration of fins is looking at theengineering implications, and at the same timeexploring the appearance. and the ones that wedidn't, like some of them were good performers, some ofthe ones that we like visually were not so good performers. and finally we end upright at the extreme right with a high performer, andwe love the appearance. and so it's this kind of almosta creative process where you're
going backwards and forwardsbetween the aesthetics and the environmentalperformance. and then, seeking to use testfacilities to explore the-- i don't know why that--there was an image where it says test section, butit's somehow gone missing. but there are two differentattenuators, one a spiral, and one a linear. and again, we set theperformance criteria, and finally we exceedthe performance criteria
that we set. and what i'm going to showyou on the next image, which if it does appear as itshould, is a test facility, a small film. and what we did is webuilt in a large warehouse, we built part of this space. and you'll see the warehouse,you'll see the enclosure that we created, then you'llsee the chilled ceiling, which is also the lightingin the ceiling plane there.
you'll see the equipmentfor simulating the climate, to make it warm,to make it cool. you'll see smoke entering itto check the air movement. and you'll see kind ofrobot like cylinders, which are representingindividuals with monitors. and that is the airmovement through the gills. and here's the-- finally. so here you can seethe weather zone. the circular elementsare individuals.
the desking is ofthe configuration. the fan is bringing the air in. the doors are openingto the grills. the smoke is coming in toshow the movement of air. it's being recorded. and then it's lookingat it in all kinds of different situations,from winter to summer. but just giving aninsight into the research behind the project.
but the most powerful argumentemerges through the studies over a 20 yearperiod, which looks at the productivity interms of individuals, as a result of being ina building where there is that relationshipto the outside world, in terms of air movement. and if you take theaverage of that, that is something like $3,900per employee, per year. so if you're talkingabout a building which,
in the case of one projecti'll be showing you for apple. where you have 12,000people in one building, you probably have about4,000 in this building. it's quite powerful. but interestingly i discoveredwhen i was putting this together with acolleague, that it was only i think last week thatfrom the department of public health, here, there's beena study much more focused. and it shows on the brownbar a conventional building.
and then the midgreen is a building with natural ventilationas a major component. and the super greenis the tall one there. and this is interestingbecause for the first time, it's focused on particulartasks like orientation, crisis response, seeking information,breadth of approach, strategy. so again, that is quantified. and those arguments that, inthe end, in terms of health and well being, arepowerful arguments
in favor of agreen architecture. and hopefully, we'll nowsee the site with apple. thank goodness. so the 24 essentiallybecome two buildings. the huge amount of tarmacshrinks to virtually nothing. the landscape is 120acres, returning it back to the kind of landscapewhen it was the fruit bowl of the united states. nearly 10,000 treesand more people.
and that building is set inthe landscape with something like five miles of trails. and the buildingand its setting, about rediscovering the benefitsof the california landscape, like many of thesebuildings, will be working with the arid ambienttemperature outside for 75%, 80% of the year. and in terms ofintegrated design, this is showing themovement of the air
into the building atthe head of the window, and the structuralelements which integrate the cooling tubesand the voids to also move air. the building around amile in circumference. but in terms of connectivityand communication, of course one singlebuilding rather than 24 spread over the entiresite, is essentially a compact building and bringsus back to that pyramid. so the form of the buildingis very, very important
in terms of its energy. and this building producesexactly the amount of energy that it consumes. so it's independentin those terms. if i go back to a building,which was our first breathing building, this was a combinedmuseum for a private collection at the universityof east anglia, called the sainsburycenter, which under its roof also encompassed aschool of fine art.
and the structural zone aroundthat pulls in the from outside, and the tubular form of thebuilding captures the view. and as you can seeit's very, very much about natural light, and theexpression of that building in the landscape. and here you can see the rooflights and its connections to the world of aviation. and the technology isrelated to that world. and it was, in manyways, the model
for a generation of airportsthat would follow from that. and the mission ofthe first airport was to question the thentraditional form of a terminal. and this was typical, it'sheathrow terminal four, but it could have been anyterminal around the world at that time. and by questioning theseparation by the roof and all the heavy servicesand machinery, which essentially cut outany connection with nature
by literally turningit upside down. putting all that heavy equipmentunderneath the main concourse, and opening up the roofto sunshine and light, great savings of energy. but also a much morehuman, poetic experience. again the contact with nature. and so if thatwas revolutionary, and a model which hassince been adopted, we've developed it much further.
so occasionally aproject will completely rethink a building type,and then the designs which will follow, explorethat and develop it in an evolutionary way. and i could give-- icould relate that back to other worlds of design. so in that evolutionaryphase, hong kong airport is a kind of step along the way. the structure and the lightingare part of the orientation.
and this is abuilding constructed on a very rapid program, on asite which really didn't exist. it was sea water. so the site had to be created. and i describe itwith its connections to the world outside. and nature aboveas a kind of analog experience in a digital world. and taking that astep further, beijing
airport, somethinglike 2 and 1/2 times the size ofhong kong, currently the largest in the world. and again, that roof playsa major environmental role, but it also is highlysymbolic in terms of its color, the color of theroofs of the forbidden city, and referred to by the locals asdragon like in its experience. and also the use of color andso the gateway to a nation, and evocative of many ofthe symbols of that nation.
at this particular point,with the opportunity for a competition for aterminal, mexico city. it was the chanceto make a leap, a kind of-- anotherrevolutionary leap, and to say, would it be possible totake away the columns? this has a roof, it has verticalwindow walls, it has columns. it has things thatreach out to aircraft. would it be possibleto do one membrane that would eliminate the columns,and really do everything?
if these are 36 meter spans,something like 120 feet, could we make the leapto much larger spans? 340, 570. and that was themove, and this is the project, which makes thatleap is now in detail design, will be starting onsite early next year. and just to give a feelfor the aesthetics of this as a terminal as aspace, this kind of fly through will give some flavorsof the scale, the light,
the lightness, thequality of that light as one moves through it. and the way in whichthat single membrane can form the supportsto the ground, and the ground conditionsin mexico city being-- it's really like a kind ofmoist, lake-like strata, and an earthquake. so this as a structuralform is very forgiving, and can move with the ground,with the ground movement.
so it's very much of its place. those projects alsoowe much from the past in terms of the explorationwith large span structures. the british museum and theway in which the heating and cooling elementsare threaded literally into the very fabricof the building. but a lot of these explorationshave emerged over time. and the roots of the wayin which this as a space is heated and cooled isembedded in the floor,
and goes back to 1965,with a small factory, electronics factory. which also, in terms of itssocial agenda at that point, was bringing managementand the assembly line under one roof as ademocratic pavilion. and in this cutaway,you can see the way in which those small bore pipes,which as a means of discreetly heating and cooling, creatinga very, very large radiator in the form of the floor.
these have developedover that 50 year period, and are particularly relevantin the case of how you climate control a historic building,without compromising the history and thefabric of the building. and the reichstag,as a competition to create thesymbolic parliament, putting the publicabove the politicians. a very powerfulecological agenda. a manifesto, if you like,for renewable energy.
and here you can see the wayin which the light is reflected into the chamber deep below, andthe various technologies which come together tomake that possible. so it's biomass,photovoltaics, aquifers deep below the ground,and all of those, with very powerfulencouragement of a culture. although this wasnot part of the brief any more than the public space. so that was something asarchitects, as advocates,
we were able to bring to bear. and it's perhaps noaccident we also, in this german environment,which was very much pro-sustainability,were able to create the world's first skyscraperthat would breathe. and if we were talking abouta 94% reduction in carbon with the reichstag, we'retalking about a 50% reduction here. this is in the late 1990s.
and literally thegardens in the sky where the green lungsof the building. and here you can see withthe red line, the window that opens, and which givesthis natural ventilation to everybody withinthe building. and that is workingat ambient temperature for 85% of the year. this was the competitionsketch that preceded it. and another building in whichthe green lungs of the building
spiral around. and here you can see the wayin which the windows open to give that degreeof ventilation, to reduce the energy. but also, in allof these buildings that also very much abouthow the city will connect. and here the potential to havedownward and outward views, as well as the conventional,horizontal view. so very much about the qualityof life for the occupants
of the building. and the first leed accreditedgold standard in new york was our hearst building here,using a lot of recycled steel. and where everything is workingas part of the ecological plan. so the water featurethere by jamie carter. the cascade is also partof the cooling system which is taking away waste heat,converting it into cooling. so it's a holistic view. and also using thehistoric base hollowed out
as the kind of social heart, theentrance that brings together all the different magazinetitles in the hearst organization. and perhaps the firstof these high rises was the hong kong bank. and the radical thing there,the revolutionary element, was to take the traditionalcenter core of the building and split it, and moveit to the outer edges, so that you would seethrough the building,
and you would haveopen deep space. the ability to create a dealer'sfloor, for example, which they did late in the lifeof the building, and the way in whichthe mirrors, which you saw in thatforest in norway, are used here todeflect sunlight deep into the heart of the space. and that building,with its undercroft, its view down to thepublic space below.
looking down, which is a kindof great venue at the weekends, a community comestogether under there. so all of these buildings,each in their different ways, connects with theinfrastructure of the city. and that infrastructure whichi referred to earlier, again considerations ofthat are inseparable from the sustainabilityof cities. and how, if we've talked aboutthe individual buildings, then looking atthe infrastructure
that binds thosebuildings together. this graph showsthat as you reduce the density, andthe cities sprawl, like atlanta, houston,los angeles, detroit, the energy consumptionkind of explodes. the most sustainable cities, interms of the minimising the use of energy are our higherdensity communities, given that they have good mixof use, good public transport, they're pedestrianfriendly, high density.
so anything you can dowith an existing city to improve thosequalities will improve its level of sustainability. and if we justlooked at the carbon footprint of thosedifferent kinds of cities. so london, marce, andhong kong, high density. compared with atlanta, lowdensity, very high consumption of energy. and we look at thefootprint of those cities,
and we compare it withthe footprint of atlanta. you see that london has thesame population as atlanta, but its carbon footprintis one seventh of atlanta. and you put those threecities, and you still have a footprint whichis smaller than atlanta. so again, if you takea city like marce, and you can improve, makeit more pedestrian friendly, improve the qualityof public transport. marce started aroundits historic port,
and it lost that connectionby ill planned roads that consumed some of the mostdesirable elements of the city. and our work there,which is a 20 year plan, we've done the first fouror five years of that. and here you can see thetransformation of that area, and a new kind ofoutdoor cafe life has returned back to the port. there are individual smallbuildings that we've done, i just show one here, whichis a kind of market hall,
and it just has areflective ceiling, in polished stainlesssteel, which again, gives a kind of playful element. and it's very muchabout bringing back the people to the port. and i could also talkabout in infrastructure, the intervention of a highway,and the way in which that might reduce the environmentalimpact and improve levels of sustainability.
and in an area not too farfrom here in the tarn valley, we did a viaduct. and the viaduct tackledthe issue of the main route from paris to perpignan. and a small part of thatroute was incomplete, so the traffic would build upthrough a neighboring village, and the traffic wouldbuild up to five hour jams, 20 miles in length. and this project, which wasour viaduct, tackled that.
but the object was alsoto create something that might be beautiful, todemonstrate that you could make that physicalintervention, and it might be something thatwas desirable to see. and the dialogue between thatand the natural world, this is something like seven--the tallest support here is 17 meters higherthan the eiffel tower. so it is the highest motorwayas an elevated structure. and if you just took thestatistics for the heavy goods
vehicles, and ignoredall those cars, and you translated in a year,the 40,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide that would be reducedby eliminating those five hour delays, then thatis the equivalent of planting somethinglike 40,000 trees or taking 115,000 carsout of the system. so unexpectedly a motorway,which you would never think of as being asymbol of sustainability, is exactly that.
and coming back tothe city and making it more friendly,more sustainable, some years back wetackled trafalgar square. this was ametropolitan-wide project, because just to makea small improvement in the heart of the city hadfar reaching consequences, right out to the veryedge of the metropolis. so that was the space which mostpeople have now long forgotten, because memories are short,and the body of that space
was totally isolatedfrom its surroundings. so now with thatintervention, it becomes a muchmore noble setting for the historic buildings. and if we look atanother intervention, again in terms of improving thequality of life in the city. this is our millennium bridge,the first pedestrian bridge on the axis of st paul's. which also brought a new levelof prosperity and connectivity.
and using computer predictions,this was the model. you can see thedark horizontal line across that, whichis the thames. this is before. and the effect of thatbridge is quite profound. it's brought a kindof ripple effect, and a new level ofprosperity to the area. if you moved out throughthe thames estuary to the right of that image, onthe black line of the river,
that is the sitefor a project which is currently underway for a wind farm, which will power somethinglike 500,000 homes, and is a joint venturebetween abu dhabi and london. and in abu dhabi,we hear we see here the project which isunder construction at the moment, which is ahundred megawatt concentrated power. these are notphotovoltaics, these
are parabolic mirrors,which concentrate the energy of thesun, focus that on a tube through whichthere is a liquid, heats that up to somethinglike 730 degrees centigrade. and that powers a turbine, whichthen generates electricity. this is the outcome, one ofmany experiments from the masdar project that we did. and the masdar projecthas a small film here. this film is a mixture ofvirtual reality and reality.
so some parts of it, like this,is exactly what is there now. other parts likethis little bit are from the originalrenderings, the sort to show what it would belike when it was constructed. so it's a mixtureof those things that goes between virtualreality, anticipate redesign, and what is actuallythere and happening. this is now a communityof several hundred. in a very, veryshort space of time,
it will be several thousand. and it's growing. it's growing by the day. it uses a number ofquite traditional devices which have come out of astudy of indigenous buildings. here you can see howit is now, still shots. and we move through. you'll see some ofthe work spaces. the masdar instituteis devoted to the study
of renewable energies. to a world beyond fossil fuels. this is realityhere that you see. this is virtual reality. and it learns-- it is gettingthat base technology in such a way that the photovoltaicsthat drive that then can give the improvedquality, the performance. and placing at night is a veryenergy intensive building, because essentiallyit's laboratories.
and they're 24 hours. they're very heavyconsumers of energy. and it is this 10 megawattsolar farm that is primarily driving this project. and if this is onekind of experiment, then looking atanother experiment to explore the wayin which, perhaps, one of thoseinformal settlements might be transformedwithout actually
bulldozing the community,and kind of starting again. all of which for the mostpart been social failures. and so the site is asuburb of mumbai, dharavi, is under 75 hectares. it's about thesize of hyde park. it's a million people. very, very high density. and nerinda, who's on the frontrow here, and a colleague, went out there and engagedwith the local community.
and some of thequestions that they asked was, in the yellowring building there, why that building,as a new response. because the city authorities hashad cleared part of the site, and erected 14 story buildings. and they were vacant and empty. and so nerinda here, part of theteam with that local community, and asking thosequestions, and finding out what made this community take.
what kind of spaces wereneeded for the activities that sustained theirrecycling activities? the pottery making,the bread making. and what was behindthose facades? and postulating that perhapsby the discreet insertion of services, and clearingaway a few buildings, creating some more public space. but essentially, respectingthe physical arteries and the social arteriesof the community.
and here, takingone of those spaces and exploring thepotential to insert those vital services that wouldtransform the quality of life. it was also suggested inone of the conversations on the subject, with anindustrialist, that perhaps that was important. but even more important would beto raise the quality of living by an input oftechnology, and to provide facilities to improvethe quality of life
in the rural countryside. and to halt, to slow downthe influx into the cities. and that led to a concept whichhas been a personal interest over many decades. that is, what would happenif in instead of buying all those individual consumeritems, the fridge which projects waste heat,which is thrown away from the back of the machine. if you could harnessand integrate
all these different elementsinto one kind of heart unit, and then you connectedthat to solar, and you use the lessons ofthe automotive industry. so that i think is interesting. and all of thesekind of research, experimental projects,some of the inspirations come from techniques that we'vedeveloped within the practice. so for example, pioneeringwith universities, the use of threedimensional printing,
led the european spaceagency to approach us about a project forlunar dwellings. and that project uses acombination of technologies to be able to take theminimum amount of equipment out to the moon, andthe element which detaches itselfcreates an inflatable, there's a robot which mixesthe lunar dust called regolith, mixes it with an adhesivewhich is flown out. and the three dimensionalprinter using inspirations
from bone cells,animal cells, to create a very, very strongstructure that would resist theimpact of meteorites, would handle something like the400 degree temperature changes. and that technology that wedeveloped there, interestingly, provided some ofthe clues, working with the elements onthe moon's surface, some of the clues for aproject in africa. again, this one withnerinda who's on the
left there with the schoolkids that he was teaching, drawing in sierra leone. and that project ledto the current concept of combining the kind of hightechnology of drones, which we associate with killingand violence and wars, and turning them tohumanitarian purposes. to deliver in africa, toleapfrog the infrastructure. which will, arguably,will it ever catch up in a continent which is thesecond largest population
of 1.2 billion. and by 2050 will have doubled. and by that time one infour people on the planet will be african. and so that, it'sworth just raising the issue of infrastructureto deliver medical supplies. so if we say thatone-third of that continent live within two kilometersof an all season road, then nerinda's littlevideo clip here
shows what an allseason road is. so that is theinfrastructure network. and as somebody said, if a childis dying through lack of blood, and waiting for a transfusion,then the drone, as a concept, would cut this down, this traveltime, down to 1/10 of the time. there is nerinda going toschool for his drawing class. and so, just the needfor-- if it was not delivering vital parts,perhaps to repair a pump which a community might bedependent upon for water,
and they can't get it untilthe spare part is delivered. but particularlythe issue of blood. and the potential for the drone. two types of drone. one which could deliver witha range of 50 kilometers, a payload of 10 kilos. which would be 20 transfusions. and the larger drone witha much larger payload, that would be much moreabout delivering larger items
and freight. and the country that the projectwill take off in is rwanda. three drone ports. the sites have been identified. the administrationis sympathetic. it's a joint venturebetween foundations. and university epfl in lausanne. and an individual who's anafrican expert who was head hunted by the university.
and so that, theconnection of course here, with the lunar project,is that on the moon, you are having to use thematerials that were to hand, and you were using robots. here you want to createjob opportunities. you want to be ableto empower a community to be able to develop anindustry buildings, not just the drone ports. but a buildingtype that would be
appropriate for schools, forlibraries, for medical centers, for civic market halls. and so it would be exportingthe machinery and the kilns, if bricks were not, or tiles,ceramics available locally. and so that's theparallel between the two. because it is working with thematerials that are to hand. and the final film clip has justbeen a part of a larger film, to convey the essenceof the project. the peaceful use of adrone to deliver a payload.
and the way inwhich the drone port would be a kind ofcommunity building that would be a gathering point. and so in this country,with millions and millions of mobile phones, whereeverybody has access to that as communication,the idea of this drone being a catalyst, anda catalyst for change, and development, andself empowerment. that's the last image.
and it works. so thank you. well thank you so muchfor this great lecture, as well as for alsoamplifying our message. i mean, this is fantastic,to see 50 years, and to see how wonderful itis from going from point a to point z. and we have teamslike long journey to go. so thank you somuch one more time. we've actually askedsome of our students
to prepare some questions. so we have threefrom our students will be asking questionsto lord foster who will call in thestudents, and then we'll open it up to the public forsome more other questions as lord foster can takethem, if you wish to do so. so the first one is [? ven ?][? chandel ?], if he's around, yes, please. good evening.
thank you for thisamazing lecture. so in the actual contextwhen the speed of changes has become exponential, and whensuccessful responses require that same amount of powerand speed to be effective, what is, in your opinion, andafter your experience, the most effective way, if there is anyother apart from architecture itself, to communicateto the society more than to thearchitects, the importance of an architectural agendafor energy, or a green agenda.
and what is the main driver toachieve significant changes? thank you. before i answer thequestion, i just noticed that john ochsendorfis on the front row, here so that's a very powerfulconnection on that droneport project. because john will beone of the engineers here at harvard who will becollaborating on the project. so it's a very, verynice connection.
but just to cometo your question. i think it's a reallyinteresting question. and in the end, it isabout the power of advocacy to raise the level, not justat a professional, level but at the public level asyou quite rightly state. i don't think there isreally one simple answer. if there is a simple answer, ithas to be the political domain. and i think that isthe professions who engage with thoseissues, and i think
that one of the thingsthat concerns me is that the issues of thoseinformal settlements, nobody really feelsresponsible for them. i don't think the professionsat large see it as architecture. i know a number of my colleaguesdon't see it as architecture. they think it's crazythat one gets involved in those kind of issues. for me it's at theessence of architecture. may not be high architecturein that descriptive terms.
but if i think of citieswhich have been transformed through the intelligentintroduction of infrastructure, good public transport,and sustainable models, it's interestingthat in those cities, in those communities, thearchitects who are not practicing asdesigning architects, but have moved intothe political domain, and are able to be influentialin their communities, in some cases as mayorsor deputy mayors--
and that's certainly the casein some of the south american countries that one can citeas enlightened examples. and it's very much the caseof the city bill bower, where we won a competitionfor a metro system. and that has had atransformative effect. and in a way, pave theway for that community to take those initiativeswhich led to the guggenheim, frank gehry'sbuilding for example. so also, if i thinkof an individual
that i've recently metand spent some time with, a guy called paul drayson,who is an inventor, and interestingly hasbeen very influential as a science minister ina previous administration in the uk. and he was showing me thepower of an app, an application on an iphone. and this is a devicethat he's invented, and we've beenhelping him promote it
by making a shortfilm to explain it. and what it enablesthe individual to do is to see the level of pollutionimmediately in the individual's environment. so you can look at that andyou can see what it was, and you could compare that,if that city had clean air monitors, whether those monitorswere really telling the truth. he described it as saying thatthe smoking habits changed when individuals realizedthat it wasn't just
their smoke that might beaffecting their health. and his point was, if youincrease the level of awareness by gauges, then that would kickstart quite radical action. so i think a number ofinitiatives, and obviously any of the technologieswhich together could create a more sustainable environment. [inaudible] yep. there's a lot of focusof using computation
in form finding for buildings,and then solving them for energy efficiency. you seem to have theopposite approach. in your practiceyou've used technology extensively to investigatethe interaction between energy and build mass. to what extent doesthis understanding of energy as a forceplay a role in shaping the form of your buildings?
i'd say that the formof the buildings, in the way that i have triedto describe it in this talk, you're absolutelycorrect in your analysis that the computer hasplayed a major role in terms of anticipatory design. the ability to beable to harness the power of thecomputer to explore the environment and movements,and to create buildings which are more efficient,which are more joyful,
which are more pleasurable. but behind the scenes, if youwere, and i'd encourage you to, if you're interested to followit up, to visit our studio and to see some of the ways inwhich we do, in other manners, explore form,explore structures. and being able tosimultaneously look at them in terms ofstructural efficiency, environmentalefficiency, and literally to be able to holdthese models, to create
three dimensional models andsay, which is more beautiful, which is more elegant? and to get that balance. so we can do thingswith computers, that we could not dothat many years ago. but also, one needsto remind oneself that the computer isa tool like a pencil, and it's as good as the personthat's pushing the pencil, or driving the computer.
so far it's notcreative it itself. and if we wantproof of the ability to create buildings ofextraordinary plastic sculpture, you lookat the work of gaudi and the greatcathedral builders. and it was an age beforeanybody had a computer. and i think many of thosethings we would have difficulty doing today with computers. one last question fromour student sabrina.
thank you for being here. in your work, you emphasizea systems approach to performance evaluation,including complicated variables such as transportationand telecommunications, and energy distribution models. in the vein of yourcollaborator buckminster fuller, the principle to domore and more with less is in the service offurthering human evolution. in today's complexworld, how can we
begin to understand the goalof furthering this evolution. what is it that wewant more and more of? and how can we quantifyit in terms of energy use? i think that if i movedaway from my world as an architect, where iengage with other disciplines, and i listen to what someresearch scientists say to me when i meetwith my colleagues, and i meet theseextraordinary individuals, and talk about thekinds of buildings that
are appropriate for them, themantra that kind of repeats itself is, we expect thatyou'll be able to get the laboratories to work. the liquids and thegases will all appear. the real challenge thatyou have as an architect is to create buildingsthat will break down the barriers between thedifferent disciplines. and that's very muchabout the social spaces. it's about thechance interaction.
and so some ofthese buildings have been designed in such a waythat the circulation encourages the chance encounter. and many of thescientific breakthroughs have happened inthe social spaces, not in the laboratories. they've happened over a coffee. and the reason thatthey've done that is because the differentdisciplines have come together.
which brings me backto my primary response to your question, and that isthat the future and that way of working is about thedifferent disciplines coming together. the interaction betweenthose disciplines. and this is the opposite of theway in which many designers are taught. that they can designand then, as it were, hand out the parcel tosomebody else to make it work.
and that for me isthe opposite of what is the creative process. for me the creativeprocess and my colleagues, and the whole sort of50 years or whatever, is built on sparking offbetween different disciplines. if there's a symbol,it's the round table. great. just in the interest oftime, we will take probably one or two more questionsfrom the audience.
we also don't want tostrain lord foster. so any questionfrom the audience? can't see. there we go. one. lord foster, and ithink that you just spoke to this alittle bit, i'm very interested in theaspect of sustainability which includes social equity.
i don't think that we can havea sustainable world unless it's sustainable for everyone. i wonder if youcould speak to that. i'd say that-- i could take youthrough each of those projects, and the emphasis wouldbe the social agenda. i wouldn't mentiona word about energy. i never use the word green. i could describeas 50 years work, trying to createplaces and spaces that
are truly democratic,that break down barriers. initially between in that tinyfactory, challenging the we and they, the posh, thescruffy, the front, the back, the management box,the worker's shed. the creation of ademocratic pavilion. the building in olson. i was told thedockers are dirty, they swear thesecretaries will walk out. you can never put themeven near each other.
you couldn't even do twobuildings close to each other. they're under the same roofand it just worked like magic. but it was a very daringsocial experiment at the time, although we never wouldhave used those words. and the greening ofthe city, opening up spaces for entertainment,for social interaction. each of those buildings hasa very, very strong agenda. and i think that part ofour task, the reichstag, for example, thepoliticians who,
for the first timein their lives, had to find common ground. because normally, they'renot doing their job unless they're disagreeingwith each other, and arguing. so for the first time, theyhave to find consensus. and as somebody said,why would anybody ever want to go to theroof of the reichstag? and if they wentthere, why would they want to have a coffee?
and then the next thing ihear is, it's so popular, the architect underestimatedthe amount of size for the restaurant. and we can't get acoffee, because there are too many people. so i think that youhave, intentionally or otherwise, i think,identified a very, very strong thread through allof these projects. on that note i thinkwe will end here.
i just want to thank lordfoster one more time. we're so lucky to have you here. thank you so much. [inaudible] thanks,everyone, for attending. and i hope we will see younext time at our next lecture.
Graph Coloring For Air Traffic Flow Management