In developing ideas for the What’s Next issue, we had a rather logical thought. The subject was “Landscape/Climate Change”—and the thought? We need to talk to a Dutchmen about this, for fairly obvious reasons. So we contacted Jan H. de Jager, a civil engineer and an expert on dikes and dams, who in the course of our conversation gave us a primer on the Dutch ways with water.
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Tell us how the Dutch approach the problem of rising sea levels. They’ve been at this for thousands of years.

Our coast is very soft and sandy, with a number of major rivers crossing into the North Sea. The country was actually formed by these rivers over the last one or two hundred thousand years. It’s a country built on sediments, which were brought in by the Rhine River. A couple hundred thousand years ago we didn’t even exist. Our ancestors have dealt with sea level rises in the past. And they had only modest means, so what they did was build little platforms, plateaus, where they built up their farms and houses. So when sea water would rise, they would run to their earth plateau and sit out the high water.

When the country got more inhabited, and now I’m talking about two thousand years ago, these practices were still in use. About one thousand years ago the population increased to such an extent that the people felt that we had to organize things. The water boards were an early form of democracy. Our oldest water boards’ [jurisdictions] are over one thousand years old. They choose a chairman and a secretary. All the people living in a certain area had to contribute to the water board, whether in money or manual labor, or horses or cows to transport earth. And then we started to build dikes. Not the same sort of thing we consider a dike now. These were earth berms, which were extended over many kilometers to fend off possible high waters. The water boards evolved over the years. In the early days, there may have been one thousand water boards, in a country the size of Maryland. But up to sixty percent of the country is below the current mean sea level, which means most of the country is still being protected by dikes. The number of water boards has decreased. We now have less than one hundred, which is cheaper and easier to manage. People don’t supply the labor anymore. They just pay a bill every month. The inhabitants pay according to the size of land they own and the properties built on it.

That’s how they maintain the dikes?

Yes. And to maintain the water levels, because precipitation falls into these polders behind the dikes and we have to pump it out. We also have water seeping in from underneath the dikes that has to be pumped out. All those costs are borne by the water boards but paid for by the inhabitants of the area. Read more…

Click the play button to watch Metropolis’s executive editor, Martin Pedersen, deconstruct the “strange, almost mutant form” of a building in his Yorkville, Manhattan, neighborhood—one that appears to have been designed entirely by real estate lawyers. (Click here to watch the first installment of “My Banal Neighborhood.”)

One of the great treats in working on our “1-5-10 Issue” was talking to experts and inviting them—urging them, really—to speculate on the future. Toronto-based Ken Greenberg—our urban-planning talking head—is currently working on a book, due out next year, on the future of cities, and he took the opportunity to ruminate on all of the changes he sees on the horizon. It was a fascinating and far-ranging talk. We took highlights from our interview for the print edition, but Greenberg’s expansive view of cities is worth a longer look online.

What do you see on the ground now in urban planning? What’s engaging you and the clients you’re working with?

I’m pretty convinced we’re in the midst of a transformation which is probably as profound as what happened immediately after the Second World War, when we got all excited about automobiles and in a sense turned our backs on cities. There are all kinds of things that are propelling this. Some of it has to do with the environment; much of it has to do with the cost of energy. I don’t know if you know the book that came out recently called Why Your World Is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller. It was written by Jeff Rubin, a former chief economist of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce who actually resigned to write this book. From an economic standpoint he is talking about peak oil and the effect it’s going to have on cities. Right now I’m in the midst of a series of skirmishes, as people adjust to this new reality and we change our entire tool kit when it comes to how we deal with cities.

How is that tool kit changing?

Almost everything that we’ve inherited and put into practice in the post-WWII decades has in some way become obsolete. Read more…

Click the play button to watch Metropolis’s executive editor, Martin C. Pedersen, introduce our new video series on Manhattan’s Yorkville neighborhood.

The Aeron Chair has about 200 parts—all of which have to be analyzed to determine its carbon footprint. Photo: courtesy Herman Miller

There’s a reason why big companies are almost duty bound to take the lead in sustainable design. To get a handle on the complexity of the task—whether it’s designing a zero-energy building system, or truly closing the loop on a task chair—requires time, money, and expertise. Recently I spoke to Gabe Wing, Herman Miller’s Design for the Environment manager, about the unique challenges of achieving carbon neutrality for products.

Is carbon neutrality for products even possible and, if it is, what has to be done to get there?

We’ve been working in this area for several years. With products, there are some pretty significant challenges to approaching carbon neutrality. The first thing you have to do is determine how much energy is used to assemble and extract all the raw materials from the ground through your production and delivery. Then you need to look at how you handle end-of-life disposal. To go into that process is a significant endeavor and the best way to do that today is through some proprietary software packages. Read more…

Gail Vittori and Pliny Fisk III, directors of the Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems

Emilio Ambasz’s claims not withstanding, no one person can declare themselves the father (or mother) of sustainable building. It was clearly a group effort. The same, of course, can be said for green hospital design. But one of the seminal figures there is Gail Vittori, co-director (with her husband, Pliny Fisk III) of the Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems, in Austin, Texas. Vittori served as chair of the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED for Healthcare committee and co-authored (with Robin Guenther) Sustainable Healthcare Architecture (Wiley). Recently I talked to Vittori about the challenges and the imperative of green hospitals.

What’s the state of sustainable health care? Is the term still an oxymoron?

Because of its regulatory requirements, its 24/7 operations, and the specific nature of what it does, health care was slow to pick up on sustainability. It really does operate as a unique segment within the architecture and building world. But with the introduction of the Green Guide for Health Care and the knowledge that LEED for Healthcare is in development, all of that has provided a structure for people within the industry to understand that “green” and “health care” is not only a good fit, but an imperative. Read more…

Last week I had the good fortune (finally) to take a bike ride around Governors Island with Leslie Koch, president of the Governors Island Preservation and Education Corporation. It was a glorious day, warm and breezy—a perfect introduction to this beautiful, strange, haunted place. The island, located in New York Harbor between Lower Manhattan and Red Hook, Brooklyn, was abandoned by the Coast Guard in 1996 and then given to the state (for a buck) shortly after. At one point it was home to more than 3,500 people. Today it still feels like a small New England coastal town or a liberal arts college (albeit an empty one, just eight minutes away by ferry.) Read more…

Click the play button for a video preview of our September 2009 cover story on the elusive Argentine architect Emilio Ambasz.

So you think you know all about Emilio Ambasz? Sure, you may have seen memorable photos of his work elsewhere. For the full story of this controversial architect, however, you need to check out the September 2009 issue of Metropolis. There you’ll find a feast of photos, drawings, and other stunning visuals. But to really understand the significance of Ambasz’s work to you—and the green movement—you have to read our in-depth cover story, “Emilio Ambasz: Father of Sustainability or Slave to Form?”

Unless you read it Metropolis, you won’t know the entire story. Click here to subscribe today.

As numerous studies have shown, the polar ice caps are disappearing at an alarming rate. Global warming or climate change, or however you choose to characterize what’s happening to our planet, will inevitably result in rising sea levels. Are we ready for this potentially calamitous eventuality? Of course not. (Silly question.) We’re not likely to prepare for it until it’s too late. In fact I doubt much (if any) of the federal stimulus money will go toward planning for a future where sea levels might rise as high as five feet. Instead we’re likely to see a lot of pothole remediation (shovel-ready projects!) and politically inspired pork (Bridge to Nowhere).

The ideas for this newer, wetter world will have to come from designers. In that spirit, the Bay Conversation and Development Commission out in San Francisco recently announced winners of the Rising Tides Competition. The competition, which drew 130 entries from 18 countries, challenged designers to create waterfront strategies that envisioned a 55-inch rise in sea level over the next century. Read more…

I finally went up on the High Line this afternoon. As a writer, it was a slightly frustrating experience, because just about everything that’s been written about it has been for the most part correct. It is exhilarating. It is a unique perspective. The designers (James Corner Field Operations, with Diller Scofidio + Renfro) have used admirable restraint. But the park merely looks wild and un-designed. It is very much a designed experience and its success lies in fact that we don’t feel the strain of all this calculated restraint.

I went at lunch and the park was pleasantly populated, with a critical mass of people that made the experience both communal and natural. When it’s teeming with visitors, as it will surely be on weekends in good weather, it won’t be as much fun. This is not like Central Park, but finite space and an overflow of strollers will spoil the adventure. Over time, however, the novelty will wear off, and the park’s use will become established through times of day, seasons, and weather patterns. Like any public space, it will acquire a personality based in part on those uses. It will have a summer personality (when no one but tourists walk it), a spring personality (when crowds flock to it at the first hint of warm weather). And that personality will change and evolve. It will be tested in inclement weather. In fact, I look forward to walking the High Line in a blizzard (if it’s permitted).

Right now, the surrounding neighborhood is an odd and endearing mix of new and old. You’d almost like to freeze it in place, because over time it’s almost certain the ragged urban edges are likely to get smoothed over. This is probably inevitable. The High Line is both a relic of the past and a gentrifying shaper of the future. Still, you can’t beat the view.