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A
Hello and welcome to the Urbanist, Monocle's programme all about the built environment. I'm your host, Andrew Tuck.
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Coming up, if design has the power to improve the quality of our lives spiritually and materially, then technology is the means to that. But closely linked to that are the lessons of history.
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London for the World Design Congress, where the event's rallying cry called for a design response to the global crisis of climate change. Lord Norman Foster joins us from the congress to unpack the importance of human centric design and why we as citizens should all be involved in how our cities take shape. We also spoke with Julia Watson to learn what indigenous architecture techniques can teach modern day planners. Plus, we visit Seattle's recently completed waterfront park that's been 20 years in the making. That's all ahead in the next 30 minutes, right here on the Urbanist, with me, Andrew Tuck. This year's World Design Congress took place at the Barbican Centre in London and the event's theme was simple but important, how do we Design for the Planet? With speakers and guests from all over the design world, this certainly was the forum to explore how the design community can and should respond to climate change. And we were lucky enough to sit down with two guests with their own ideas on how to proceed. The first was Lord Norman Foster, the legendary British architect behind many icons of the built environment, including the so called Gherkin in London. Carlotta Rubello spoke to him about quality of life and human centered design. And Carlotta began by, by asking how the climate and sustainability conversation has changed during the time of his career.
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B
Well, we were promoting everything that is now called sustainable green in the late 1960s, early 70s and at that time it was a fringe activity and now it's mainstream and everybody's talking about it. So we've been fairly consistent on that and of course moved with the technology. And the technology, we mustn't forget, is a means to improve the quality of our lives. Whether that's in a building, whether it's in a city in a. That is really the power of design. And we have the means to live a good life, to have a quality of life and at the same time reduce our carbon footprint. We have the technology, we have the means.
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C
One of the other points when you decided to present two of the case studies of work you've done that you're quite proud of, unexpectedly they weren't building. So I'm kind of going to ask you to retell that story. And we're talking here about the society.
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B
Yes, I mean There was a journalist who was interviewing me and said, you've done so much in London. I mean, what are your favorites? What are the ones that you really rate? Or whatever? And I said, they're not buildings. Because if I talk about the effect of design on the citizens of London and the visitors, then it's going to be Millennium Bridge and it's going to be Trafalgar Square, because those influence the quality of urban life to a far greater extent than any individual building, however powerful that building, and important that building might be. And of course, if you take the number of people who cross from the north bank to the south, which has equalized, so it's brought prosperity to the traditionally poorest south bank from the rich financial center of the financial square mile and Trafalgar Square, most people have forgotten it was a horrendous pedestrian roundabout. You risked your life going there. The heart of London was largely occupied by pigeons and one or two people feeding them. And so the transformational effect of what we did there has been revolutionary. It's now become the living room of London, the heart of London for cultural events, concerts, celebrations, festivities, whatever. So it's perhaps a way of saying that something we take for granted, the infrastructure, the pedestrian spaces, those influence our quality of life and we can make them better. So it's a plea for the infrastructure of connectivity. Public spaces and cities hold the key to climate change. That's not to say the buildings are not important. Of course they are. I'm an architect. It's my lifeblood.
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Are you worried about the pace of urbanization?
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The pace of urbanization, it's very difficult to perhaps comprehend that where we are right now. But those parts of the world which are rapidly urbanizing, I mean, the equivalent over the next 25 years is the construction of 11 cities the size of London every year for the next 25 years. So that's a daunting challenge. And what I was doing at this event was saying we have a choice. We can encourage those kinds of cities which have a low carbon footprint, which everybody wants to go to as Monocle itself as a magazine. Select cities, they're all a particular kind of city. They're pedestrian friendly, they're walkable, they have good public transport, they have neighborhoods, they have a historic core. They're not the car born sprawling cities. So they consume half the energy, they're more desirable, they're healthier, and they also conserve nature and biodiversity. It's the win, win.
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C
When we talk about, indeed quality of life in cities, it's all Those factors and almost also then there's this element of community supporting you and enabling that community. We know that one of the main issues that cities face nowadays is loneliness.
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In cities as a killer. It's also promoting exercise, which is health.
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And that's where design can be powerful.
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I mean, as ever, it's a constant. Everything is designed. It's very easy to think that things happen by accident. It doesn't mean if there's a designer is not involved, somebody's making a decision. We live in a man made world.
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C
Your foundation sits in Spain and that's just two hours away. And often we talk about how just a slight adjustment in perspective can boost creativity, can allow us to see things differently. And I'm curious if splitting your time between there and here has also had that effect on you. And of course on top of all the travels as well. But does a slight change in perspective help when it comes to finding inspiration?
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Yes. The practice is based here in London and there are certain things the practice can do. There are some things the practice can't do or it's difficult to do and the foundation can do. And so the foundation has a global. The graduate class that I was illustrating in this Talk comes from 23 countries, but they are separate in every sense, legally, financially. And so it's helpful to have a geographic difference. And Madrid, like London, is pedestrian friendly, it's compact, it's high density. You could argue that also it has in its growth, it sprawled as a carbon model, not to its advantage. And London notwithstanding the fact that the green belt, which constrains London, so London has not sprawled in a way that many other cities has done. That's a rather interesting difference between the two because I think the politicians are not aware of that effect of the green belt. It's seen as a developer's opportunity to kind of dilute and divide, rather than a great invention. Interestingly reinforced at the height of World War II, when the master plan for London, the Abercrombie plan, was drawn up in the height of the war. So as a real gesture of regeneration and optimism for a future, it's interesting.
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C
To hear just how the green belt, I guess also, you know, the 15 minute city, which many associate with Paris, of course, but not a Parisian invention. A lot of these small, in theory steps to improve quality of life seem to be looking at the past and taking lessons, isn't it?
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Yes. I mean, if design has the power to improve the quality of our lives spiritually and materially, then technology is the means to that. But closely Linked to that are the lessons of history. It's a cliche, but it's also a truism. If you want to look far ahead, first look far back. There are links, there are lessons.
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C
I cover urbanism for Monocle. I have no background in design or architecture. I just like living in cities and concerned about what happens in them. And often I guess one question you might get a lot is what would you tell up and coming designers and architects? Any advice? I want to actually ask you what would you say to just citizens about why should they care about what happens in their cities and why they should be active participants in how they're designed?
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Because they have a say and they should make that opinion their view. They should make it loud and clear and contribute because the city is about citizens. The words are synonymous. So go for it.
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Lord Norman Foster there speaking with Carlotta Rebelo. Carlotta also got a chance to speak with Julia Watson, the Australian born Greco Egyptian landscape architect and author who specialises in tapping into traditional ecological knowledge. Julia spoke with Carlotta about what we can learn from Indigenous communities, about being building, resilient, responsive and respectful architecture. And Carlotta began by asking her about her background and why it's so important to have her point of view at an event like the World Design Congress.
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D
I'm originally Australian. I was educated as an architect in a country that had really understood that you had to be aware of Indigenous knowledge systems and non Indigenous knowledge systems if you were going to be a designer. After working in practice for 10 years, I came to the States to study a Master's and had thought originally that the states would have a very similar kind of ideology given similar histories to Australia, but was really confronted by the fact that Indigenous knowledge systems just were not a part of any of the education in the US and when I was teaching post graduation I was teaching at Harvard and Columbia. I wanted to integrate and share the experience experience I'd had in Australia as a student with the students that I was teaching. So developed an amount of research that explored Indigenous knowledge systems and their technologies that result from the application of those knowledge systems that I had found and the communities that I had worked with across the globe. So my books, my research, my education system that I've developed and my office, we all explore how Indigenous knowledge systems and their applied technologies can be built into everyday design education and everyday design practice, especially for city making.
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C
Earlier this morning here at the Congress someone is saying often design is not really reinventing something new is when you look at things under a new light. But Often with old technologies. And I feel like this is so apt for what we're talking about. Tell me a bit more about low tech and what are some of the practical examples for listeners who might not understand what this actually means in practice? What are some of the case studies that you mentioned to your students, for example?
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D
So low tech is actually a word I made up, so it's not familiar to anybody. It came out of the book that I published in 2019. It stands for Local and Tek. And Tek is the Indigenous science of traditional ecological knowledge. So it's the knowledge practice, belief systems of cumulative generations of knowledge holders and how they actually activate the ecosystems that they live in, sometimes to make food, sometimes to clean water, and sometimes to do a whole various number of things. Most of this work was just not in any of the literature that I was teaching. So I really felt that there was an exploration into decolonized design and infrastructure and landscape management systems that had to be made aware of because designers are working in all these spaces around the world, and often not intentionally bringing a colonial aspect to the way that they're designing. So I work through a system called Radical Indigenousism, which is what you were speaking about. And Radical Indigenousism is a concept that was developed by a Cherokee professor, Eva Marie Garoot. And she says that Indigenous communities can look at their knowledge systems, look at their folklore, look at their mythology, look at their land management practices, and can use that knowledge to confront new things, things that they're confronting, whether it be environmental, food sovereignty, water sovereignty issues. Use that knowledge to chart a pathway for the future, for the next seven generations. And so as a designer I thought, well, isn't that really what we need in design as well? Number one, we need to co create with all Indigenous knowledge holders and local communities. But number two, we really need so many other types of value systems, technologies, practices and ways of understanding how to connect with our planet and how to connect with all the various peoples on the planet. And so leveraging that idea, I thought, let's bring it to sustainability and let's bring it to climate resilience, which is really a very burgeoning part of the industry. And so through that, I actually began working with a couple of communities in Bali in Iraq, and those different communities, what I had thought of as these touristic landscapes. I came to understand that there was an incredible technology, rice terraces and amazing food growing, water cleansing systems. People who live on islands in the southern wetlands of Iraq, they've developed amazing technologies that are buoyant, that are water cleansing that allow them to float in a wetland environment on an island that lasts for 25 years. And they've lived this way for six and a half thousand years. So we're not looking at technology that was developed since the Industrial Revolution. We're looking at really old stuff, systems of technology and innovation that work in incredible symbiosis with their environment, that add back to the planet and add back to their environments and have stood the test of time, of flood and drought and food problems and water problems and climate events and all these other things we're experiencing for sometimes six and a half thousand years. They have that inbuilt resilience and wisdom of generations of people living. And that's incredible to think that we actually have that in existence and it will lead a pathway for our future on this planet.
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C
It's really amazing to hear that example and also, you know, this connection to our planet, this connection to resiliency, because funnily enough, this year's theme here of the congress is Design for Planet. And we've heard so many conversations, you know, about sustainability, about blue to green design, how you can help new sources of energy. But here we're talking, as you were describing, about something that has been done for millennia and that actually, when applied to the modern world, can have a revolutionary effect. Tell me a bit more about your thoughts on the power of design to be the usher of this change. And is there a missed opportunity here to learn these traditional techniques, to learn from these communities while they're still around?
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D
We talk about this century as being the greatest loss of biodiversity and sort of systems collapse. But I think the systemic reason why there's such this collapse and why there's the loss of the biodiversity is because we're losing these indigenous technologies and we're not acknowledging them. Because all of the biodiversity on this planet actually sits in the spaces of these indigenous communities. And so all of the biodiversity is being upheld by these ancient indigenous technologies. And it's not just a proposal that we should be building indigenous technologies the same way they were built for six and a half thousand years to create cities and landscapes of the future. What's actually happening now, and it's been happening for the last 10 years, some of our most resilient urban infrastructures, water infrastructures, agricultural infrastructures, are actually being modeled on indigenous knowledge systems. And that's what I'm charting in the next book. I actually have a catalog of 20 plus projects. Sponge park by Kongjian Yu, a lot of work by Kachiko and Vakaram which is a rice terraces at Chungalung University. These projects are actually taking indigenous knowledge systems and applying them to create the most forward thinking contemporary design that deals with water. And that's the potential that we as designers can learn from community. We can co create and build relationships with community so that we're actually together with the same vision of creating a generational planet for the next generations. We can do this together and we can build this knowledge into how we design for the future.
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C
I want to stay on that topic of community, just to end with, because you've been talking lots about some of these indigenous technologies. But one thing that is also very specific to indigenous cultures is community is the power of the people around you to help bring everyone up, to help support everyone. And in modern societies, we know loneliness is an epidemic, that people do not feel support from the community. So I almost wonder, as a way of wrapping up our conversation, if this is something that can be engineered by design too. Can we bring that sense of community support and belonging that is natural to the indigenous people to places around the world and perhaps help destigmatize loneliness in cities?
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D
A really essential part of all of these systems is that all of these communities and collectives that actually design these indigenous technologies operate on a very democratic form of governance. And governance is a really important feature with all of these technologies. The idea is about co creation. You create with your neighbor, you have kinship, you have reciprocity with your landscape, you have reciprocity with the different animals and plants within your landscape. So really the intention of these systems primarily is about the collective and about creating relationships all around, both with each other and with the community. And these projects that we see that are being newly co created with communities, they are number one spaces for community, spaces for all different types of animals and humans and plants. So the way that these projects are actually being built is to bring a relationship of co creation and a space where everybody can inhabit. And that the idea is that there would be ownership and investment by local government, by community and by other organizations. And if you can really understand sort of the value and intention of these systems and bring that to ground as a grassroots project, that's where you can actually get that buy in from the community and start to like build from the ground up.
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Julia Watson there, speaking with Carlotta Rebelo at the World Design Congress in London. And finally today we head to Seattle, where the 20 years in the making Waterfront park has recently had its grand opening. This follows cities such as Barcelona, Seoul and San Francisco, who have all undergone seismic makeovers when they remove highways and revitalise their waterfront offering. Monocle's Seattle correspondent Gregory Scruggs has been tracking down how the project has transformed the city, its sense of identity, and the public's confidence in urban governance. He dipped his toes into the water and dodged a few jellyfish too, to file this report.
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Congratulations, Seattle. Have a wonderful, wonderful day.
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With a snip of the scissors, Mayor Bruce Harrell officially opened Seattle's Waterfall Park. Where there was once an elevated highway severing the city's downtown from the water's edge, there are now promenades, play structures, native plants, piers for concerts and festivals, restored heritage buildings, a brand new aquarium, a gravel beach, and stunning vistas over Elliot Bay and the snow capped Olympic mountains beyond. The effect is nothing short of transformative. The combination of removing the Alaskan Way viaduct and building a marquee park in its place has helped Seattleites rediscover their downtown waterfront and boosted civic pride. The park is an instant classic, drawing hordes of tourists during the summer cruise ship season and eager crowds of locals who relish the setting for a brisk morning run or a chance to soak in the sunset. The grand opening celebration in early September filled the park with performances drawing on the city's cultural traditions, creating a joyful cacophony. As the sounds of an indigenous welcome gave way to choreographed dances, to Chinese pop songs, to an upbeat hip hop soundtrack. Motivating a spirited round of double Dutch jump rope, a public art collective fabricated hundreds of jellyfish shaped lanterns, an homage to the park's new jellyfish themed playground, and led a procession through the park at dusk. The day before the festivities, I met up at Waterfront park with some of the key leaders who kept the vision afloat through changing political tides that easily could have deep sixed such an ambitious idea.
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I'm Angie Brady. I work for the city of Seattle. I'm the office of the Waterfront director and I've been in charge of the design and construction of Seattle Waterfront.
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Tell me where we are right now and what used to be here.
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So we're standing here on the beach looking back toward the city. We used to have this enormous Alaskaway viaduct, basically a wall of concrete double decker structure that separated our downtown from our waterfront. It was ugly, it was dirty, it was noisy and essentially, you know, we had no plants down here. We had no. Our sidewalks were super narrow. It just was not a good place to experience Seattle. And so now the viaduct is now gone. It's given the city this huge opportunity to open up our beautiful New waterfront. And we've created a whole suite of projects that have done just that.
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We met on a gravelly beach, inhaling the briny smell of low tide as a heron hunted for breakfast and commuter ferries blasted their foghorns as they pulled into the docks. The unique combination of natural ecosystem and urban infrastructure is a hallmark of Seattle's Waterfall Park. This now daily scene is the result of a saga that began here in 2001 with a magnitude 6.8 earthquake that cracked the viaduct. The damage was fatal. The concrete had to go. But what would replace it? The city, state, and voters wrangled for years over whether to rebuild the viaduct, dig a tunnel, or gamble on having no highway at all. Back on the beach, I asked how the office of the waterfront maintained forward momentum.
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G
So the decision to build a tunnel to replace the viaduct happened in 2009, and that was a state level decision by the governor back then, Governor Gregoire. And that decision really created an opportunity and a space for the city to be able to reimagine our waterfront. And so in 2010, we hired Field operations, a company based out of New York. Landscape architect, incredibly talented. They did the high line and many other amazing projects worldwide to really come into Seattle and put together a vision for what could be down here. In 2012, they completed what we called a concept design that essentially spanned 20 acres of property along our waterfront. It included a set of renderings and working together with community and strong civic leaders who really supported and championed the waterfront at the time, we took that vision to city council, and city council adopted that vision. And so it really created, kind of set the stage for what could happen on our waterfront. And since then, we've stuck to that vision. And we've gone through seven mayors now. I mean, it's been many, many years of design, planning, right of way, acquisition, getting ready for construction, and then construction. And, you know, all along the way, we met many challenges. Lots of different politicians came and went. But I think what created that consistency for us and that momentum was really having a very strong group of civic leaders who were with us from day one. So one of the things we did in 2000 was we put together what was called a central waterfront committee. And it was made up of these incredible civic leaders who really championed the project since then, I mean, and they're still with us today. And they were able to support the city as we spanned all these years. And every mayor that came in, they would sit with us, we would walk through the vision, and it just really helped the city team maintain that momentum and keep things going.
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Seattleites, myself among them, have been eager to show off the new waterfront park to visiting friends and family. But the park shares waterfront real estate with scenic tour boat operators, a recreated gold rush era pier stuffed with souvenir shops, a giant Ferris wheel, and proximity to the bustling cruise ship terminal. In short, the area can also feel a bit like a tourist trap. So what will keep us coming back in the drearier months after our summer visitors have gone home? On one of the park's new piers, I met Joy Shigaki, president of the Friends of Waterfront Seattle, the park conservancy in charge of programming and public safety.
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Obviously, the summer everyone loves, but also people in Seattle are used to going out in the rain in the winter months. This last couple years, we've been piloting our fire pits and coffee on Saturdays and Sundays. That's a really important way to signal people coming back to the water. Waterfront. And now the overlook walk opening. You can make a beautiful walk up to the Pike Place market and actually have an experience there as a local in the shoulder season. That's really connecting this park to the core of downtown into the heart of the market. We also really highlight local talent. So on Thursdays, part of our spotlight series, you bring the best of local community. Tap dance group, tai chi group from the cid, other performers to have this intimate experience, to have people see themselves when they come down to the park and see people they know. And also a curiosity about what makes Seattle so interesting.
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F
Weather is not the only potential impediment to attracting local residents to come and use this park. Public safety as well has been a paramount concern in public spaces across North American cities and especially on the west coast and city centers. How do you manage that aspect of this park in a way that's a little different from other Seattle parks? That has enhanced and created a cleaner.
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E
Safer atmosphere the conversation around public safety in this particular urban space. We're expecting, you know, 10 to 15 million people to come annually was how do we create a model to be able to ensure we have a humane approach to public safety? We looked at nationally, other models, including in New York and Chicago, Louisiana. And Miami, where a lot of other urban parks are figuring out the public safety approach. What we came back to is a Seattle Center, a 78 acre campus that is an arts and culture campus. You put on large, big events in the city, have an emergency services unit or public safety team that is very publicly customer facing. They can enforce the park rules and they know how to do that in A context of really, really large gathering spaces. So as part of that arrangement and being the nonprofit partner, we committed 5.4 million to that partnership. That was then matched by the metropolitan parks district, which is a levy to ensure they could come in into the space to become the public safety presence in the park, to be able to enforce the park rules, along with park friends ambassadors who were this additional layer of keeping the park clean, setting up the furniture, staffing the restroom, setting up events and production. And then the reach team. That again is another layer of support when we, we need it for people who are unhoused again, humane approach to public safety. And then when you need it and you need it because of public safety for the public, you call spd. So that modeling we've now been doing for nearly four years has been an important one of matching public private dollars to do that work and bring Seattle center, which is the best of what we have done in the city, to be able to provide that sense of public safety here in a public space. And people are noticing the difference. And I think that we're beginning to also keep elevating that conversation of what are the other models that we need to be thinking about in the rest of downtown.
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While there are still some kinks to work out as informal vendors attempt to capitalize on the larger crowds, it's undeniable that Waterfront park experiences much less of the rough sleeping, open air, drug use and graffiti tagging that plagues some of downtown Seattle's public spaces. Indeed, the relative absence of street disorder at Waterfront park has inculcated the notion that after a five year downward spiral, Seattle's governance might finally be turning a corner. Moreover, in a city where ambitious megaprojects frequently go off the rails, the ability of the city to actually deliver on Waterfront park has bolstered civic confidence. For James Corner, landscape architect and founder of Field Operations, the ultimate urban transformation occasioned by the park is the opportunity to give a waterfront back to the people we met on a floating dock. Another of his team's design interventions where you can reach down and feel the saltwater.
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D
It's Waterfront park in the service of Elliot Bay. Because the way the light plays the.
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Different weather, sometimes it's a bit blue.
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D
Sky and bright sun. The water is still. Sometimes it's misty and foggy. Sometimes you're caught in clouds and rain. It's so atmospheric. The light is gorgeous, the water is always different. And I don't think people realize just how spectacularly beautiful this is was when.
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There was a viaduct in the way people literally didn't know it was there.
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For Monocle, in Seattle's Waterfront Park, I'm Gregory Scruggs.
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A
That's all for this week's episode of the Urbanist. You can follow us for new editions of the show every week. And you can subscribe to Monocle magazine for reports on all things design, architecture and urbanism, too. Just visit monocle.com the Urbanist is produced by Carlo Tobello and by David Stevens, who also edits the show. I'm Andrew Tuck. Goodbye, and thank you for listening. City lovers.