-
My mom has always reminded me
-
that I have the same
proportions as a LEGO man.
-
(Laughter)
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And she does actually have a point.
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LEGO is a company that has succeeded
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in making everybody believe
that LEGO is from their home country.
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But it's not, it's from my home country.
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So you can imagine my excitement
when the LEGO family called me
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and asked us to work with them
to design the Home of the Brick.
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This is the architectural model,
we built it out of LEGO, obviously.
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This is the final result.
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And what we tried to do was to design
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a building that would be as interactive
and as engaging and as playful
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as LEGO is itself,
-
with these kind of interconnected
playgrounds on the roof scape.
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You can enter a square on the ground
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where the citizens of Billund
can roam around freely without a ticket.
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And it's probably one of the only
museums in the world
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where you're allowed
to touch all the artifacts.
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But the Danish word for design
is formgivning, which literally means
-
to give form to that
which has not yet been given form.
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In other words, to give
form to the future.
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And what I love about LEGO
is that LEGO is not a toy.
-
It's a tool that empowers the child
to build his or her own world,
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and then to inhabit
that world through play
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and to invite her friends to join her
in cohabiting and cocreating that world.
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And that is exactly what formgivning is.
-
As human beings, we have the power
to give form to our future.
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Inspired by LEGO,
-
we've built a social housing
project in Copenhagen,
-
where we've stacked blocks
of wood next to each other.
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Between them, they leave spaces
with extra ceiling heights and balconies.
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And by gently wiggling the blocks
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we can actually create curves
or any organic form,
-
adapting to any urban context.
-
Because adaptability is probably one
of the strongest drivers of architecture.
-
Another example is here in Vancouver.
-
We were asked to look at the site
where Granville bridge triforks
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as it touches downtown.
-
And we started like mapping
the different constraints.
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There's like a 100-foot
setback from the bridge
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because the city want to make sure
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that no one looks into
the traffic on the bridge.
-
There's a park where
we can't cast any shadows.
-
So finally, we're left with a tiny
triangular footprint,
-
almost too small to build.
-
But then we thought like,
-
what if the 100-foot minimum distance
is really about minimum distance
-
once we get 100 feet up in the air,
we can grow the building back out.
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And so we did.
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When you drive over the bridge,
-
it's as if someone is pulling
a curtain aback,
-
welcoming you to Vancouver.
-
Or a like a weed growing
through the cracks in the pavement
-
and blossoming as it gets light and air.
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Underneath the bridge,
we've worked with Rodney Graham
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and a handful of Vancouver artists,
-
to create what we called
the Sistine Chapel of street art,
-
an art gallery turned upside down,
-
that tries to turn the negative
impact of the bridge into a positive.
-
So even if it looks like
this kind of surreal architecture,
-
it's highly adapted to its surroundings.
-
So if a bridge can become a museum,
a museum can also serve as a bridge.
-
In Norway, we are building a museum
that spans across a river
-
and allows people to sort of journey
through the exhibitions
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as they cross from one side
of a sculpture park to the other.
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An architecture sort of
adapted to its landscape.
-
In China, we built a headquarters
for an energy company
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and we designed the facade
like an Issey Miyake fabric.
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It's rippled, so that facing
the predominant direction of the sun
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it's all opaque,
-
facing away from the sun, it's all glass.
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On average, it sort of transitions
from solid to clear.
-
And this very simple idea
without any moving parts
-
or any sort of technology,
-
purely because of
the geometry of the facade.
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It reduces the energy consumption
on cooling with 30 percent.
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So you can say what makes
the building look elegant
-
is also what makes it perform elegantly.
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It's an architecture
that is adapted to its climate.
-
You can also adapt one culture to another,
-
like in Manhattan we took
the Copenhagen courtyard building
-
with a social space
where people can hang out
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in this kind of oasis
in the middle of city,
-
and we combined it with the density
and the verticality
-
of an American skyscraper.
-
creating what we've called a courtscraper.
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From New York to Copenhagen.
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On the waterfront of Copenhagen
-
we are right now finishing this
waste-to-energy power plant.
-
It's going to be the cleanest
waste-to-energy power plant in the world,
-
there are no toxins
coming out of the chimney.
-
An amazing marvel of engineering
that is completely invisible.
-
So we thought, how can we express this?
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And in Copenhagen
we have snow, as you can see,
-
but we have absolutely no mountains.
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We have to go six hours by bus
to get to Sweden,
-
to get alpine skiing.
-
So we thought, let's put
an alpine ski slope
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on the roof of the power plant.
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So this is the first test run
we did a few months ago.
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And what I like about this
-
is that it also show you the sort of
world-changing power of formgivning.
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I have a five-month-old son,
-
and he's going to grow up in a world
-
not knowing that there was ever a time
-
when you couldn't ski
on the roof of the power plant.
-
(Laughter)
-
(Applause)
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So imagine for him and his generation,
that's their base line.
-
Imagine how far they can leap,
-
what kind of wild ideas
they can put forward for their future.
-
So right in front of it,
we're building our smallest project.
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It's basically nine containers
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that we have stacked
in a shipyard in Poland,
-
then we've schlepped it
across the Baltic sea
-
and docked it in the port of Copenhagen,
-
where it is now the home of 12 students.
-
Each student has a view to the water,
-
they can jump out the window
into the clean port of Copenhagen,
-
and they can get back in.
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All of the heat comes
from the thermal mass of the sea,
-
all the power comes from the sun.
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This is the first 12 units in Copenhagen,
-
another 60 on their way,
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another 200 are going to Gutenberg,
-
and we are speaking
with the Paris Olympics
-
to put a small floating
village on the Seine.
-
So very much this kind of, almost like
nomadic, impermanent architecture.
-
And the water fronts of our cities
are experiencing a lot of change.
-
Economic, change, industrial change
and climate change.
-
This is Manhattan before Hurricane Sandy,
-
and this is Manhattan after Sandy.
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We got invited by the city of New York
-
to look if we could make the necessary
flood protection for Manhattan
-
without building a sea wall
-
that would segregate the life
of the city from the water around it.
-
And we got inspired by the High Line.
-
You probably know the High Line,
it's this amazing new park in New York.
-
It's basically decommissioned train tracks
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that now have become one of the most
popular promenades in the city.
-
So we thought,
-
could we design the necessary
flood protection for Manhattan
-
so we don't have to wait
until we shut it down before it gets nice.
-
So we sat down with the citizens
living along the waterfront of New York
-
and we worked with them to try
to design the necessary flood protection
-
in such a way that it only
makes their waterfront
-
more accessible and more enjoyable.
-
Underneath the FDR
we are putting like pavilions
-
with pocket walls that can slide out
and protect from the water.
-
We are creating little stepped terraces
-
that are going to make
the underside more enjoyable,
-
but also protect from flooding.
-
For the north in the East River park
-
we are creating rolling hills
-
that protect the park
from the noise of the highway,
-
but in turn also become
the necessary flood protection
-
that can stop the waves during
an incoming storm surge.
-
So, in a way this project
that we have called The Dryline,
-
it's essentially the High Line --
-
(Laughter)
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The High Line that's
going to keep Manhattan dry.
-
(Applause)
-
It's scheduled to break ground
on the first East River portion
-
at the end of this year.
-
But it has essentially been codesigned
-
with the citizens of Lower Manhattan
-
to take all of the necessary
infrastructure for resilience
-
and give it positive social
and environmental side effects.
-
So New York is not alone
in facing this situation.
-
In fact, by 2050,
-
90 percent of the major
cities in the world
-
are going to be dealing with rising seas.
-
In Hamburg,
-
they've created a whole neighborhood
-
where the bottom floors are designed
to withstand the inevitable flood.
-
In Sweden, they've designed a city
where all of the parks are wet gardens,
-
designed to deal with storm water
and waste water.
-
So we thought, could we perhaps --
-
Actually, today,
-
three million people are already
permanently living on the sea.
-
So we thought, could we actually
imagine a floating city
-
designed to incorporate all
of the Sustainable Development Goals
-
of the United Nations
-
into a whole new human-made ecosystem.
-
And of course, we have to design it
so it can produce its own power,
-
harvesting the thermomass of the oceans,
-
the force of the tides,
of the currents, of the waves,
-
the power of the wind,
-
the heat and the energy of the sun.
-
Also, we are going to collect
all of the rain water that drops
-
on this man-made archipelago
-
and deal with it organically
and mechanically
-
and store it and clean it.
-
We have to grow all of our food locally,
-
it has to be fish and plant-based,
-
because you won't have the space
or the resources for dairy diet.
-
And finally,
-
we are going to deal
with all the waste locally,
-
with compost, recycling,
and turning the waste into energy.
-
So imagine where a traditional
urban master plan,
-
you typically draw the street grid
where the cars can drive
-
and the building plots
where you can put some buildings.
-
This master plan, we sat down
with a handful of scientists
-
and basically started with all
of the renewable
-
available natural resources,
-
and then we started channeling
the flow of resources
-
through this kind of human-made ecosystem
or this kind of urban metabolism.
-
So it's going to be modular,
-
it's going to be buoyant,
-
it's going to be designed
to resist a tropical storm.
-
You can prefabricate it at scale,
-
and tow it to dock with others,
to form a small community.
-
We're designing these
kind of coastal additions,
-
so that even if it's modular and rational,
-
each island can be unique
with its own coastal landscape.
-
The architecture
has to remain relatively low
-
to keep the center of gravity buoyant.
-
We're going to take all of the agriculture
-
and use it to also create social space
-
so you can actually enjoy
the permaculture gardens.
-
We're designing it for the tropics,
so all of the roofs are maximized
-
to harvest solar power
and to shade from the sun.
-
All the materials are going to be
light and renewable,
-
like bamboo and wood,
-
which is also going to create
this charming, warm environment.
-
And any architecture is supposed
to be able to fit on this platform.
-
Underneath we have all the storage
inside the pontoon,
-
almost like a mega version
of the student housings
-
that we've already worked with.
-
We have all the storage
for the energy that's produced,
-
all of the water storage and remediation.
-
We are sort of dealing
with all of the waste and the composting.
-
And we also have some backup farming
-
with aeroponics and hydroponics.
-
So imagine almost like a vertical section
through this landscape
-
that goes from the air above,
where we have vertical farms,
-
below, we have the aeroponics
and the aquaponics.
-
Even further below we have the ocean farms
-
and where we tie the island to the ground,
-
we are using biorock to create new reefs
to regenerate habitat.
-
So think of this
small island for 300 people.
-
It can then group together to form
a cluster or a neighborhood,
-
that then can sort of group together
to form an entire city for 10,000 people.
-
And you can imagine
if this floating city flourishes,
-
it can sort of grow
like a culture in a petri dish.
-
So one of the first places
we are looking at placing this,
-
or anchoring this floating city,
-
is in the Pearl River delta.
-
So imagine this kind of canopy
of [unclear]
-
on this archipelago floating in the sea.
-
As you sail towards the island,
you will see the maritime residents
-
moving around on alternative forms
of aquatic transportation.
-
You come in to this community port.
-
You can roam around
in the permaculture gardens
-
that are productive landscapes,
but also social landscapes.
-
The greenhouses also become orangeries
for the cultural life of the city,
-
and below, under the sea,
-
it's teeming with life
of farming and science
-
and social spaces.
-
So in a way, you can image
this community port
-
is where people gather,
both by day and by night.
-
And even if the first one
is designed for the tropics,
-
we also imagine that the architecture
can adapt to any culture,
-
so imagine like
a Middle Eastern floating city
-
or Southeast Asian floating city
-
or maybe a Scandinavian
floating city one day.
-
So maybe just to conclude.
-
The human body is 70 percent water.
-
And the surface of our planet
is 70 percent water.
-
And it's rising.
-
And even if the whole world
woke up tomorrow
-
and became carbon-neutral over night,
-
there are still island nations
that are destined to sink in the seas,
-
unless we also develop alternate forms
of floating human habitats.
-
And the only constant
in the universe is change.
-
Our world is always changing,
and right now, our climate is changing.
-
No matter how critical
the crisis is, and it is,
-
this is also our collective
human superpower.
-
That we have the power to adapt to change
-
and we have the power
to give form to our future.
-
(Applause)