Designing for Climate Change

Architect Richelle de Jong heads the successful design practice of DP6, which has its studio in the heart of the old city of Delft in the Netherlands. Urban Designer Shyam Khandekar has worked with Richelle de Jong on a couple of his urban-design projects: DP6 designed one or more important buildings. When the two designers met recently, they discussed how, through sustainability, reuse and innovation, designers can contribute to mitigate the effects of Climate Change.

Shyam Khandekar: We met a few years ago in Paleiskwartier and later at Coevorden. In both the projects, at the urban design scale, old industrial areas are being reused and upcycled. Also, because of their location next to railway stations, the urban design solutions are sustainable promoting the use of public transport and reducing the use of fossil fuels. How have your architectural projects contributed to the larger goal of sustainability and designing for Climate Change?

Richelle de Jong: On the one hand, it concerns reducing CO2 emissions by limiting the use of energy and fossil materials and on the other it also concerns adapting to the changing climate: reducing heat stress, buffering and delayed drainage of rainwater, and increasing biodiversity.

Above all, in our opinion, the best form of sustainability is to create future-proof buildings that will be used for a long time. Buildings form public space and are part of the fabric of the city. That is why it is important to create this embedding, to design the experience of public space, the relationship between inside and outside and the natural social interaction between people. At the building level, it is about creating high-quality buildings in which it is pleasant to work, live and learn. Buildings with qualities such as good proportions, lots of daylight and beautiful, high-quality materials that age sustainably.

In the ‘De Nieuwe Veste’ education project in Coevorden, we are investigating how, to the maximum extent possible, we can build with biobased products. For example, by making wooden structural floors, which also have an acoustic effect and by using flax insulation in the facades. Brick is also a biobased product, which we will stack according to the dry stack system in Coevorden. This is a masonry wall system without the use of cement mortar. The facade will therefore be detachable and can be reused in the future.

The education building in the Paleiskwartier is constructed of concrete, but with a modular grid of 1.80 m and substantial floor heights, so that the building can be used in any number of ways. In the design we also anticipated a future change of function to residential construction. Together with landscape architect Bureau B+B, we designed a campus landscape between the buildings where students, teachers and residents can interact. The cultivated parking and building roofs provide buffering and delayed drainage of rainwater, watering plants and cooling the environment. The vegetation has been selected for biodiversity and to attract bees, butterflies and insects. Roosting places for bats are included in the facades.

As an architect, how can you contribute to mitigate the effects of Climate Change?

Broadly speaking, this means minimising the use of fossil energy and reducing the use of fossil raw materials and therefore CO2 emissions. For example, through adaptive reuse of existing construction materials or by making existing buildings suitable for new conditions and new functions in a smart way, so that they can be reused in a different way for a longer period of time. And by designing new buildings with future adaptive reuse in mind like our design in the Paleiskwartier and by using renewable materials in general. Also, by building demountable (but not by definition quickly dismantling), and by reducing energy consumption in construction and during use of the building.

Renovating and repurposing existing structures is becoming an increasingly important commission for architects in the Netherlands. The number of buildings that no longer meet today’s requirements is enormous. In our projects we try not only to make the building future-proof with careful interventions but we also like to do something more that will provide added value to the city, the village or the adjacent public space.

Like in our project De Rederij in Alblasserdam, where we combined the renovation and conservation of the monumental town hall building with strategic, purposeful interventions that improve connections with the surroundings and local residents. Between the harbour and the village, architects Berghoef and Hondius designed a stately town hall for the municipality of Alblasserdam in the 1960s. A building with beautiful details and, for that time, a revolutionary open floor plan with only one bearing line and a beautiful, bright top floor where the council chamber was located and the mayor was seated. After 50 years, this stately but closed town hall no longer suited the needs of a modern municipality. Moreover, the building was clogged up with all kinds of additions, so that the original qualities were no longer shown to their full advantage.

 

The best form of sustainability is to create future-proof buildings that will be used for a long time

With a number of restrained but targeted interventions, we restored the original qualities and transformed the closed town hall into an open, inviting building, with rooms for meeting and connection. Through careful design, the character of the original design remained intact. The most important intervention was placing a glass extension at the entrance level and extending a number of windows downwards to the steps. 
This gave the building a very transparent and inviting character. It is suddenly strongly connected to the square, and thus to the village. The second major change was to organise public functions on the ground floor with the work café as the vibrant heart. The public library is also located here, as is the council chamber, which was moved from the top floor to the ground floor. On the first and top floors, civil servants now work in a pleasant, open, working environment. In terms of sustainability, the building now has energy label A+++.

An example of making existing buildings suitable for a new function and new conditions is our project RADIUS in Delft. At the foot of the Delft water tower we transformed a 100-year-old pump house with underground water basin – which has stood empty for years – into RADIUS, a Center for Contemporary Art and Ecology. With respect to the national monument, we designed an atmospheric entrance and a fascinating exhibition space underground. The design pays a great deal of attention to minimalising the project’s ecological footprint through the use of biobased materials and low-tech installations.

The reservoir’s circular, concrete walls were affected by the water over time and display splendid chalk markings. These fascinating markings on the walls have been retained, and at only a few points have the walls been breached to create good routing throughout the 500 m2 space. The mass of earth insulates and cools the complex, reducing the need for additional installations.

Recently, DP6 has received a lot of media coverage because of your design for the Natural Pavilion in Almere which also won the Dezeen Award, a public vote for sustainable building and The Chicago Athenaeum’s International Architecture Award 2023. What were the specific design solutions which led to this project’s unique design?

The Natural Pavilion was the Dutch National Government’s Pavilion that was designed and built within a year for the Floriade Expo 2022. It focuses on the spatial challenges we are currently facing in the Netherlands: the energy and raw materials transition, solving the housing shortage, making agriculture more sustainable, restoring biodiversity and adapting to climate change.

The pavilion is an almost 100% biobased, circular and fully demountable inspiration-pavilion that can be rebuilt in different configurations at different locations.

The building concept is simple but ingenious and consists of two main elements: 

• A framework of wooden beams sourced from indigenous wood as a structurally evident shell, the modules of which are connected by a universal steel connecting element.
• A flexible filling-in of the framework with biobased and re-used materials such as wooden floors, biobased walls and windows of re-used glass, with which any space can be created and which can fulfil specific conditions, such as acoustic or fire-safety requirements.

What are the other projects in which the issue of designing for Climate Change played an important part in design?

Cargo building Vrachtgebouw 17 at Schiphol Airport is a 61,000m2 freight building that we designed from two basic materials: recycled ‘crushed’ concrete, where the cement from the concrete is reused, and laminated pine wood. Applying these circular materials throughout the building had a sustainable impact on a large scale. Especially because the freight building can be completely taken apart and rebuilt elsewhere.

The design of our Thijssehuis Cultural Centre project on Wadden Island of Texel is inspired by the typical Texel ‘sheep barn’; these sheds can still be found on the Texel landscape and serve as storage space for hay and materials and also provide shelter from rain and wind.

The shapes of the roofs in the Thijssehuis offer a great sense of spaciousness in the interior, creating a connection with the Texel landscape and also between the four different users in the building. The wooden roof structures support the wooden roofs, which are filled with flax insulation, just like the facades. The materials used inside and outside are in their pure form and sober. For example, the wooden roof elements are perforated and thus contribute to the acoustics; suspended ceilings are not necessary. The bamboo cladding is untreated and will gray over time.

We are currently working on the design of an educational centre in the historic centre of Utrecht, for their university. Three nationally listed historic buildings from different periods are being renovated and redeveloped, and one building will be replaced by new construction. Where the four buildings meet, a connecting atrium with a wooden arch structure has been created as a new time layer that literally and figuratively establishes a connection. Virtually all materials in the new building parts and all incoming materials in the existing buildings to be renovated will be biobased or reused and can also be dismantled.

In your design for the City Hall of Rheden you’ve used some local elements/materials in the design not only to anchor the building in its context but also to achieve the larger goal of designing for Climate Change. Can you tell us why?

That’s right. In our project for the municipality of Rheden we used renewable materials of local origin. For example, we used wool from the local sheep for acoustic wall hangings, beech wood from locally sourced trees for the seating steps, and river clay from the area for the brick. Wooden ceilings from the old building have also been saved to return to the council chamber and wedding hall. Not only are these materials biobased but we also save on transport for them. They root the building in its environment and give it a tangible identity for the residents of the municipality and the civil servants who work in the town hall.
 

The transition to circular energy and material use is underway

What are the other issues and developments that seem to run contrary to the idea of designing for Climate Change? Can you enumerate a few instances where achievement of Climate Change goals was made more difficult or impossible?

Building with biobased materials isn’t easy. The construction sector is designed to build with concrete and it is often easier and cheaper to purchase new materials than to reuse them. Regulations or too many restrictions in an existing building sometimes make reuse difficult, as do guarantees on materials.

But the transition to circular energy and material use is underway. Awareness of the necessity in society is increasing; regulations surrounding fossil energy and material use are increasingly tightened. In my opinion, it is good to focus on what works, to do what is possible in a project. Where one aspect may not yet be possible due to regulations, costs or unfamiliarity with the product, there are often other components that do contribute to the goal.

To achieve the transitions to sustainable energy and materials, it is essential to collaborate and share knowledge. It is precisely the cross-pollination between different disciplines and driving forces from different parties in the design process that is necessary to achieve the objective. In the Natural Pavilion, for example, we worked with a big team of very motivated experts from various fields. New ideas were generated through interaction between one another. And then it was a matter of just tackling and ‘doing’. By setting the bar high, it was possible to build this project almost 100% circular and biobased.