2022 Dutch Design Week
What if our cities were fully self-sufficient?
Published on: March 10, 2023
The world is changing. Extremes are the order of the day. It is either too wet or too dry, too hot or too cold. Raw materials and energy are scarce, and we lose dozens of square miles of valuable nature every day. We need to embrace them. This means going back to the basis, to our origin. Being self-sufficient is closer than ever.
Being dependent on other countries for many of our essentials is a major topic of discussion. Living on local resources increases our flexibility exponentially. What if we organise everything within a limited radius? Our traffic movements would decrease, and the air quality would improve. We could deal with our energy consumption more smartly and economically and help nature recover. In short, this is the (necessary) transition we are currently engaged in.
The transition to local resources requires us to look differently at the world around us. Is our living environment still in line with today’s challenges? Such a challenging issue calls for new perspectives and powerful collaborations. That is why Sweco Netherlands, together with the Dutch Design Foundation, organized a What if Lab at the 2022 Dutch Design Week, the largest design event in Northern Europe.
Together with Sweco, three designers explored what the world would look like if cities are self-sufficient. The assignment they worked out in a short time: Design a trailblazing application for the self-sufficient city, five years from now. The applications make a valuable contribution to the fields of energy, food and water for optimum health, biodiversity and social connection for residents.
The designers worked together with an expert panel and were given access to Sweco’s knowledge and network. The end result being their presentations at Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven. Altogether we created an environment in which we researched, experimented, and learned from each other.
For us in Europe, climate change means hot, dry summers with a sporadic cloudburst. It is these cloudbursts that cause flooding of sewers and damage to our homes and infrastructure. With human suffering and astronomical costs as a result. Nevertheless, rainwater is a precious commodity that we can make better use of. Rainwater is fresh, relatively clean and comes in large quantities just like that. An average roof of a residential house can easily absorb 2,500 liters of water during such a flood. Wouldn’t it be a shame if we didn’t do anything with it?
Tjeerd Veenhoven came up with a locally manufactured ceramic facade panel that can hold rainwater being saved. Once stored, this rainwater is absorbed over a period of three days by the ceramic material and evaporated on the outside of the wall. The transition from liquid to vapor brings the cooling that is also so needed in the hot summer months. This ceramic facade panel therefore offers two solutions: storing rainwater during extreme showers and cooling of the urban environment through evaporation. The panel can be used both in new construction and in making post-war neighbourhoods more sustainable.
Small farmers used to settle near a river, so that they could grow their food in this fertile soil. The inhabitants were in close contact with their natural environment. Villages, however, grew into cities and became diametrically opposed to nature. Agriculture moved inland on a large scale and the fertile soil became covered with tiles and concrete. The countryside industrialised, in terms of layout and as a habitat, along with the urban ones need.
The Circlefarming project softens these hard dividing lines between the urbanized area and the agriculture, at both the landscape and cultural level. Circlefarming offers space for rich land, nature, food forests and housing. After all, by creating circular fields, you give space back for recreation, living, animals. At the same time, within the boundaries of the city come the circular fields are closer to the inhabitants and they can participate more easily. ‘The compass’ is the smart tool that makes this agricultural system economically feasible and workable makes. The necessary automation saves time for the farmer being able to engage with nature, stimulating biodiversity and transferring the valuable knowledge.
Instability in the world is increasing. We can make great gains by finding a way on which the population can provide itself with energy. This creates more independence and people will have to deal more with their own consequences. Can enter a country like the Netherlands become more independent in the field of energy in the future?
Bram de Vos thinks so. With ‘The material energy transition’, Bram proposes a diversity of possible answers. Based on the distance of the material to be extracted, required for the energy transition. In his proposal is a new combination of innovative and older systems, with a mix of recycle/upcycle for energy generation and storage. The proposal takes place in and around the recent purchased Wielewaal estate in Eindhoven. With a slightly provocative tone, the advantages and disadvantages of material use in the energy transition are balanced for the best results.
