Expert insights: Diego Luna Quintanilla

Mobilising a diverse network of experts is key to the global transition

Diego Luna Quintanilla is an architect and urban planner at Sweco in Belgium. We met up to talk about resilience within architecture.

Diego Luna Quintanilla

“There is a huge global transition going on, and we as consultants at Sweco, have the expertise to manage this transition in a sustainable and resilient way. We are increasingly aware of the vulnerability of our clients and the fact that many of them are not well prepared to deal with big changes,” , says Diego Luna Quintanilla

Most of his projects are in Brussels where he also lives, and range from urban design to strategic planning and regional visions.

“Brussels is a perfect place to work in the field of urbanism, because it’s not a perfect city so there are a lot of things to do. We have the feeling that there is momentum in urban practice in Brussels right now.”

He explains what urbanism means for his profession.

“It refers to everything with an urban character, which in the contemporary context we live in, means most of our territory – not only the built environment and infrastructure but the ecology and social fabric.
The profession has evolved. Decades ago, the focus was on designing new cities and expanding the existing ones during a period of extreme global urban growth.

“Today the most of our world is already built, so urbanism is about anticipating changes while studying the complexity of urban dynamics and working with different partners to come together around sustainable solutions. As urbanists we have become facilitators of processes between different actors in society.

There is a huge global transition going on. We are increasingly aware of the vulnerability of our clients and the fact that many of them are not well prepared to deal with big changes,

”With this new approach, instead of trying to sell a standard project, he and his Sweco colleagues come with a process that is case- and site-specific, with resilience in focus.

“It’s a process where we engage with a broad range of actors and try to find a good match between investors, clients, authorities and citizens, so we can do a project together. The process is resilient because we are building a network of people engaged around a specific place. If the network is strong, it can easily adapt to new circumstances.”

The networks also have to be well connected and diverse to be as resilient as possible, he adds.

“Resilience, the ability to adapt to changing conditions, expected or unexpected, is about diversity. The more diverse a system is, the more resilient it can be when a shock happens. Certain elements can be damaged, but if the network is diverse enough the others are able to compensate.”

Resilience, the ability to adapt to changing conditions, expected or unexpected, is about diversity. The more diverse a system is, the more resilient it can be when a shock happens

Open Brussels is one of the projects that Diego Luna Quintanilla was involved in. It is a landscape vision for a coherent network of open spaces in and around Brussels.

“We looked at landscape structures, like valleys and rivers, that for different reasons were showing lower ecological performance than before and had to be reinforced. With the help of ecologists, geographers and other technical experts we were able to identify where existing landscape corridors could be reinforced and new ones created. The goal was to create a performant landscape structure on the regional scale.”

Image: OPEN Brussels, a network of open spaces in and around Brussels.
©BUUR Part of Sweco / Perspective.brussels

Sweco then provided the framework for connecting these different structures with, for instance, local parks, community gardens and natural zones, creating the conditions for local initiatives with a much bigger impact.

“Today the open spaces are quite fragmented. But when you zoom out and look at them from a regional perspective instead of a local one, you can understand that these patchworks could actually be linked and become a system. The project focuses on climate structures, but it also provides possibilities for urban development and optimisation of the built environment. You can’t densify if you don’t have relations of proximity with big open green areas, parks or other public spaces.”

“Resilience becomes apparent in cities where people, economies and technologies are linked in a network. The more diverse, the better. But the network also has to be well connected and agile for resilience to fully kick in”, says Diego Luna Quintanilla.

Where are the biggest challenges within resilience?

“The rapidity of the responses. Even though we might know how to arrive at solutions, it takes time to mobilise the huge network of experts that must be involved. We also need to think about how to react to short-term incidents without forgetting about the long-term visions,” he says, explaining why there is a gap between the two time horizons.

“Usually we get projects with a long-term vision from a public or an institutional actor, but with no concrete action plan, with no operational framework. On the other hand, when dealing within a short-term scope, we interact with different types of actors, a private client or a community organisation, with a fixed business plan, limited timeframe, defined budget, and the ambition to get short-term returns in either societal or economic benefits, and not necessarily looking at the big picture,” he says.

“Very few projects are located in the middle and deal with both scopes at the same time. That’s where we come into the picture. We need to initiate those projects ourselves. By being at the point of convergence of different actors, we have the opportunity to have a wider vision of the context and a cross-cutting influence on the project. We’re in a good position to initiate ventures and become more ambitious. Very few actors deal with this scale in between, so we can take on that role.”

Close up of a coworkers working on a project

“While acting on many levels of the project (from the strategic level until the further implementation) at Sweco we can take distance from particular agendas and to be ahead of traditional clients by considering them as partners in a collective effort.”

“Sweco as a “partner in transition” becomes an active node on a network of stakeholders with strong influence in spatial transition processes (experts, partners and clients). The active work in the consolidation multi-stakeholder cooperation networks gives Sweco a strong influence in framing the ambitions of a wider range of actors, facilitating processes, initiating ventures, creating opportunities for concrete projects, providing common ground between different parties, easing the flow of information and becoming s strategic actor in the transition to a resilient society.”

In his spare time, Diego engages in bottom-up initiatives.

“I believe in the importance of citizenship, as part of the idea of community building. Everybody has a role to play.”

In 2016 he co-founded a cultural association, Cakri ASBL, which recognises the importance of streets’ cultural value as a stage for urban culture.

“For example, with Cakri we founded the Brussels Street Photography Festival to bring together local and international communities of street photographers. The idea was to motivate people to go out and take photos in the streets and public spaces, during a very sensitive moment in Brussels just after the sad events of 2016. We did it for four years and we will resume the initiative again this year.”

Brussels Street Photography Festival 2017. ©Cakri

“Another interesting collaboration was Leesstraat, a placemaking project that we initiated in 2018 together with Muntpunt’s public library. Over five years, we activated the public space in front of the library during the summer period. Leesstraat was a summer outdoor library, providing spaces to read but also to organise cultural activities.”