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Designing Change - Professional Mutations in Urban Design 1980-2020

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 Eric Firley
Professional Mutations in Urban Design 1980-2020
Over the timespan of just one generation the planet’s pace
of urbanization has dramatically increased. New challenges
have emerged that deeply question the validity of the post-
war planning paradigms. What impact does this have on
the work of the urban designer, and how can the profession
prepare for the future?

Designing Change tries to answer these and many other

questions through in-depth conversations with 12 leading
practitioners in the field. The book offers an unorthodox
combination of case-study analysis and theoretical debate
that addresses the topic’s complexity not only as an experts’
discussion, but as a question of wider societal debate.
Professional Mutations in Urban Design 1980-2020
Unpartisan in spirit but political by conviction, Designing Eric Firley
Change understands city-making as a pluralism of choices
and viewpoints, providing a voice to those who design it.
Presented to those who build and live it. Christopher Choa (AECOM)
Bruno Fortier (Agence Bruno Fortier)
Eric Firley teaches at the University of Miami School of Finn Geipel (LIN)
Architecture and is the initiator and co-author of Wiley’s
Urban Handbook Series. Adriaan Geuze (West 8)
Djamel Klouche (AUC)
Christopher Choa
Michael Denkel Winy Maas (MVRDV)
www.nai010.com Bruno Fortier
ISBN 978-94-6208-481-0 Finn Geipel Dennis Pieprz (Sasaki Associates)
Adriaan Geuze
Wang Hui Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk (DPZ)
Djamel Klouche
Winy Maas Albert Speer (AS+P) with Michael Denkel
Dennis Pieprz
Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk Paola Viganò (Studio Paola Viganò)
Albert Speer
Paola Viganò Liu Xiaodu (Urbanus) with Wang Hui
Liu Xiaodu
Wenyi Zhu Wenyi Zhu (ZhuWenyi-Atelier)
nai
oıo naioıo publishers
Contents

Foreword 6
Introduction 10

CHRISTOPHER CHOA (AECOM), London 16

Reconciling Opposites
Al Shamal Masterplan, Qatar 36
Riyadh Airport City 40
Global Palestine – Connected Gaza 44

BRUNO FORTIER (Agence Bruno Fortier), Paris 56

Nature and Artifice in the Production of French Urbanism
Île Feydeau, Nantes 68
Masséna-Chevaleret, Paris 72
Brest Capucins 76

FINN GEIPEL (LIN), Berlin 94

The Emergence of a New Type of Urbanity
Cité du Design, Saint Étienne 114
Grand Paris Métropole Douce 118
Urban densification and innovative living through serial timber construction, Bremen 122

ADRIAAN GEUZE (West 8), Rotterdam 132

Contemplating the Squatter Legacy as a Reminder of Urban Diversity
Borneo-Sporenburg, Amsterdam 148
Strijp-S, Eindhoven 152
Toronto Central Waterfront 156

DJAMEL KLOUCHE (AUC), Paris 168

Digital Acceleration and Environmental Restraint
Fives Cail, Lille 180
Pleyel-Landy Sector, Saint-Denis 184
Tangram, Paris 188

WINY MAAS (MVRDV), Rotterdam 208

Mission Impossible
Ypenburg-Waterwijk, The Hague 226
ZAC Bastide Niel, Bordeaux 230
Oosterwold Freeland, Almere 234
DENNIS PIEPRZ (Sasaki Associates), Boston 244
North-American Campus Work from the 1980s onwards
University of South Florida Master Plan, Tampa 258
University of Pennsylvania Penn Connects, Philadelphia 262
Tecnológico de Monterrey Urban Regeneration Plan 266

ELIZABETH PLATER-ZYBERK (DPZ), Miami 280

A Recent History of Zoning and Design Codes in the US
Charleston Place, Boca Raton 292
Kentlands, Gaithersburgh 296
Miami 21 300

ALBERT SPEER (AS+P) with MICHAEL DENKEL, Frankfurt 316

The German Way of Keeping the Power Balance in City-Making
Europaviertel, Frankfurt 338
Städtebaulicher Masterplan Innenstadt Köln 342
InnovationCity Ruhr - Modellstadt Bottrop 346

PAOLA VIGANÒ (Studio Paola Viganò), Milan 354

Concrete Descriptions of Future Situations
Plan for Prato 372
De Hoge Rielen, Flanders 376
The Horizontal Metropolis, Brussels 380

LIU XIAODU (Urbanus) with WANG HUI, Shenzen 394

China as a Place of Attainable Utopias
Tulou Collective Housing, Nanhai 402
Shum Yip UpperHills Loft, Shenzen 406
DenCity – a reachable Utopia 410

WENYI ZHU (ZhuWenyi-Atelier), Beijing 430

From Triumphal Arches to QR Codes
Green Field & Lane, Shanghai 452
Guangzhou University City Group 3 456
The Water-Line, New York City 460

Interview text analysis 468

Epilogue 478
Index 502
Bio 511
Foreword
by Regula Lüscher
The urban designer is just one participant in the process of city-
making, but it is impossible to make the city without the urban
designer, because of his ability to transform societal goals and
programmes into physical form and space. This simple recognition
predestines him or her to a leading role, one that arguably should
be further strengthened.

The question, however, is how? How can we use the urban

designer’s knowledge and work methods to improve the outcome
for the citizens, and to better defend the common good?

Designing Change approaches this question through international

comparisons of not only case studies, but of viewpoints, in placing
particular emphasis on the interface between politics and urban
design. This drew my attention, also because it reflects parts of
my own history. As a Swiss, and trained as an architect, I came to
Berlin 11 years ago, invited to head the urban planning and building
department, and to become a professional politician with the title
of a state secretary at the same time.

My contribution to Berlin is quite specific and has to do with

international exchange but just as much with discussion culture.
I was socialized in a Swiss participatory democracy in which citizens
vote on many issues directly, a practice that is much less common
in the German representative system. This experience enabled me
to advise the city administration in financially highly precarious
times in which topics such as participation and self-organization had
become a necessity. Today, this trend continues and is as relevant
and topical as ever. In my office, rather than to design buildings or
masterplans, we design, adapt, and try to perfect the processes that
translate the needs and political will of the citizens and stakeholders
into lived reality. This requires precision and experience, but also
resources, for which I constantly have to fight.

7
In my opinion the originality of this book lies in its insistence on
not only the multitude of implementation processes, but on the
pluralism of opinions, and opinion making in general. How do we
know what we want, and under what conditions are we inclined to
rejoin dissenters? Designing Change suggests that a healthy and
informed debate about the city can contribute to this phase that
precedes the one of implementation. The new generation does not
see the world in terms of party politics anymore, neither do they
use the media and public sphere in the same way as their parents.
New tools have to be invented to satisfy an ever-growing appetite
for co-determination in all sorts of societal aspects, including the
built environment.

Regarding my own convictions, after twenty years of work in

the public sector—first for nine years in Zürich and now here in
Berlin—I have come to realize that an unrestricted market economy
and forces of globalization, for example in the form of real-estate
speculation, make it almost impossible to defend land against
individual interests in favour of the common good and the needs
of minorities. Currently, Berlin attracts investors from all over the
world, but a substantial part of the population cannot cope with
the resulting rise of rental costs. Our city government, a red-red-
green coalition, has therefore been empowered by the people
to experiment with tools that differ from the economically liberal
ones. This is the policy that I have and want to implement, but I am
aware that not everybody with whom we make the city shares this
viewpoint. Agreement can therefore only be found by applying a
healthy debate culture and a mutual willingness to compromise.

This, among more practical and programmatic points, is also linked

to what I call ‘shared authorship’, a concept that is not always
welcomed by people who follow a formalistic approach, or who still
use Berlin’s urban fabric as a battleground for ideological disputes,
universally preaching for or against the symbolic reconstruction
of the pre-war morphology, without further consideration of the
everyday qualities that urban design is supposed to deliver.

8
In this highly complex context I perceive my role as a guiding and
advising one, between citizens and stakeholders, but also in support
of the experts who bear the necessary knowledge to turn intentions
into spatial plans. On the following pages, twelve of these experts
share their experiences with us. Some of it is highly inspiring, some
of it does not reflect my own convictions, but the overall mixture is
very useful.

Regula Lüscher
Senate Director of Urban
Development of Berlin
Hon. Prof. Berlin University of Arts

September 2018

9
DESIGNING CHANGE

Introduction
Both the structure and concept of this book are simple. It consists
of twelve illustrated interviews with practicing urban designers,
complemented with three project sheets per participant. The
overarching theme—change in urban design—has been delimited
in a fairly loose manner, and by the actual focus of each discussion
as chosen by the respective interview partners. As a matter of
fact, one of the project’s explicit aims is to keep a certain stand-
alone and unplugged quality of each exchange, as well as the
kaleidoscopic nature of the book as a whole. The aim is not to hijack
the participants’ contributions for a personal agenda, neither to
put them in a historical or theoretical context. This would be an
interesting exercise, but it should be done by others, or at a later
stage in the form of academic papers.
Therefore, this introduction is mainly to describe the general
approach, and to put the project itself in context.

10
INTRODUCTION
A. Background
This project started several years ago from the
consideration to write an urban design text
book for college students, a so-called ‘primer’.
Encouraged by the fairly modest choice on the
market, the plan was to analyze, categorize,
and visualize the different ways one could build
the city. Fairly quickly however, while working
on the content list, it became evident that over
time my interests had shifted not only from a
morphology-oriented perspective to a process-
oriented one—something that could still have
fit into the straightforward format of a primer—
but that more recently this shift had guided me
even further away, into the realm of the social
sciences and politics. I hesitated to spend years
working on a book that could show what one
could do, but that would struggle to explain
why it usually did not happen. I had become
intrigued by an understanding of the built
environment as a translation or even mirror
of specific societal conditions, a perspective
that is fairly common, but rarely a component
of architectural education. This may sound
abstract, but it starts to take shape in the form
of concrete examples: these include, as part
of my new life experience in the US, viewing
the sprawling and decentralized American
cityscape not only as a car- and zoning-
related issue, as I would have before, but as a
spatial expression of excessive liberalism and
individualism, fuelled by the state-sponsored
availability of suburban mortgages. It was
difficult to say what came first. In terms of
research, I started to wonder if cases such as
the new tower typologies of Vancouver—the
object of a former housing study—really
were in the first place a means of inner-
city densification, or whether architectural
hybridization following the influx of Hong
Kong-Chinese money and apartment culture
was not an equally relevant phenomenon.
Another example, the German co-housing
revival, the so-called Baugruppen, brought
to my attention by a lawyer from Berlin, were
first analyzed as an alternative development
and ownership model to the condo type, but
soon unravelled in my and many other people’s
imagination as a symptom of increasing
societal demand for customization and self-
determination, in line with the development
of social media and digital fabrication. As a
last and somehow summarizing case, projects
such as Oosterwold, featured in this book,
illustrate a personal fascination for the idea
that the development of a settlement—in
terms of both process and built form—can
influence the political culture of a place as
much as the political culture undoubtedly
influences the shape and workings of the built
environment. There can be little doubt that
years in the construction of such a new place
will have an impact on the participants’ political
convictions, and that it would not just be the
political convictions and socio-economic
realities that retroact on physical form. It works
both ways. The Dutch example’s liberal spirit
and bottom-up nature might accentuate this
quality and facilitate its reading, but there is
no reason to believe that the impact is less
pronounced in the more common situation of
a technocratic top-down planning system in
which most of us are involved. We are just less
aware of it, of how intrinsically political every
process of city-making is, and to what extent
it co-defines the essence of what the word
‘political’ actually signifies.
Obviously, these changing perspectives, which
I tried to illustrate by the four above-mentioned
examples, are neither mutually exclusive nor
even contradictory, quite the opposite, but
then again each perspective entails a slightly
different reading and research method, a
different type of interdisciplinary approach.
None of this is particularly original or new.
To venture, as a trained architect, from the
profession’s formal and physical origins
towards the nebulous boundaries with the
social, economic, and political disciplines
arguably is nothing but the urban designer’s
logical fate. But what this emphasis on the
socio-political aspect of city-making underlines
in the context of this book is the importance
and reality of choices. In my understanding
11
ADRIAAN GEUZE
West 8, Rotterdam
INTERVIEW

134
Contemplating the Squatter Legacy as a
Reminder of Urban Diversity
Or How To Counter the Destructive Advance
of Mass Culture
Adriaan Geuze

PROJECTS

148
Borneo-Sporenburg, Amsterdam

152
Strijp-S, Eindhoven

156
Toronto Central Waterfront
ADRIAAN GEUZE

Contemplating the Squatter Legacy

as a Reminder of Urban Diversity –
Or How To Counter the Destructive
Advance of Mass Culture

Adriaan Geuze won his first major award at the age of 30 and
with his partner Edzo Bindels developed internationally acclaimed
projects such as Borneo-Sporenburg and Schouwburgplein in
Rotterdam already in the early 1990s. A trained agricultural engineer
and landscape architect—and fervent admirer of the Dutch
tradition of land reclamation—Geuze is the only non-architect
participating in this book. On the following pages he elaborates
on his split nature as an engineer and a romantic, his confidence in
progress, but also on the change of framework conditions that his
profession has experienced over the last thirty years, culminating
in the identification of mass culture as one of the most debilitating
and detrimental influences on society. Geuze explains how his work
tries to sidestep and combat this, and how the legacy of the squatter
movement may contribute to this endeavour.

134
CONTEMPLATING THE SQUATTER LEGACY AS A REMINDER OF URBAN DIVERSITY

Eric Firley: Your background is in landscape design, and I thought that it

would make sense to map out the difference that this background may
constitute for your way of doing urban design, compared to most of your
competitors who entered the field from an architectural perspective. As
this is a vast question, I would like to begin our discussion by trying to
better understand what the notions of progress and technology mean in
the field of landscape architecture. I guess that it is not just about green
roofs, is it? Are there any new tools available, components of public
space or landscape design that have something to do with technological
progress?
Adriaan Geuze: I find landscape architecture is by its very nature
conservative, so I would not be too overwhelmed about the impact
of technology on the field. Of course, the development of new
materials and methods such as new techniques of milling and 3D Adriaan Geuze

printing does have an influence on the industry.

EF: The Madrid project incorporates such techniques if I recall?

I remember the transformation of an image of a cycling boy into
murals on a pedestrian bridge.
AG: I will give you an interesting and less obvious example:
through advances in robotics we are once again incorporating
brick paving into public spaces. This had become very complex due
to legal restrictions. It was labour-intensive work with workers
developing health problems because they were constantly on
their knees. Now robotic machines can do the job with an even
higher-quality outcome. Technology helps to make methods
available again that were abandoned because of their unfeasibility.
Another example is in the field of artificial, or synthesized soils:
100 years of international laboratory research have resulted in Granite waiting to be
installed on a West 8 project
a very clear logic of how you design soil according to precise site
specifications. Previously, people knew approximately what
good or bad soil was, what worked and what didn’t. Now we can
predict soil performance, according to specific parameters of
use, temperature, annual rainfall, sun hours, altitude, etc. The
knowledge about this is shared within the professional realm and
we can even look it up on the internet. We can synthesize these
soils on site with special machines.
Globalization is the other catalyst for progress in the profession.
In many contemporary designs we see an abundance of the use of
granite. Because China has started to mass-produce and export
granite at a phenomenal scale, public space and park design can be
detailed in stone. If I bring a container full of granite to London it
costs me just 400 dollars in transport. That’s how efficiently the
international transport network works. Now you can construct
out of stone what was previously, for at least a hundred years, made
out of concrete. That makes a fundamental difference.

I find landscape architecture is by its very nature

conservative.
135
ADRIAAN GEUZE

EF: How about regulatory changes and design prescriptions? When

you came to Miami for the opening of Gehry’s New World Symphony
and West 8’s Soundscape Park, you also gave a presentation at our
School. In this presentation you talked about the design of the dividers
that you were supposed to put on the sitting surfaces of the benches in
the park.
AG: Yes, we designed them as pillows, trying to somehow bypass
the fact that these dividers are meant to hinder people from laying
down and sleeping on the benches.

EF: Yes, exactly. You actually said that in the Netherlands you would
consider it to be a compliment if somebody wanted to sleep on a bench
that you designed. Be that as it may, the point is not to blindly criticize,
but what I take out of this, is that alleged details can turn out to have
a certain social and political connotation. They can be symptoms of a
societal change, without necessarily having been conceived with bad
SoundScape Park and bench intention. Do you often find yourself in these situations?
detail in Miami Beach
AG: I cannot even begin to fantasize... this is the second nature of
public space design. Groups of stakeholders, local communities,
politicians, and investors all have their own interests. In our
profession, social and political positioning is relevant: which
users are to be included or excluded? On top of that, we often face
severe legal constrains that limit tailor-made solutions. It’s a mad
world.

Image of Lichtenreuth EF: So, it’s a common thing?

project in Nuremberg
AG: Yes. If you want to work in public space, and not be an artist,
you have to work with these constraints constantly.

EF: And what would be other examples?

AG: Currently, we are designing a park in Nuremberg and 50%
of the area is designated as a playground by the authorities. From
my point of view, the entire park should be a playground, just
like our Governors Island project in New York where grown-
ups and children share the play. That idea needs to be tailored
to a German legal framework. Those frameworks can be very
limiting and could easily undermine the idea of the park. Children
are intelligent and they like to explore, so you don’t necessarily
need to offer them a catalogue playground. But we have to deliver
within the German regulations. Officials or politicians cannot
undo that for us, even if they wanted to. It’s an example of how
strongly legal parameters can influence the world of design.

EF: I wonder if this can be linked to another question. I recently wrote

a paper with a lawyer from Berlin, focusing on how to provide publicly
accessible space through the private sector, on property that remains
private. We have a lot of that, private gardens or malls being the most

In our profession, social and political positioning is

relevant: which users are to be included or excluded?
136
ZAC BASTIDE NIEL / BORDEAUX / FRANCE

13

14

13 Queyries block rendering in bird’s-eye view

14 Interior rendering of Queyries block

233
DE HOGE RIELEN / KASTERLEE / FLANDERS / BELGIUM

1 2

1 De Hoge Rielen Masterplan 3 Context model of the Wadi Youth Hostel

2 The layers of the masterplan 4 Floorplan of the Wadi Youth Hostel

377
DENCITY – A REACHABLE UTOPIA / SHENZEN / CHINA

7 Future expansion scenario in the Pearl River Delta 9 Preparation sketch

8 Model in work

413
INTERVIEW TEXT ANALYSIS

PAOLA VIGANÒ (Studio Paola Viganò)

Concrete Descriptions of Future Situations

territory
research
space
today
water
social
change school
questions public
landscape type studies
economic moment reading
scale
perspective prato natural centre
caniggia florence past future
bernardo sense experience

situations nature experts university

paris small forest military
debate starting europe
spatial region process
grand study environmental

society understanding diffuse concrete

ideas form ecological italy

clear knowledge citizens solution

address tool spaces

475
DESIGNING CHANGE

It has already been stated in the introduction that the book’s interviews
are meant to stand on their own, part of a kaleidoscopic whole rather
than tools of substantiation for any overarching or unifying thesis. The
aim is to exhibit a selection of subjective views regarding current trends
and expectations for the future, based on an understanding of what has
happened over the last three to five decades in the professional career
of each participant. This might explain a certain reluctance to further
summarize what already has been treated—through the very flexible
format of edited interviews—as a form of scientific popularization.
Therefore, a particularly fine line separates misleading generalizations
from hopefully useful comments, made by industry leaders, that have
professional and societal relevance without fitting the tight armature
of an academic article. The point, however, is not to say that this tight
armature is not needed anymore. Quite to the contrary, the exercise
undertaken here also proves that not everything can be done while
neglecting academic rigor. It is, for example, difficult to address in this
context and format the issue of transferability of research outcomes,
a central concern of every scientific study. The topics and situations
presented here are too mixed-up to deduct anything substantial from
one interview to the other, at least not without additional layers of
investigation. The profession’s increasingly global outlook further
accentuates this problematic, subjected in many markets to an often
hieroglyphic and ambiguous mix of cultural specificities on the one
hand, and global standardization on the other.
I would like to conclude these slightly theoretical considerations by
making clear that this book and the following paragraphs see their value
in helping to identify potential hypotheses, rather than in providing
material to validate existing ones.

It is hence in the spirit of what has already been claimed in the

introduction to acquaint the participants’ views with each other, in
view of an exchange and debate, that in the following paragraphs I
will try to repeat and situate, rather than summarize, some of what has
been said in the interviews. It is of crucial importance in this context to
understand that the topics listed here are not only not exhaustive, but
that they are the ones that create usually at least three links between the
various participants. This does not mean that these topics carry more
importance than those that can only be found in the interviews. Many
relevant points have been made by just one or two urban designers that
will not be found hereafter. I did not see any sense in repeating with less
eloquence what can or already has been appreciated undilutedly within
the respective interview texts.

The themes of the introduction and this concluding chapter obviously

overlap, but the difference is that the content of the following
paragraphs is based on an analysis of the participants’ output rather than
a review of my own questions.

480
CREDITS

Eric Firley, of French-German origin, is Associate Professor

at the University of Miami School of Architecture. He joined the
School in 2011, after having worked for ten years in Paris and
London in design practices, the real-estate sector and as an
independent book author. He studied architecture at the EPFL
in Lausanne and at the Bauhaus University in Weimar, before
graduating as a city designer at the London School
of Economics.
Firley is the initiator and co-author of The Urban Housing
Handbook (2009), The Urban Towers Handbook (2011) and
The Urban Masterplanning Handbook (2013).

Text: Eric Firley

Copy editing: Leo Reijnen (Taal & Teken)
Design: Studio Sander Boon, Amsterdam
Lithography and Printing: epopee
Paper: Fly 05, 115 gr
Publisher: Marcel Witvoet, nai010 publishers

We would like to thank the participants for their support of the

book. We also would like to thank the University of Miami School
of Architecture and Dean Rodolphe el-Khoury for their
support of ‘Designing Change’.

© 2019 the author, nai010 publishers, Rotterdam. 

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
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recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission
of the publisher.

For works of visual artists affiliated with a CISAC-organization

the copyrights have been settled with Pictoright in Amsterdam.
© 2019, c/o Pictoright Amsterdam

Although every effort was made to find the copyright

holders for the illustrations used, it has not been possible
to trace them all. Interested parties are requested to contact
nai010 publishers, Mauritsweg 23, 3012 JR Rotterdam, the
Netherlands.

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