Town planning
Belén Moneo Feduchi –granddaughter of Luis Martínez-Feduchi, co-author of the iconic Capitol building on Madrid’s Gran Vía, and daughter of Rafael Moneo, the first Spaniard to win the Pritzker Architecture Prize– arrives on foot at the Madrid studio she shares with her partner, Jeff Brock, whom she met while studying for a master’s degree in architecture at Columbia University after graduating with degrees in Fine Arts and Art History from Harvard. Optimistic by nature, enthusiastic about the bike and the ‘San Fernando car’, Belén offers her recipe for the challenges of climate change in cities. And she is not a brick.
– We are in 2042 and you are commissioned to design a city… Where do we start?
– The wonderful thing about cities is that they have grown from the different architectures that each civilization has incorporated. The ideal would be to transform cities, not start from scratch. That residue of knowledge, history, architectural language and public spaces that we already have is very valuable. The city of 20 years from now is today with some improvements. In that city we will have 60 percent fewer vehicles on the streets. We can go on foot or by bike because in half an hour we will cover a wide territory; we will have excellent public transportation; the car will be electric and shared. There will be no noise or pollution…
– What will we do with so much underground parking?
– They will be logistics platforms for loading and unloading from which last kilometer deliveries can be made on equipped bicycles.
– And all that asphalt of public space that is going to be free?
– The ideal would be to renaturalize it. Generate a large continuous park, upholstered and permeable, whose subsoil could reduce the temperature by up to four degrees in summer. We would have more wooded, cooler and healthier cities.
– Climate experts predict more heat and less water within 20 years.
– We cannot allow our rainwater to go down the drain. Water must be redirected and reused. In Mexico they are making small rafts with the topography to retain water and this strategy could be applied to many places in our geography, even on a small scale, so that the water remains underground instead of being wasted.
– Now imagine the floors. In 20 years…
– Less is going to be built, there is already a lot of housing and construction built. But much is in poor condition, we must raise awareness and focus on the rehabilitation of buildings.
– Will we still want to be owners?
– There will be more rentals. Young people don’t want to own a flat or a car…they don’t want to ‘own’ a lot of things, and that trend is positive.
– What will happen to the gigantic shopping centers?
– We are not going to continue building them because we will buy more online. Also, when we feel like shopping, we won’t choose the mall. We have realized that we like to walk the streets much more, see the shop windows and enjoy the outdoor public space. These gigantic buildings will have to be reprogrammed and find other uses: coworking spaces, gyms, logistics centers… They could also be hydroponic, soilless and drip irrigation warehouses.
Demolishing is in our future. Many buildings of poor quality and those that damage the natural environment must be demolished»
– Will the historic centers be exclusively tourist places?
– If they become theme parks, we will have failed because the city will stop being interesting even for those who come to see it. The city is much more attractive when the energy that is breathed is that of the residents… there are formulas to prevent the exodus from taking place and ensure that the center continues to belong to the local people.
– For example?
– Local governments must help residents stay; for example, providing public parking spaces and public transport in that area.
– Is the revolution in architecture going to come from design, from materials, from structures?
– The revolution in architecture is already here, and it has come through sustainability. We architects are beginning to question everything we do from scratch. We need to rethink how a building is built, what energy is used to produce its materials, how the building’s carbon footprint is calculated, and how it is deconstructed so that it is minimal. This calculation is going to be transferred to many of the actions and objects of our life to try to avoid ending the resources of the planet. We have to have the support of the administrations, which are the ones that legislate, and of society.
– Vertical or horizontal urbanism?
– Vertical. It is more sustainable. New York is one of the most sustainable cities because it occupies less land and fewer resources. A tower where there are a thousand people is equivalent to 250 houses with a garden. It is vital that the construction of that building be sustainable. The use of wooden structures is being rethought. Concrete and steel are not going to disappear, but their use is going to be more rational. A novelty of our projects are the facades that capture solar energy.
– There are architects who talk about building cities in space in 50 years… Science fiction?
– I love to imagine that this could happen, but it would require too many resources for it to be sustainable. There are so many things we have to fix on this planet before we can spend resources on something like this!
“We need more wooded and fresh cities. And we cannot allow rainwater to go down the drain. You have to reuse it”
– Will we be able to return to the Spanish coasts its natural charm even daring to demolish what was poorly built?
– Demolishing is in our future, without a doubt. It is necessary to demolish many buildings of poor architectural quality and those that damage the valuable natural environment, many!
– The Algarrobico is still there.
– No one has given value to our landscape and we have built without thinking about the consequences. We still do not have clear figures to protect it. Why are highways being built destroying valleys, mountains and unique landscapes? Supervision of infrastructure projects and collaboration with other disciplines should be mandatory: landscapers, biologists, agronomists, architects… and make an associated landscape project so that they are integrated into their environment.
– The reconstruction of Ukraine has been estimated at 750,000 million euros…
– It is a great opportunity to build in a more sustainable way. For years the industrialization of houses has been studied so that they are built with pieces that are assembled. Ukraine can be rebuilt with an industrialized system: ‘sandwich’ walls that come from the factory with the façade finished, with windows and thermal insulation included, and whose materials have a small carbon footprint.
What is the best advice your father has given you?
R. It has given me many very good ones; for example, trying to transform into something positive a stumbling block in a work.
#revolution #sustainability