Image Courtesy of LAVA.
What if research, science and architecture merged? What if millions of people could live and work comfortably in a modern city in the desert? What if an old industrial plant could be carbon neutral? Or act as a beacon of renewable energy? What if we thought of our buildings in terms of ecosystems, rather than square metres? What if the façade of a building could double as a safe haven for animals and plants?
Unprecedented challenges require unprecedented thinking and solutions. In April 2020, 56% of the world’s population lived in cities. The World Bank projects predicted by 2050, that number will increase to 70%. The UN equates that to having to build an additional two billion new homes. So if we accept a more urbanised future for the world, then why not also imagine a more naturalised urban landscape? So that the places in which we live, breathe and work function more like natural habitats rather than concrete jungles.
LAVA is the Laboratory for Visionary Architecture. The founding partners, Chris Bosse, Tobias Wallisser and Alexander Rieck have been asking themselves – and their clients – these kinds of questions since 2007. They have now established a network of offices in Berlin, Stuttgart and Sydney and are specialists in designing landscapes for arid climates: a useful knowledge bank in a warming environment. To date, their work includes a building inspired by the fractal geometry of a snowflake, and a water tower in Heidelberg, Germany, whose energy-storage façade is designed to look like an undulating snake skin. At the outset, the buildings look shiny and avant-garde, but they are designed with heart and designed for humans. “It’s not just for the sake of making something different. Or to find someone who pays for our follies. We’re really trying to combine information in a different way”, says Tobias.
Images Courtesy of LAVA.
LAVA, in collaboration with the Fraunhofer IAO for the Morgenstadt Innovation Network, has previously envisioned what Berlin may look like in 2050. The team envisioned iconic Karl Marx Allee as a naturalised avenue with tiered landscaping and wind generators on top of all apartment buildings. Karl Marx Allee is “the typical Modernist idea of a city. It’s a big axis and everything’s lined up. There is one order, it’s nice to take this order and weaken it to say that the future will be less rigid. There needs to be more small scale solutions and there won’t be this dominating axis,” says Tobias.
The independent firm takes the same approach to architecture as artists or scientists apply to their own craft – where each challenge, idea or project is approached from a place of curiosity, rather than conventionality. They champion an experimentation of ideas before deciding on the best course. This is largely at odds with a typical German approach. Tobias explains “that we [Germany] entered the digital age but a lot of our business models are still rooted in the industrial age.” He’s referring to existing technologies which Germany continues to perfect, rather than innovate altogether. “…But no (German company) had the idea that you could substitute a combustion engine with electric engines because the efficiency of an electric engine motor is much higher than the best combustion engine …There’s technical optimisations, which we could do, but we also need to trigger a mindset shift,” he continues.
LAVA proposes this mindset shift through their projects, visual renderings of public places, and through their recent book “What If?”: a collection of ideas that propose how cities can shift towards decentralised micro mobility structures, greener cities and increased food security. When it comes to cities, this comes back to naturalising the urban environment.
Image Courtesy of LAVA.
One obvious solution for that is shade: “So we need to make sure that life can happen outside. and for that we need to create comfort through shade. Plants are a great way of shading because plants provide shade but also oxygen, they bring down the temperature. You have evaporative cooling and you have a better microclimate”, Tobias says.
Our dependence on, and need for, comfort generates large household energy expenditure. Heating and cooling, for example, gurgle through 47% of total household energy. “If you want to control the energy, it’s all about creating human comfort, because at the end of the day, that’s where we need energy in the running operations of buildings or spaces,” says Tobias. LAVA employs a mix of high tech and ancient methods to create comfort without relying on energy-draining technology such as air conditioning. To combat heat, LAVA’s ideas include adaptive street shading: a system which can be pulled over the street and removed as needed. It’s an old technique used in Morocco and surrounding areas. In 2020, the team created the German Pavilion Expo: an entirely demountable and recyclable pavilion based in Dubai. The design featured stacked cubes that created a spacious atrium inside, and blocked direct sunlight throughout different points of the day.
Whether LAVA is envisioning life in the desert or creating microclimates in Berlin, their driving motivation is less about creating shiny, curved buildings and more about creating comfort for humans. Tobias says, “People often say architecture is humanising the planet. And in a way, that’s the whole thing. The planet can live without us, but we can’t live without the planet. So we have to find a way to create an environment for humans. To live. But obviously, not at the expense of recent years.”