Caution: HOT!

Transsolar + TUM

Caution: HOT!

urbainable – stadthaltig | 2020 | Akademie der Künste Berlin

Thomas Auer (TU München, Transsolar) / Stefano Boeri Architetti; Bilge Kobas (TU München); Ata Chokhachian (TU München, Climateflux); Daniele Santucci (Climateflux); Alessandro Melis (University of Portsmouth, Curator Italian Pavilon Venice Biennale 2020)

„Climate adaptation provides the opportunity to recalibrate public realm with less cars and green infrastructure instead, to generate livable and healthy cities; while also re-evaluating building density.”

Global warming requires a climatic transformation of our Central European cities. The time axis of the necessary climate adaptation goes hand in hand with the potential for a reduction of motorised individual transport. This enables a re-evaluation of the quality of building density as well as a redesign of public space as a measure for climate adaptation.

Microclimate has a strong influence on how we experience cities, in particular the public spaces where society and economy meet, and daily activities take place. Environmental factors play a fundamental role in promoting pedestrian comfort, health and well-being; shaping the quality of the public space. Now with the strong variations expected in climate in the near future, the morphology and materiality of urban spaces are becoming even more critical actors in order to provide this quality for city dwellers.

Caution: HOT! explains the relationship between urban morphology, materiality, and microclimate, based on the principles of 'Climatewalks' – a sensing technique – and how the experiment is generating human-centered climatic knowledge of urban spaces. 'Climatewalks' were designed by TUM’s Chair of Building Technology and Climate-Responsive Design to measure microclimatic variations and outdoor conditions in the built environment. Using a portable instruments in a backpack, measurements with a high spatiotemporal resolution were taken. The collected data allowed to put into evidence the effects of urban artifacts on human thermal comfort and to evaluate the subjective behavior of people in transient conditions.

Hypothesizing that by 2050 Berlin’s urban climate will be similar to the one of Rome today, the installation aims to make the effects of the built environment on the microclimate comprehensive and tangible, by comparing and experiencing microclimatic conditions in Berlin and Rome. This narrative aims to raise awareness on the relation between different urban structures, and how they affect the outdoor comfort and health of people. It displays the opportunity of a climate adaptation strategy in order to generate a liveable and enjoyable public realm.

Urban microclimate and outdoor comfort were main drivers for the design of Il cerchio rosso (The Red Circle) project proposed by Stefano Boeri Architetti for the Polcevera Park in Genova. The urban project, named “The Polcevera Park and The Red Circle” has been thought out as a system of parks with different ecologies and infrastructures for sustainable mobility and smart buildings for R&D and manufacturing with the aim of reversing the current image of the Polcevera valley, from a complex and tragically devastated place to a territory of sustainable innovation for the rejuvenation of Genoa itself....

Photos below © Erik-Jan Ouwerkerk