Design and Engineer connections, no seperate islands ! Thijs Asselbergs

Design & engineer connections No separate islands!

Column by Thijs Asselbergs, Architect and Professor of Architectural Engineering at TU Delft

We live in a time of major issues. Issues that concern energy transition, use of materials, scaling down or, on the contrary, scaling up, as well as densification of the city and metropolis and dilution of the countryside. With the help of the internet we share unlimited knowledge and ideas. We design in an international world.

Architects, engineers, clients, investors, municipalities, and government all look for quality solutions for a better living environment. The modern architect thereby acts as a generalist of new ideas and is no longer doing this alone. The twentieth century in which he was the dominant master builder is really over. Ever more complex issues require an integrated approach and not short-term solutions. The total life cycle of built structures requires that the complex, sustainable and culturally well-embedded indoor and outdoor spaces are optimally, efficiently and coherently designed. Authorship is shared with several.

A few years ago in my own practice, we realized the widening of the river Waal near Nijmegen in the east of the Netherlands with a large team of landscape architects, architects and engineers from all kinds of disciplines and in close cooperation with contractors, the municipality and central government. Flooding has always threatened this oldest city in the Netherlands. A sustainable and especially safe solution was sought that also had to provide the existing polder, the dikes, the bridges and the river with better use value. Despite the fact that people were forced to leave their homes and a beautiful old polder was partly flooded, an integral plan was realized for miles that worked well spatially and programmatically. Architecture and engineering enriched the built environment. The enormous differences in height of the water have become the starting point for the total design and engineering process for new bridges, quays, dikes, agricultural land and buildings. This “Space for the Waal” project has since received many international prizes. Designers, builders and users are proud of this sustainable result.

It addresses the need for designers, engineers, government and citizens to work together. This process must be optimally organized and respected, resulting in an integrally designed product. The team is always looking for new solutions. This synergistic process means that the sum is more than the individual parts.

Architecture and engineering in the built environment connects all scales. For example, at the Architecture in the Built Environment faculty at TU Delft, we have to ask ourselves whether our departments work together sufficiently and do not operate too much as a system of separate islands. Do we strengthen each other when we want to realize architecture at all levels, engineering, technology and management integrally and with value? Islands can develop strongly, but connection with open borders is indispensable. How disastrous will Brexit be for the progress and improvement of the quality of the built environment for England? Integration is a necessity just because segregation has never led to coherent architectural quality. Innovative architecture that attaches itself well to the environment requires teamwork with the input of optimal international connections. That is where the increase in value for our future lies.