Article: Miriam Pouwels

EXTREME DESIGNING

Climate is changing. This has been common knowledge for a pretty long time now. However, this fact has become more noticeable even more in the last few years. More severe hurricanes, devastating droughts, extreme ice storms and exhausting heat waves are occurring because of climate change. These phenomena are claiming lives and causing immense damage. It is evident that climate change influences weather conditions everywhere in the world. Who would’ve thought a few years ago that temperatures around 32°C and nights over 25 °C for weeks would become “normal’’ in summer. These temperatures don’t allow us to recover at night. Cities don’t have the time to cool off and therefore the temperature can become unbearable, making it hard to do basic things like working and even just having a goodnight’s rest.

The impact of climate change is clearly visible in several different aspects of our daily life. Longer periods of extreme temperatures like drought are harming flora and fauna. Besides the rising temperatures, heavy rainfall events taking weeks and the associated floods impact our living areas greatly. The ground can no longer absorb this amount of water and the gullies overflow. Especially the cities that are built near rivers, face high risks of flooding. Water is a devastating element which can destroy everything in its way.

As Earth’s climate changes, the frequency, intensity and duration of these extreme weather events is expected to increase. Events like extreme temperatures, heavy rainfall and the associated floods will definitely happen more often in the future, therefore it is necessary to design with these scenarios in mind.

A city should be able to cope better with fluctuating temperatures and weather conditions in the future. But how to design for the future? According to several studies, creating suburban buffers are key to designing sustainable cities. Nowadays cities are perceived as urban heating islands, big surfaces of land, consisting mainly of concrete and similar materials. Concrete heats up very slowly, but once heated up, also cools down very slowly, which results in hot nights as well as hot days. There is no easy solution on how to cope with these future challenges all cities will be facing. However, we do know that our habits and way of designing needs to change drastically. A good starting point in this process is to investigate cities that are currently facing these extreme climates and how they deal with them.

One of these cities which coped with extreme weather conditions for decades is Yakutsk, located in Russia’s Sakha Republic. The relatively warm summer in this city can have temperatures around 30 °C, whereas during winter the temperature could easily dip below -40 °C. Talking about extreme high and extreme lows, the coldest temperature in this city ever recorded was -64.4 °C! Residents do not get outside unless they really have to and crops have only a small growing period of only a few weeks. So how to build in this extreme cold? Construction-wise this means that buildings are built on concrete and steel stilts, suspending the buildings 2 meters above the ground. The reason for this is the melting top ice

layer, which results in an unstable active groundlayer. Therefore the foundations of the building are firmly deep-rooted in the permafrost below.

Furthermore, extreme climates result in a rising sealevel and The Netherlands has always been innovative when it comes to building with this in mind. The floating housing at Maasbommel is a project which demonstrates flood resilient architecture. The floating houses are fastened to flexible mooring posts and rest on concrete foundations and consist of a lightweight timber construction. These posts limit the motion caused by the water while allowing houses to move upwards and float when the level of the river rises.

Mankind has already succeeded in developing successful architecture in some challenging locations and weather conditions. Humanity is known for thinking outside of the box and focusing on what is possible instead of what is not. But maybe let’s first try to save our planet…

Lena Blomert

Sources:

Mynott, A. (2010). How do you survive in the coldest place on earth. Retrieved August 17, 2020 from https://www.bbc.com/news/ world-11875131

Yakutsk city, Russia. Retrieved August 17, 2020 from https:// russiatrek.org/yakutsk-city

Edmonds, P. (2018). Look inside the world’s coldest city. Retrieved August 17, 2020 from https://www. nationalgeographic.com/ magazine/2018/02/ex plore-yakutsk-russia-coldest-city/#:~:text=The%20 capital%20city%20of%20 the,temperature%20extreme%2C%E2%80%9D%20 Iuncker%20says.

How extreme weather conditions affect home building. Retrieved August 18, 2020 from https://allurausa.com/ blog/how-extreme-weather-conditions-ef fect-home-building

Climate change impact on buildings. Retrieved August 18, 2020 from https://en.klimatilpasning.dk/sectors/ buildings/climate-change-impact-on-buildings/

Srishti (2019). 10 Examples of extreme architecture around the world. Retrieved August 18, 2020 from https://www. re-thinkingthefuture.com/ architects-lounge/a726-10examples-of-extreme-architecture-around-the-world/