Climate Change and Design Form Operative Research on the Morphological Role of the Ground Level

The issue of form and aesthetics in climate change

Climate emergency is pushing for a reconsideration of design practice, where the enhancement of resilience and sustainability is necessary to reduce carbon emissions due to the building process and make the space able to resist climate hazards. Nevertheless, nowadays, this objective is often achieved through a technical approach.1 Indeed, current urban agendas and practitioners are implementing circular economy and Nature-based solutions that act as drivers for adaptation and mitigation of climate change, relating the open space and the built fabric. This is the result not only of a general will, rather it represents a technical answer fostered by international policies such as the ongoing “European New Green Deal” and the related documents such as COM/2020/982 and COM/2020/662,3 respectively related to a renewed roadmap for the built environment panorama, to implement circular logics in building construction and promoting the greening of buildings, calling for more attention to the whole project’s life cycle.

Starting from this background, considering the current state of the art, circular economy and nature-based solutions could be framed as technical strategies for rethinking the built environment at various scales, setting a series of different solutions and approaches. [ 1 ]

The research takes part in this changing panorama of the built environment, without focusing on the technical specificities of these tools, rather investigating how the morpho-typological dimension of the project is changing, focusing on the spatial impacts related to the implementation of circularity and nature-based solutions, thus exploring the relationship between climate-related technics and spatial modification. Indeed, the current climate breakdown is producing a growing onset of risks and damages to the built environments,4 and more in general on people’s life.5 Floods, rainstorms, and heat island effects are immediate effects of tangible climate change. They require a reflection related to the urban space, how to redesign it, which material use, and which typological elements could be implicated in this climate-related transformation of the project.

As architects, we should not only relate technics to avoid climate-hazards, but we should also recognize which are the possible spatial modification of the project. Because of that, to understand not only the quantitative impacts of the project but also its qualitative result, it is considered important to have a morpho-typological reflection on the theme of the ecological transition. As written by Kenneth Frampton: “There is no manifest reason why environmentally responsive and sustainable design should not be culturally stimulating and aesthetically expressive. Sustainability and its implicit aesthetics ought to be rightly regarded as a prime inspiration to enrich and deepen our emergent culture of architecture, rather than as some kind of restriction upon […] the fullness of its aesthetic and poetic potential.”6

From Frampton’s words appears a concern related to the way we are facing the issue of the environmental crisis. Adaptation and mitigation are necessary strategies to implement in the practice, but how these are shaping the design answer is still vague.7 Investigating this issue establishes an aesthetical discourse but is also impactful in understanding the image of the city of the future. Therefore, to examine this topic, the research started to investigate the role of the form in this new design condition, considering the morpho-typological issue as a result and driver of the entangled relationship with the environment. Thus, emerges the question of how architecture could go beyond environmentalism and technological determinism,8 to structure a new design narrative attached to the very issue of architecture: to give shape to our needs and space.

Tools and methods

The doctoral research is developed through a highly design-driven approach, essential to structure a discourse regarding the contemporary design production, to understand better the influence and spatial impacts that climate adaptation and mitigation strategies are producing. The selected cases refer to the last decades' regeneration processes, considered to enhance urban resilience, rethink neglected built contexts, and contrast the continuous and limitless usage of resources for new urban expansions.

The analysis set a series of interpretative categories to analyze the case studies, chosen in the European context, at an intermediate scale, to deepen the design actions on the building object and its possible connection with the context. The climate-related strategies considered are, on the one hand, circular approaches related to reuse practices, where the ground level could represent a key element in containing the consumption of new land and reducing the depletion of the resources9 reusing already existing structures. On the other hand, the study focuses Nature-based solutions applied to ground reclamations and greenery interventions. The ground, especially in urban areas, represents a crucial issue. Often depleted and polluted, it is an essential resource for a safe urban environment, hosting human activities, and counteracting climate hazards. Because of these reasons, regeneration projects usually act on it, applying nature-based as technical tools to reclaim the soils, or to increase the number of trees in urban areas. Nevertheless, from a design perspective, we should reconsider how we design through nature, framing the role of ground-design in a broader sense, not only focusing on the number of plants we are planting. Indeed, operating with the ground means establishing the relationship between humans, building and open space.10 In this perspective, a renewed importance could be addressed to the ground level, as a level that connects the building with the city.

Subsequentially, the investigation starts from the collection of case studies, of which only some will be reported and analyzed. The analyzed projects provided a set of solutions from which starting to question the aesthetic/formal values of the tools applied, so understanding the ontological and cultural features addressed.

The ground level as urban design challenge

The new global condition of climate threat imposes to apply effective climate-proof strategies, to adapt the urban environment and help mitigating the effect of carbon emissions. Because of this undeniable necessity, the projects are increasingly developed through strategies that highly affect the project's image. This issue set a further need for the design field: a deeper understanding of the role of the project in this new climate condition.11 We could argue that circularity and nature-based solutions could imply a reconsideration of the conception and configuration of the design practice; nevertheless, to understand them over their technological representation we need to interpret them upon their spatial role in the project.

The first reflection could start from the circularity, considering the long-lasting tradition of reuse. Focusing on the intermediate scale, the research defines reuse as a form of architectural regeneration able to entangle the building and the city, revealing the relation between the site and the surroundings in its formal features. With this perspective, the research identifies the bearing structure of the building as the core of a possible typological permanence, also limiting the carbon emission in reuse processes.

In Shenzhen, a recent project worked with a similar attitude. The project, by ARCity Office, focuses on the reuse of a former industry, where the existing bearing structure has been maintained as an unmodified element of the new project. This action contained the carbon emission that could derive from the demolition process and think the new design action within the previous building form. Indeed, this decision acted on the typological identity of the building [ 2a ], which remains an urban element in the fabric. The ground level became the place where the project could shape more modification, enhancing its urban relation, working with the ground in implementing greenery spaces. Then a subsequence of artificial grounds took place in a vertical layering of the building, creating a dynamic space for a new urban garden. Hence, the architectural project here proposed is close to an act of repair12 more than reshaping, where the circularity could work in a perspective of design for longevity, revealing the possibility of regeneration to consolidate the morphological and typological identity of the building, rethinking the practice starting with what we have.

Similarly, in the Netherlands, the project redevelopment of Klaprozenbuurt neighbourhood by the BETA office, operates a regeneration of a former industrial site, with a sensibility in maintaining the bases as elements of permanence of the previous fabric structure. [ 2b ] In these terms, the reuse of the structural elements defines a potential stratification of pre-existing architectures, connecting the practice to a sedimented imaginary visible in the permanence of the form. [ 3 ]

Moreover, this open to a reflection of the transformation of industrial sites without demolishing them, but rethinking the spatial relationships among the fabric. With this perspective, the ground level could be considered the floor in contact with possible climate risks, requiring forms able to resist extreme events or prolonged climate stress.

From this statement, spatial responses could vary in many different forms, elevating the ground floor, working with the external ground section, implementing drainage solutions, and others.

In the city of Doetinchem, the Dutch studio De Urbanisten started in the 2009 to work on the masterplan development of the neighborhood Iseldocks. This project, which is still ongoing, focuses on a typological work, visible in section, between the building and the ground design, to define a spatial resiliency to water flood risk. [ 2c ] The office worked on redefining the connection between the building level and the urban one. Here the project acts on the spatial relation of the ground level, where the need of avoiding the water risk during possible floods is solved by rethinking the house levels, creating a shift between the urban external level and the housing one.

On the other hand, exploring the design manipulation of ground levels means not only taking into consideration the building's base, but also the urban ground. Often depleted and polluted, it is an essential resource for a safe urban environment. Thus, the ground could be framed as a typological element to connect the urban scale and the plot. Many projects are working in this direction, contributing to a renewal of the urban landscape, where acting on the ground means using nature for a renewed coexistence between nature and the city. For example, looking at projects such as De Ceuvel by Space&Matter in Amsterdam, or Bottière Chenaie by Atelier de Paysages Bruel Delmar in Nantes, we can perceive the display of a renewed picturesque idea of nature within the modern city. Here, nature could enhance soil reclamation and, at the same time, produce unexpected forms of the urban landscape, as displayed in the project of De Ceuvel [ 2d ]. In this perspective, the greenery action reshapes the artificial spaces into a new urban wilderness, creating a new ecological reservoir for the city and implementing a romantic idea of wild nature. [ 4 ]

Operating on the ground level seems to be an open exploratory field, where manipulation of the space could produce a new syllabus for the design agenda, in its spatial, cultural and aesthetic traits.

Looking at these projects, the design challenge of climate-change modification seems to open a set of different possibilities. On the one hand, the circularity could work on a subtle idea of the permanence of the architectural form. Reusing, so repairing, means working on an idea of duration, re-discovering a relationship of permanence between the built fabric and the city. Design for longevity means not only to curb the emission derived from demolition processes, but also to state a fabric permanence of the city, where the regeneration is not necessairily aimed at changing the urban elements, but rather to consolidate them, also through an ecological lens.

On the other hand, nature-based solutions open to a broader discussion of a new urban sensoriality13 of the project, where a renewed closeness between the minerality of the city and the naturalness of the ground could produce a new image of the urban landscape.

To conclude, the reflection regarding the morpho-typological aspects opens to a discussion on the possible formal and ontological meaning that climate-related technics have on the contemporary project. Indeed, if the transition toward a more resilient built environment is necessary, it should be addressed not only through a quantitative lens but also by considering the cultural and morphological implications.