Peter Kindel, Cities and Climate Lead, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, In conversation with Clay Chandler, Fortune
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00:00Thank you, Nick.
00:01Peter, welcome.
00:02Thank you so much for being here.
00:04Hi, everybody.
00:05It's a real honor to be here with you, Peter.
00:09I'm a great admirer of your work and really look forward to kind of diving into some of
00:15it here this afternoon.
00:17Let's just start by talking a little bit about SOMs, Skidmore, Olinings, Merrill.
00:22This is one of the most storied architecture practices in the world.
00:26Tell us a little bit about the scale and the type of work that it does.
00:31Yeah.
00:32So I think maybe many of you have heard of SOM.
00:34Those of you in the architecture field, we're an 88-year-old design firm, started in 1936.
00:43And some of the major buildings we've done are Burj Khalifa in Dubai, Jinmao Tower here
00:49in Shanghai, and many other projects in China and Hong Kong area.
00:56And I think what's unique about SOM is we've tried to maintain a collaborative design studio
01:04between architects, structural engineers, mechanical engineers.
01:09So it's a very integrated approach to architectural design, and I think that's led to some of
01:13these iconic structures that we've been able to create.
01:18Along with that, we do have what we call the city design practice, which I'm a member of,
01:22which is our design studio that manages large-scale projects.
01:29Let's talk a little bit about that.
01:30Tell us about your role and what it means to be the city's lead at Skidmore.
01:36Right.
01:37Yeah.
01:38So, I mean, we've heard all day today about design at various scales, in various guises.
01:45So I design probably at the largest scale possible, which is really at the city scale.
01:50We don't often design cities from scratch.
01:54That really doesn't happen in my profession, but what we do is parts of cities or components
01:59or districts, oftentimes, for both city leaders and private developers.
02:08So you may know Xintiandi in Shanghai.
02:11Sure.
02:12That was a big development in the late 90s, early 2000s, very well known.
02:17That had to do with cultural conservation, as well as new development.
02:21So that's the type of scale that we work at.
02:25But my background is also as a landscape architect, and so I have this natural interest or affinity
02:35with ecosystems, and that's really what's led to what we'll talk about today, which
02:41is the integration or relationship of urban design and ecosystems.
02:47It's a great segue to kind of take a look at this concept of, let me get the slides
02:51up there, there it is, of biomorphic urbanism.
02:56What is that?
02:57Can you explain it for us?
02:59Yeah.
03:00So you just heard about biomimicry.
03:02Biomorphic urbanism is really a related idea that we can influence how we design cities
03:14through natural processes.
03:17So bio meaning life, and morphic is form.
03:21So cities that are formed by life.
03:24And what I meant by that, or what we mean by that, is it's actually two sort of sides
03:31of the equation of life.
03:32So it's natural processes, but also human interaction with those processes.
03:38So the cultural side of how we design cities.
03:43So biomorphic urbanism really is about cities that are shaped by nature and cultural history.
03:51And I just added at the bottom there that the measure of a biomorphic project is, does
03:57it have a net restorative benefit?
03:59So we talked a little bit about degradation of environmental systems earlier in the introduction.
04:07So the idea behind biomorphic urbanism, it has a regenerative or restorative benefit,
04:12both culturally and environmentally.
04:14So this is a little bit similar to Bill McDonough, who's a great friend of Brainstorm Design.
04:21His idea of cradle to grave, that it's not enough to slow the rate of death, of atrophy
04:27of the planet, that you have to actually reverse it.
04:30And that that's the real mandate of a designer, if you're thinking about sustainability.
04:34And what I love about your philosophy here is that it's increasingly emerging that it's
04:41not just kind of a nice way of thinking about cities.
04:44It's a kind of existential imperative.
04:46Well, right.
04:47I mean, that's, you know, it's nice to talk about ecosystems and cultural connection and
04:54all that.
04:55But it actually has a practical purpose, which is to protect our cities, make our cities
05:00more resilient, both culturally and ecologically, manage sea level rise.
05:05And we'll talk a little bit about some of the work that shows that purpose.
05:11So yeah, it's not just about, you know, a nice idea.
05:16And the idea really emerged.
05:18I did a piece for National Geographic.
05:21They asked us to design a future city.
05:24I met the editor here, actually, in Hong Kong.
05:27And I said, if you ever want to do an issue on cities, I'd love to contribute.
05:31So she took me up on it.
05:33And she gave us about two months to come up with a design for a future city, if you go
05:37to the next slide.
05:39And we organized our thinking.
05:42And what we do at SOM is we use 10 principles, typically, to organize our urban planning
05:47work.
05:48And they're shown here in bold letters.
05:51And so for NatGeo, we worked at five scales.
05:55And on the next slide, you can see that we started on the right-hand side of the image
05:59at the scale of the living unit.
06:02And then the second scale was on the left-hand side, the building.
06:05So we wanted to show the relationship of these two scales, these two parts.
06:10And then we went to the third scale, which was this district or neighborhood scale.
06:18So you can start to see the integration of ecological elements into this drawing.
06:24And then the fourth scale was what we called urban hubs.
06:29And this was actually modeled on a project that we did in Kuala Lumpur.
06:33And you can see how we've allowed the water to circulate in and around the urbanized areas.
06:39So it's a very integrated design with natural systems.
06:44So instead of landfill and trying to force all that water out to sort of welcome it in
06:48and say...
06:49Yeah, so that water can go up and down, depending on rainfall, depending on flooding.
06:54It doesn't hurt the city at all.
06:57Now this is, again, speculative here.
06:59This is not a real design.
07:04And then we took it to this scale, which is a regional scale.
07:06And you can see in the lower right, this is where the idea of biomorphic urbanism first
07:11was introduced.
07:13I think the regional scale is really important because it shows in purple the urbanized areas.
07:19Yellow is agriculture.
07:20But you can also see that we talked about conservation, marine conservation, upland
07:27conservation, micro wilderness, ecosystem conservation.
07:32Now the shape of this coastline looks vaguely familiar to me.
07:35So this was, again, a speculative project, but we took this as a snapshot of a coastline
07:41just north of Hong Kong, actually.
07:43So this is very close to where we are today.
07:46Very cool.
07:47All right.
07:48So can we segue quickly into talking about this project?
07:53And particularly about water, because as I mentioned yesterday, one of the things that
07:58I love most about your work is that it's so conscious of water and the role of water
08:04in the life of cities.
08:06And it really embraces this philosophy that water is your friend, not your enemy.
08:12Right.
08:13And you need to learn to work with it.
08:14And this is just a fantastic example of this.
08:18Everyone's heard of the High Line.
08:19We'll kind of look at that in a second.
08:20But this is an idea called the Water Line.
08:23What is it?
08:24Yeah.
08:25So I moved to Hong Kong to start our urban design studio in 2014.
08:29I lived here for four years, until 2018.
08:33And one of the things that always struck me about Hong Kong and the areas around here
08:38was the incredible beauty, first of all, of just this place.
08:42But the fact that you can't really get to the water very often, it's difficult to actually
08:48get to the water.
08:49You've got to go to a specific beach or a specific park.
08:53So what I proposed to our studio, and we did this over about a one-month period, I
08:58said, wouldn't it be cool if we could build a path all the way around Hong Kong Island?
09:06And so that was the genesis of this.
09:07But the reason it relates to biomorphic urbanism is, again, thinking about scales of work.
09:14And so we said, OK, well, it's a trail.
09:17That's fine.
09:18That's a nice idea.
09:19Everyone likes a trail.
09:21How does it relate to Hong Kong's ecological problems, for instance, or some of the social
09:28benefits that we might get from a project like this?
09:31So that's what the Hong Kong Waterline is.
09:34It's a circumferential trail around the island.
09:37It's such a great idea.
09:38Let's look at maybe some of these specific slides.
09:40And the other thing that struck me was, thinking ecologically about this area, is that there's
09:46very little protected marine environments around Hong Kong, which I think is really
09:51a tragedy, if I can be a little blunt.
09:55There's a few, but not enough.
09:57Which is odd, because there are so many country parks, but there are not as many...
10:01Right.
10:02It's all on land.
10:03Right.
10:04But there's this incredible asset right in front of everyone, which is the sea.
10:09So the lighter blue areas was an idea about expanded marine conservation areas.
10:16And so that would inform and provide a rationale for why you might want to create a trail.
10:21So it's a little more holistic.
10:23And if you go to the next slide.
10:26So today, there's two main trails on Hong Kong Island, the Hong Kong Trail and the Wilson
10:31Trail.
10:32But they're both inland.
10:33The red line and the yellow line are the two trails.
10:36There's no way to get to the coast.
10:39And if you want to get to the coastal edge, you have to go to one of these green spots,
10:43these little parks.
10:44I'm sure there's many more than that, but the concept was that they're not connected.
10:49So I live down here in Shekou Beach, the end of this peninsula.
10:54And you can see from this map that even if you want to go up to Big Wave, the other beach,
10:58you've got to follow a paved road.
11:00There's no trail.
11:01Yeah.
11:02Take your life into your own hands.
11:03That's right.
11:04Because everyone drives really fast, and the roads are narrow.
11:08So we proposed this trail.
11:10So you can see the red is the urban side of the island.
11:13I'm sure everyone knows Hong Kong pretty well here.
11:16The blue is the non-urban side, let's call it, the south side.
11:21Ten segments, 50 kilometers.
11:26And the beauty of it is a lot of it is already in place.
11:30It's just about linking it together.
11:32So Southern Ridges in Singapore, incredible project.
11:35I don't know.
11:36If you haven't been there, please go.
11:38It's really beautiful.
11:39So there are precedents for this.
11:42This is not something we just dreamed up one day.
11:45The High Line, I think everyone knows.
11:47There's many others, actually.
11:48There's one in Shenzhen as well.
11:51And so the team went out, and we walked and mapped the whole island, each segment.
11:57And we looked in detail.
12:00This is a very detailed map of Hong Kong.
12:05The big challenge was what I called turning the corner, was going from the north side
12:10to the south side, around Cape Collinson, which you can see on the upper right here.
12:16And then getting back around on the west end, because it's topographically very, very challenging
12:22there.
12:23So anyway, we looked at all the segments, and we should probably...
12:29But anyway, the coast is beautiful.
12:31And then we said, okay, there's also this issue of trash on the beaches.
12:35So can we use trash to create the component parts to build the trail?
12:41And so this series here shows how that would be done.
12:45And we could then 3D print the components that would build the trail.
12:50So you see that here.
12:52And we proposed a series of simple modules, so it could be prefabricated and actually
12:57brought out to the location.
12:59Because we didn't want to...
13:00It's more like Tom's idea of Lego pieces, little modules that can snap together.
13:05Because you don't want to build a trail and destroy the environment that you're trying
13:08to protect, to some degree.
13:11So we elevated the trail up, so we don't destroy habitat.
13:17Habitat can just move right into the trail.
13:19Capture the water, filter it, return it to the site.
13:23And so these just show the different applications.
13:26And then we tried to have four or five different applications, where if you did have, say,
13:31a road and you wanted to put a trail next to it, there was a design for that.
13:35And so this is an illustration of going around that eastern end, Cape Collinson.
13:42We also, as you can see in this image very clearly, it's not possible to do it actually
13:47right down at the waterline.
13:50But we didn't want to do that anyway, because that's a beautiful ecosystem just by itself.
13:55So sometimes you're close to it.
13:57But generally, we pulled it back, say, 100 meters from the water edge.
14:02So you're still able to access the water if you want to.
14:08But the idea was to bring people closer to the coastline to appreciate this incredible
14:15beauty of Hong Kong.
14:17And for that instance, we were talking yesterday that maybe this could apply to other places
14:22like Macau.
14:23This isn't an idea that only has one application.
14:27Well, it's a brilliant idea.
14:28So you did this pro bono, right?
14:32Yeah.
14:33What's the status of play on this?
14:34Why isn't the Hong Kong government all over this idea?
14:36I don't know.
14:37I don't know.
14:38I think there's one more image.
14:39Is there one more?
14:40Let's see.
14:41Yeah, that's what it looks like.
14:42So this is kind of a rendering.
14:43Now, today we would have done this in AI in about five minutes.
14:45This is more traditional.
14:50I was talking to a friend in Hong Kong, and they were saying that you now can walk quite
14:55a ways along the North Coast in an interconnected trail.
14:59So I think they're just kind of building it piece by piece.
15:03But the analogy I use, I'm from Chicago.
15:07You know, 30 years ago, they decided to create a setback along the Chicago River.
15:13Oh, we're out of time.
15:16And they said, OK, we're going to set all the buildings back 10 meters, 30 feet.
15:22And everyone said, why would you do that?
15:25And they said, well, someday it's going to be a trail.
15:27Yeah.
15:28Yeah.
15:29And I don't know if anyone's been to Chicago recently, but they've finally implemented
15:32the whole river walk.
15:34So over the last 20 years, everybody has built a piece of it.
15:40And all of a sudden now, it's this incredible asset.
15:44And everybody can get to the water in the city.
15:48And it's just become probably the single greatest civic feature in Chicago now, after Millennium
15:55Park.
15:56So that's by way of saying, you don't need to do it all at once.
16:01But if you work on it over 10, 20, 30 years, you get incredible results.
16:07Yeah.
16:08Peter Gindel, this is an extraordinary case study and a wonderful demonstration of how
16:13you can use design at the scale of cities, which is really powerful.
16:18Thank you so much for coming to share your ideas and insights.
16:21Well, thank you.
16:22Yeah.