design report THE TIME IS NOW

Less glass, better insulation... and the ability to float? World-leading architects on changes the design world urgently needs to make

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FEATURE Keith Flanagan

The biggest change to how architects are creating now, to the thinking behind all those grand designs, isn’t a new aesthetic trend. It’s our changing climate, which has long knocked on our doors, and is officially making itself heard. Hastily, visionaries and urban planners are shifting focus toward a different future, adapting home and building design for a different world. For perhaps the first time ever, the purpose of good design isn’t to shape our own environments, but to listen to the atmosphere, and let our environment shape us.

‘We need to create buildings that can withstand extreme elements that climate change will bring,’ says Bryant Lu, vice chairman of Hong Kong’s Ronald Lu & Partners, a force in future-ready design. ‘Rising sea levels, super storms, increased floods, disruptions to transportation and supply chains, and more – but we also need to use design to help change the tide by reducing carbon emission and recycling waste.’

In our current state, we are not nearly ready, even in our own backyard. A recent ‘Global Sponge Cities Snapshot’ study of seven world cities by British firm Arup ranked London in last place, just shy of Shanghai, in terms of its ‘sponge-like’ nature and its ability to naturally absorb rainwater in case of flooding. As climate change brings more storms and heavier rainfall, urban centres like London lack permeable landscapes that manage excess water – think parks, ponds, and trees — and that’s just one element we face in new climate change scenarios.