Video Presentations: Safe, Sustainable, and Socially-Conscious: A Case Study on Post-Crisis Mixed-Use Towers

Andrew Kiel
Partner
Sauerbruch Hutton, Berlin

The pandemic has demonstrated that life as we know it can change overnight. The world has survived and emerged stronger from a number of catastrophes and setbacks in the past, however it is up to society to leverage lessons learned from the pandemic to ameliorate the current environmental crises. We will reflect upon the impact of past pandemics, and discuss how these may have played a role in the Great Divergence, with some surprising results for the development of building technologies and the wages of the craftsmen involved.

Mixed-use towers have an important role to play in a post-crisis society, in which flexible densification will be needed to create a safe, sustainable, and amenity-rich city. Three different projects are examined as case studies in how mixed-use towers can promote a sustainable, adaptable approach to post-crisis tall buildings. Case studies reviewed include Stockholm One, which is already complete, and is part of a new ecological district in the Swedish capital, as well as mixed-use projects in Berlin and Santiago de Chile.

We think that policymakers and planners must learn from the sudden changes made of necessity and re-evaluate what truly matters, using the effects of the pandemic to engineer more sustainable cities using clean energy and enabling a higher quality of life. Timber construction and reuse are a part of our own strategy towards innovation in creating more sustainable cities: Timber is the material of the twenty-first century for a city that will become its own source of raw material.