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learn from nature. We cannot copy nature,
but whenever we create a new building, it is
not an abstract landscape but a new reality.
And reality can learn things from how nature
operates, hybrid aspects. You have been focus-
ing a lot on that when it comes to your social
infrastructures, where you add one function on
top the other. It is a fantastic strategy because
it is what landscapes do. They provide you
with water but you can also ski. They provide
you with trees, but you can also walk.
BI: In my view there are two tendencies.
One is an extreme centralization. For instance,
global companies (Amazon, Walmart…) have
bigger and bigger distribution centers but are
more and more centralized, as if they were
trying to create a single warehouse for all of
America. But there is another process, hap-
pening in cities, which is extreme decentral-
ization, or mixing. Roof farming in New York,
for example. There is a huge desire for it, al-
most as an ideology, maybe as a hobby, though
most people living in cities are too busy to grow
their tomatoes. But I really think that if you
get a company to call out warehouse owners
and say: “we would like to take possession of
your roof, we will install, manage, operate,
maintain and you will get 50% of the crops,”
everyone would benefit.
KT: We have also studied it and we calcu-
lated the weight of the earth and the produc-
tivity of the earth that you could get straight
out of the agriculture soil that was already on
the ground once its clean. The 30-centimeter
layer of agricultural soil is full of embodied
energy. To throw it away and not use it as
food production is kind of a waste.
BI: We are doing this power plant in Van-
couver, and aside from several sustainable
energy systems we are using a fairly commod-
ified Dutch farming system where you don’t
have soil. You have these tubes where plants
grow out of the tubes, so it consumes much
less water. Everything is painted white, the
floor is white, the tubes are white, so that no
photon is swallowed by light-sucking colors,
everything is bouncing around. A completely
effortless roof farming concept.
KT: That is cool. Also, we have to rely on
the future technologies, and their develop-
ment. So much could happen in the field of
industrial design. It is one of the areas where
I feel that we have done a lot but at the same
time, nothing. The industrial design elements
in architecture, for instance, are completely
missing, so one of the few things that we are
starting to do now is actively moving more
into the hardware production line of smaller
things in life. Pocket lamps, for instance. A
torch is a fantastic invention because you
carry the light with you. There was this fic-
tion writer who talked about glass that retains
light, and for light to penetrate through the
glass it takes about twenty years. So that
means that you have this panoramic window,
and then you build it into your home. You
don’t have a TV, you have a one to one vision
to Niagara Falls in New York, because the
delay of twenty years actually puts the real
image in your living room. Simply through
the delay of light penetration. It is science
fiction of course, but it is actually beautiful.
“We have to rely on the
future technologies, and
on their development”
