Interview with Ruth Schagemann

Ramona Thumm / Drees & Sommer (RT): It’s a pleasure to have you with us, Ms. Schagemann. Urbanization continues, but space is limited. One option for densification is going vertical, but can verticality be designed to be sustainable, both from an ecological and social point of view.

Ruth Schagemann (RS): First of all thank you for inviting me to have this talk together. With regard to your first question, I believe verticality is usually associated with striving for density, so it’s really about how we want to achieve that. If we look at Europe, we have heights of between 15 and 30 floors on average, and opinions vary on whether these buildings are efficient or not. I absolutely agree – we need to increase urban density. And we have to change people’s mindset so that not everyone wants their own house with a garden. So it’s partially about education, but also about not only looking at the building itself, but also at its surroundings. One idea for our discussion today is that the space between buildings really matters for the future.

RT: Yesterday I had a conversation about recently introduced taxes for one-family houses in urban areas to make it less attractive to have a house with a garden. Can regulation be a tool to change the way people think about housing?

RS: It’s a difficult issue because any regulation around the private home can quickly become extremely emotional, but I think we must be courageous and say if people want to use so much land, they have to pay for it. But we also have to see how that fits in with urban planning and landscape architecture, because mayors and public authorities need to take a holistic approach to developing their cities, and any such policy has to align with that.

RT: That brings me back to the quality of density and of surrounding areas you mentioned before: If cities become more and more dense, how do we maintain a social society because densification could create social conflicts?

RS: We have seen this in the past, so it’s important to have a really functional social mix. We also need walkability. We need these quality of life elements to be implemented, as in the 15-minute city, so that neighborhoods are vibrant with a range of options. There are many good practice examples – we have great mayors who are making a difference in their cities, in Barcelona, Vienna, Paris and Copenhagen, for example. But there are also many towns and rural areas with best practice examples and solutions. We should learn more from each other and implement more of these excellent solutions.

RT: Re-Building Europe has visited the cities you mentioned, but I also love the idea that we can sometimes learn more from towns and rural areas because they are more agile in their development and have greater stakeholder involvement. In the end, development is a stakeholder management process, and you need to involve citizens in order to develop a successful, vibrant and livable urban district. How can we involve citizens in our city development?

RS: First we have to listen to them – and that means overcoming the problem of professionals being out of touch with them. We also need to speak in a language that people can understand. For example, when discussing the Davos declaration and high-quality architecture, we tend to say something like “We are aiming to achieve a high-quality living environment”. That is very vague to the average person – and also sounds unaffordable. We need to take a bottom-up approach and get the stakeholders involved.

I recently had a very inspiring discussion with young students at a landscape forum. One idea was to have a fun festival where, rather than talking about problems and discussing urban planning in abstract terms, participants develop ideas, allowing people to add joy to their own living environment. Education is also part of this. People are prepared to learn about things if they are interested and connected, and if their district is sensitized to topics such as climate change. And we should also highlight best practice examples, but in terms that address people’s needs. Money also plays a key role: Everyone wants the best value for their money. And finally, as we mentioned earlier, the social aspect is also important. Not only diversity, but also ‘democracy of space’, namely that spaces are accessible to everyone and can be used by all.

RT: We know cities have a huge impact on carbon emissions and on the overall climate problem in general. Will densification make the problem worse? Are we developing heat islands in our cities? In short, how do we manage the climate risk in very dense cities?

RS: There are cities where density and a failure to integrate green space and water leads to the heat islands you mentioned. I just saw yesterday that the average temperature in Stuttgart has risen by 1.5 to 2 degrees over the last 20 years – and that really brings home the importance of urban spaces. We can densify cities, but we have to integrate green and blue spaces. Again, there are great examples of how to manage density while at the same time avoiding sealing every surface with concrete – using water-permeable materials and providing greenery, for example. But once again, this approach takes courage, because planting trees may take away parking spaces.

RT: That’s one of the challenges we can hopefully tackle as an ecosystem.

RS: Exactly. It is also important to demonstrate new value when you ‘take something away’. People accept change more readily if you show them the benefit. For example, retailers initially opposed closing roads to create pedestrian precincts. But then they realized that pedestrians meant more passing trade and potentially higher sales. But urban planning should not only be about economic benefit, of course.

RT: You mentioned several European cities as best practice examples, but how do the Americas, Asia, India and the rest of the world influence European architects?

RS: Architecture has always been about professional exchange of knowledge and best practices, and learning from each other. But architecture, urban planning and landscape are also about the sites: You can adapt ideas, but you cannot copy one to one. So you have to choose what changes you want to make. For example Asia, Europe and Africa are not comparable and have different development systems. I was recently in San Francisco where I met colleagues from Asia and Africa who are also adopting bottom-up approaches, and fostering participation and cultural identity. But it’s important to keep cultural differences in mind. Even within Europe, Italy is culturally very different to Scandinavia, and we have to really respect that and adopt local approaches, but with shared general values.

RT: Yes, and I think Europe benefits from having very strong but diverse cultural identities. In some cities we have prestige projects that are culturally integrated and that people are proud of, but we are not a high-rise continent like to Asiaor elsewhere. Why are we blocking high rises?

RS: Good question! I never looked into it, but if we are blocking, maybe European culture has never been really into high-rises. The United States developed a totally different approach in the 1920s and 1930s. I don’t know if we are blocking, but I am also not sure that it would be good to be going above about 30 floors anyway.

RT: In Paris they now have an official ban of high-rise buildings above 37 meters. Do you think this will be happen more and more in European cities?

RS: Yes, I think it will. It’s really about location. Paris has a huge cultural heritage, and high-rise buildings clash with it. I think we need to maintain the building stock in heritage areas. We also have to balance development with climate protection. It would be counterproductive to simply tear down a building and put up a high-rise. We really need to analyze carefully where it is and how it would benefit everyone. We also need to consider what we want to avoid, such as buildings that only contains office space and have no landscaping around them. That’s not my idea of the city of the future.

You mentioned rethinking our European cities and their heritage. High-rises can be introduced as an element, but before doing that we need to consider repurposing existing building stock that is not currently being used. There were some great examples of this at the Venice Biennale. You have to examine what can be repurposed, refurbished, retrofitted or converted, and how to make best use of industrial brownfield sites. Before we start building high-rises, we have to analyze what already exists and see how we can develop it further. That’s a bit challenge because everything has to happen fast – and we should not make the mistake of making quick decisions and forgetting the quality of our living environment.

RT: During the Coronavirus pandemic, the character of many inner cities changed completely. And there is the phenomenon of the doughnut city, where people and businesses move out and the city center deteriorates. So how can we revitalize the inner city?

RS: We already mentioned the importance of a mix, so you can make changes to make living in the city more attractive. We also need to bring in professionals to look at all the building stock and think about the direction in which the city wants to develop – for example towards tourism or leisure. Europe has over 620,000 architects, as well as great landscapers and urban planners. We have the people with expertise and we have to utilize them. They should work together with mayors, developers and the construction sector. This matchmaking is really important for the future. Professionals should not stay in their silos – they have to develop ideas together. Everyone – from the citizens and developers, and especially the construction sector – should take responsibility. If you look at numbers in our sector study, you can see that the architectural market only accounts for one percent of the entire construction market, so yes, we really do have to bring forces together to bring about change.

RT: We need a common narrative for people to follow.

RS: Exactly. And maybe we now have a good chance to foster this in the future with activities in the 2023 Davos Baukultur Alliance, because the basic idea is to bring the different players in the field together – private industry, the public sector, professionals and citizens – to shape the future and bring about change.

RT: Yesterday we talked to the World Economic Forum. They will also be in London with us and we had kind of the same discussions. Initiatives like Re-Building Europe are trying to bring together precisely those stakeholders to collaborate in workshops. But how can we scale up and speed up? I always feel the pace is still so slow. We know what to do, but nobody’s doing it!

RS: That’s so true. This is the crucial thing: We have great research, we have knowledge, we have best practice examples – so basically, we know the concept and we agree on the values…

RT: So what's missing?

RS: I think that there is sometimes a lack of courage – first of all to identify that something is missing. In general, architects are highly engaged and want to bring about change – and they also have the expertise. But they could all take a critical look at themselves and ask questions like “Do I lack knowledge in a certain area” and “How can I discuss things with my client in a different way, taking into account that regulations may have changed such as the EU Taxonomy.” If everyone – not just architects but big companies too – did that, we would see if we really have to stick with business as usual, or whether we can make impactful changes while at the same time maintaining revenues.

RT: I agree that it’s about being honest with yourself, having honest conversations and making authentic commitments.

RS: …And really analyzing. Saying “We’ve always done it like this,” is not valid argument. It might have worked in the past, but let’s really reflect and see what changes are possible. And maybe for the beginning, the bigger the change, the better. But sometimes change is also frightening, and companies have shareholders and have to take an economic perspective. But nevertheless, I have often heard industry say that they need clear policy and if they know they have to reach targets, they will adapt because they are investing in research anyway. We need a really clear policy framework because that will drive change.

RT: In Brussels we discussed whether the people who make policy – especially at the European level – are too far removed from the people? Do they lose the connection to the bottom-up approach?

RS: I would say the European institutions have never been more bottom-up than they are at the moment. As President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen has really made a big change. She is interested in the bottom-up approach and introduced it into the Commission’s work. It may not yet have taken full effect, but the intention is there, and some elements are already successful. It’s important that voters in the election next year understand that Europe does not want a single idea for everyone, but a regional approach. It’s about a creating a framework in which national ministries and European authorities work together, because governments have an impact on European legislation. Simply blaming Europe is the wrong approach.

RT: So it’s a kind of ‘think global, act local’ approach. I think the New European Bauhaus is a great example of this bottom-up approach.

RS: Absolutely. And I think that’s that was really a gamechanger because before the New European Bauhaus was put in place, recommendations such as architectural policies were simply suggestions to national ministries, which they implemented or rejected at their discretion. We have made big advances there. And for hot topics like energy legislation, we have environmental legislation and public procurement, which is absolutely European turf. New European Bauhaus has brought these elements together so that cultural elements of the quality of our built environment have been included in legislation. But the New European Bauhaus is not properly understood, so once again we have the issue of translation in such a way that people understand what impact it will have on their daily life. And then we’re back to your question about contact with the people.

RT: For my last questions, I would love to hear what you think are the three most important topics over the next two or three years.

RS: The first topic is the transformation of our existing buildings. The second is keeping a focus on sociocultural and environmental aspects and maintaining quality in the built environment and the living environment. So it’s not only about architecture, but also about how we live together – and that includes public spaces and landscaping, however you define that. We should also use our best practice examples. We have so many good ideas and so many smart people we have to make best use of them and be courageous.

RT: Amazing! I don't want to ask anything else because that was the perfect final statement. Thank you so much once again, it was a pleasure talking to you.

RS: My pleasure.