Changing Climates

“It is not the environment that shapes plants, but plants that shape the environment.” Charles Darwin

“Life is a geological force that shapes the earth.” Vladimir Vernadsky

The exhibition “Changing Climates” explores how built environments can be transformed into urban ecologies. Producing an enhanced micro-climate, each of these ecologies has the capacity to augment the resilience of the urban condition towards the challenges of the climate crisis.

A city can be understood as a juxtaposition of artificial micro-climates. Buildings change wind patterns and sunlight exposure, while streetscapes modify runoff and soil permeability. For each man-made micro-climate, a comparable natural condition can be found. The study of its living organisms informs the introduction of vegetation as an agent of change into the artificial environment.

The city thus becomes a second nature and a living laboratory. Similar to plants that have gradually transformed their environment, and life in general that has been shaping the form of the earth, these urban ecologies have the force to transform the very nature of the city into a living organism. The built environment becomes an intelligent interface between an uncertain meteorology and an underused geology. Positioned between the above and the below, cities develop into a true zone of life.

The exhibition illustrates how these new urban ecologies can be conceived and constructed through a selection of projects from Bas Smets’s international practice. Varying in both scale and program, these projects show how to develop solution-based design through science-based research.

Appointed as a Professor in Practice at the Graduate School of Design of Harvard University in 2023. Bas Smets is conducting a 5-year program into the climatic resilience of cities with his studio ‘Biospheric Urbanism’. The students’ projects for first two case-studies on New York City and Paris are exhibited as an illustration of his methodology.
 

© SON-group, Himarë Waterfront Renovation, Albania, 2016