The Presentations: a new way forward

Fred pointed out that all six major causes of death can be seen to be city-related. His work is about minimising the adverse impacts of urban life upon the environment and human health, and maximising well-being and community feeling. Good quality public spaces, integrated greenery, climatic comfort, balanced mixed use neighbourhoods, and correct density are all factors in achieving this.

Cities are made up of neighbourhoods, communities, and the walkable community is the fundamental element in healthy place-making. In order to qualify as a walkable community, it needs to provide all one’s daily needs within walking distance, integrated green space, and a compact mixed-use urban structure. If you can achieve this, you have less traffic, better air quality, communities are stronger and you have the experience of nature.

A hundred hectare medium density walkable neighbourhood development could have about 13,000 people. There would be community public space, neighbourhood building blocks and car parking would be at the edge, not at the centre.

How does this relate to the Auroville master plan? Fred pointed out that if we think that healthy place-making is not already there, it’s important to incorporate it. The key points are we need to commit to having a non-motorised, non-polluting city centre and increase our mixed-use areas.

Herbert began by observing that “None of us have experienced a galaxy, yet it is everywhere in little water drops. Water is full of structure.”

Herbert did some striking demonstrations to exemplify this. When he let a drop of colour fall into a column of water it created a vortex. When he brought movement into the water, the vortex acquired a rhythmical movement: “it is like an endless spiral that is dancing, going up and down”.

Then he scattered coloured moss on the water and drew a straight line bisecting it. “It creates six galaxies! And they are not the same. When you look at the forms you can see how a simple impulse like a straight line bisecting water makes it react in a very interesting way. It’s as if both sides start to talk to each other, and to make vortices. In water, contrasts can come together, so we can learn from water about how to balance two opinions. “

A river, he pointed out, is always reforming, changing, “and it’s the same for a galaxy: a galaxy is something that is never fixed, it is in a permanent process of change. But our consciousness is limited. We cannot imagine change processes easily, but water is a very good teacher. Water relates to fluid thinking, to perfect integration, and we can learn from just a single drop how we should create our cities.”

One example he gave of this ‘fluidity’ was an open space he redesigned in Singapore. During the monsoon it floods to absorb and control the water flow but when the water subsides, it is a park where children can play.

In the open discussion after his talk, somebody remarked that in Auroville we should have a ‘water master plan.

Joachim revealed that seeing the Auroville Galaxy design in a brochure in 1968 inspired him to continue studying architecture. In 1975 he learned about the healthy building movement that started in German architecture. “My journey started with researching healthy building materials and step-by-step my eyes widened to all the ecological aspects.”

These also included the different aspects of sustainability, like social and economic sustainability, as well as the aesthetic and spiritual dimensions. “You can never advance unless all these aspects are integrated, layer by layer, and if you do not employ learning loops. This is why town planning is so complex: there is no other profession on earth that deals with so many different levels.”

Joachim’s office in Tübingen was the first eco-settlement in Germany. “We learned a lot from this project about healthy building, about permaculture and how to integrate rainwater cycles.” From there his team began developing eco-city master plan principles based on the step-by-step layering of ecosystems and social systems. They concluded that decentralised neighbourhoods are the most important basis upon which to create eco-cities. Also that nature has to be brought into cities. “Where there is a lack of nature in our cities this creates physical and mental diseases. In this sense, as architects we are not only shapers but also therapists.”

When they embark on a new project they always start by contacting the genius loci, the ‘soul’ of a site. Once they know where they can build - and they never use concrete, only wood, glass and brick - they employ techniques like bio-climatic design. In one of their pioneer buildings, they collected all the rainwater, cleaned it, and then used the cool water to create waterfalls on the edge of a greenhouse attached to the main building. “This is a natural air-conditioning machine. As the warm outside air passes through the waterfall it is cooled and cleaned.

“We learned from this that we can create climates using architectural means, not only in a building but also on an urban level. All you need is water, plants and an understanding of ventilation geometry.”

“In other words, with organic architecture and in organic urban planning you work with the natural elements. And in an organic approach to a master plan concept you never use the right angle or the axis because these come from the mind.” When all the different aspects are taken into account, “you have a flow in your master plan and step-by-step it becomes an organism which is almost like a living being.”

He then spoke about the spiritual aspects of creating a new settlement. His team always starts by contacting the unseen energy fields from the planets, the elements, and from elemental beings which are already there on site. “We have to communicate with this unseen living nature as well as with living nature. When we plan, we are always in dialogue with it.

“In other words, in every project we try to touch the ground not only intellectually but also with our hearts through meditation.”

A fascinating example of this was a design they did for a settlement around a new railway station in Sweden. The railway engineers had been trying for many years to construct a new tunnel through a nearby mountain, but it kept collapsing. Joachim and his partner did a weekend meditation and became acquainted with the energy of this mountain.

“To explain it in an image, it was a dragon and his family who did not like the tunnel. So we had a conversation about how to heal his situation. We implemented all our ecological approaches and gave it a particular form and the dragon agreed to what we were designing. The jury in the international design competition did not understand our plan - it looked a little like a dragon! – but finally we won the first prize. And the tunnel was successfully completed.”

Claire talked about a project in a neighbourhood of Dublin, Ireland. The neighbourhood had historic buildings as well as 1960s style mass housing, but unlike other areas of the city it had failed to thrive. There had been proposals for redevelopment but these had always been blocked by the residents who felt these would destroy the spirit of the place.

Claire and her team spent 14 months involving the community in developing a plan that would have wide consensus. After a high-profile launch, the team met people in the neighbourhood to encourage them to get involved, and to find out what people valued in their area and what they didn’t like. There followed three neighbourhood workshops, as well as schools’ and young people’s workshops, where they looked at problems, dreams and solutions and did hands-on planning sessions.

There were three more public workshops and then a forum was established. “The idea of the forum was to review the local area plan as it went along. At each stage, we did a presentation to the forum and then people would sit around tables and come up with questions and ways it could be improved. We would take it away, redo that part of the structure and come back again. All the time we were being flexible, listening to what the people had to say.”

Alongside the forum, focus groups were created that looked at issues like built heritage, environment, arts and culture, sports and recreation, biodiversity and open spaces. “Planning a city is not really about architecture, that’s only a bit of it. There are also many other things which are equally important, like the element of water, the greenery and the economy.” Consultants were appointed to lead these groups. The groups would meet independently and come back to the forum and present what they had done.

There was also a communication group that produced newsletters and set up a website. In each newsletter they explained what was going to happen in the next forum, and report back on what happened in the previous forum.

At the end, there was a big exhibition, final amendments were made on the basis of the feedback, and then it was presented to and approved by the Dublin city council.

“The key to our success in getting development moving where it had previously been blocked was bringing people into the middle of the process with regular meetings and providing constant information about what was happening. The forum was good because people could see what they had expressed reflected in real changes, so then they came back and encouraged other people to participate.”