Designing for the Future: Henning Larsen's Innovation-Pushed Sustainable Structure

Designing for the Future: Henning Larsen’s Innovation-Pushed Sustainable Structure

The aim of innovation is to advertise constructive change and progress in numerous features of life. This entails creating, creating and implementing new concepts, strategies, merchandise, or processes that enhance current ones or introduce fully new ideas. Famend structure and design agency Henning Larsen, based in 1959 in Denmark, has a strong dedication to embracing innovation as a core factor of its work. With an emphasis on design excellence, sustainability, collaboration and user-centric approaches, innovation performs a key position in its quest to create iconic and sustainable architectural landmarks. By means of devoted analysis and growth, they’re always exploring new concepts, supplies and applied sciences to boost performance and elevate the person expertise of their buildings. To be taught extra about this visionary strategy and its influence on architectural effectivity, we spoke with Jakob Strømann-Andersen, who heads a specialist division that mixes innovation and sustainability, highlighting the agency’s dedication to pushing the boundaries of sustainable structure.

Eduardo Souza (ArchDaily): You may have a management position as Director of Innovation and Sustainability at Henning Larsen. Might you describe your duties and the way you collaborate with different areas of the corporate to combine sustainability and innovation into tasks?

Jakob Strømann-Andersen: In my position at Henning Larsen, my most important focus is to encourage and encourage our international community to embrace innovation and sustainability. Slightly than being a uncared for division within the nook, we consider that these rules must be built-in into all our tasks. 

We begin by embedding sustainability and data-driven design into the core narrative of our early design ideas. This manner, we are able to current our strategy to shoppers from the very starting, reasonably than including sustainability as an afterthought. 

One of many methods we collaborate throughout completely different areas of the corporate is thru a devoted crew of educated engineers and designers who concentrate on digital innovation and efficiency evaluation. This crew performs a significant position in integrating sustainability and innovation into our tasks by using superior digital instruments to optimize efficiency all through the design course of.

ES: In your articles, you’ve got talked about the significance of innovation in attaining sustainability targets within the structure trade. Might you present some examples of how innovation has been utilized to create extra sustainable designs in your work at Henning Larsen?

JS-A: Innovation performs a vital position in attaining sustainability targets inside the structure trade and we embrace this connection. 

We all know that the constructing trade may be conservative and gradual to vary, typically taking a number of years earlier than progress is made. To drive the trade ahead, we actively pursue parallel innovation tracks with our shoppers.

One instance is our new inexperienced façade answer, designed in collaboration with BG Byggros and Komproment and supported by the Danish Ministry of Setting. To display its feasibility, we developed a mock-up of the inexperienced façade. This strategy was used to show its scalability and showcase the potential for widespread implementation.

One other challenge that exemplifies our dedication to innovation is the extension to Feldballe College. Our ambition with this challenge was to check new and progressive supplies, pushing the boundaries of sustainable development. By exploring and implementing these cutting-edge supplies, we had been capable of create a extra sustainable faculty. Now we’d like to do way more and at a a lot a lot bigger scale. The extra sq. meters are constructed this fashion, the much less CO2 we emit within the constructing trade. Our objective is to push the entire trade in a extra sustainable route; we have now a duty to take action. While this development system just isn’t the one reply, it’s a central one within the seek for a sustainable transition for the trade.

ES: In recent times, digital instruments and synthetic intelligence have turn out to be more and more essential in structure, as you additionally mentioned in your article “3 International Tendencies for the Subsequent Technology of Digital Structure“. How do you see these applied sciences shaping the way forward for the trade, and what alternatives and challenges do they current for architects?

JS-A: These applied sciences present architects with highly effective instruments for design exploration, evaluation, and optimization, finally resulting in extra sustainable and environment friendly buildings. Opposite to the futuristic metropolis portrayed in films, the place expertise dominates and human interplay diminishes, I consider that sensible applied sciences and AI can really improve social interactions and creativity. 

By leveraging AI and robotics, architects can acquire helpful insights into cultural and contextual features, enabling them to design areas that higher replicate the native identification and local weather. For example, AI can analyze a variety of pictures scraped from the web, together with standard platforms like Instagram, to know individuals’s preferences and design with a larger native influence. Whereas these applied sciences supply nice alternatives, there are additionally challenges to think about. It is essential to strike a steadiness between automation and human creativity to make sure that designs stay considerate and aware of human wants.

ES: Sustainable practices and supplies are important for lowering the environmental influence of the development trade. What steps do you consider architects ought to take of their every day practices to advertise sustainability, and the way can the specification of supplies and development methods contribute to this objective?

JS-A: Firstly, it is essential to acknowledge and perceive the present limitations that hinder sustainable practices within the trade. By acknowledging these we are able to work in the direction of overcoming them by means of progressive approaches.

Collaboration with shoppers performs a significant position. Architects ought to attempt to reinvent how they interact with shoppers, shifting past purely offering income and exploring new enterprise fashions that incentivize sustainable selections. For instance, within the case of the inexperienced façade idea talked about earlier, we have now royalties on the product we have now developed with our companions.

ES: Might you talk about any tasks you might be at the moment engaged on that you’re notably enthusiastic about, and the way they align along with your values and targets for sustainable and progressive design?

JS-A: Two key tasks are springing to thoughts. The primary one is ReWater Aarhus, the event of the biggest water therapy facility in Denmark. This challenge goals to remodel wastewater into helpful sources equivalent to warmth, algae, and phosphorus. Slightly than preserving it hidden, we’re creating an innovation hub that invitations the town to actively interact with the power, making it a vibrant and enticing vacation spot; one of the best picnic spot in Aarhus! This challenge aligns completely with our values and targets for sustainable and progressive design, because it rethinks the standard strategy to wastewater administration and promotes useful resource effectivity.

The second challenge is a collaboration with Ramboll, referred to as Galago. The event of drone expertise designed to watch and protect nature in Washington is making certain exact biodiversity monitoring, going past easy and ineffective species counting, to realize a complete understanding of the ecosystem. By leveraging this expertise, we are able to design city areas that harmonize with and assist pure methods. A revolutionary approach of integrating expertise and sustainability to create a greater steadiness between city growth and the surroundings.

ES: Is there the rest you want to add about the way forward for sustainable design and innovation within the structure trade or any explicit challenges or alternatives that you simply assume are essential to deal with?

JS-A: The trade must design much less and focus extra on high quality and influence. Reworking current buildings and areas is essential, as repurposing and reimagining what we have already got will considerably scale back environmental impacts in comparison with fixed new development.

To realize sustainable design, we should broaden our understanding of design excellence past iconic buildings. Approaching tasks with thoughtfulness and intention, we are able to guarantee they align with the wants of the area people and promote long-term sustainability. It is important to view tasks as half of a bigger community, collaborating and connecting to deliver the best worth to society. Let’s name it reworking collectively to attenuate waste, maximize sources, and positively influence communities and the planet.

To maintain up with the developments at Henning Larsen, observe their weblog.