When, in 1960, still a student, I got a traveling fellowship to study housing in North America. We traveled the country. We saw public housing high-rise buildings in all major cities: New York, Philadelphia. Those who have no choice lived there. And then we traveled from suburb to suburb, and I came back thinking, we've got to reinvent the apartment building. There has to be another way of doing this. We can't sustain suburbs, so let's design a building which gives the qualities of a house to each unit.
1960. sam, kao student, dobio stipendiju za studije urbanizma u Severnoj Americi. Proputovali smo državu. Videli smo višespratnice sa socijalnim stanovima u svim većim gradovima: Njujorku, Filadelfiji. Tamo žive oni koji nemaju gde drugde. Zatim smo išli od predgrađa do predgrađa, i u povratku sam pomislio, moraćemo da preporodimo stambene zgrade. Sigurno može i drugačije. Predgrađa su pretrpana, hajde onda da osmislimo zgradu u kojoj će svaki stan biti poput kuće.
Habitat would be all about gardens, contact with nature, streets instead of corridors. We prefabricated it so we would achieve economy, and there it is almost 50 years later. It's a very desirable place to live in. It's now a heritage building, but it did not proliferate.
U Staništu bi glavne bile bašte, dodir sa prirodom, ulice umesto hodnika. Unapred smo proizvedi delove da bismo uštedeli, i ovako izgleda nakon skoro 50 godina. Mnogi žele da žive u njoj. Sada je deo kulturne baštine, ali ideja nije zaživela.
In 1973, I made my first trip to China. It was the Cultural Revolution. We traveled the country, met with architects and planners. This is Beijing then, not a single high rise building in Beijing or Shanghai. Shenzhen didn't even exist as a city. There were hardly any cars. Thirty years later, this is Beijing today. This is Hong Kong. If you're wealthy, you live there, if you're poor, you live there, but high density it is, and it's not just Asia. São Paulo, you can travel in a helicopter 45 minutes seeing those high-rise buildings consume the 19th-century low-rise environment. And with it, comes congestion, and we lose mobility, and so on and so forth.
1973. sam prvi put otputovao u Kinu. Tad je trajala Kulturna revolucija. Proputovali smo državu i sreli arhitekte i planere. Ovo je Peking iz tog vremena, nije bilo nijedne višespratnice ni u Pekingu, ni u Šangaju. Šenđen tad nije ni postojao. Skoro da nije bilo automobila. Ovako Peking izgleda posle trideset godina. Ovo je Hong Kong. Ako ste bogati, živite tu, ako niste, onda živite ovde, ali svuda je gusto naseljeno, i to ne samo u Aziji. U Sao Paolu možete 45 minuta da letite helikopterom i gledate kako višespratnice zamenjuju prizemne kuće iz XIX veka. A uz njih dolazi gust saobraćaj, slaba pokretljivost i tako dalje.
So a few years ago, we decided to go back and rethink Habitat. Could we make it more affordable? Could we actually achieve this quality of life in the densities that are prevailing today? And we realized, it's basically about light, it's about sun, it's about nature, it's about fractalization. Can we open up the surface of the building so that it has more contact with the exterior?
Tako da smo pre nekoliko godina odlučili da razvijemo Stanište iz početka. Može li da bude pristupačnije? Može li se takav kvalitet života postići u gusto naseljenim oblastima današnjice? Shvatili smo da je u pitaju svetlost, sunce, priroda, fraktalizacija. Može li površina zgrade da se otvori kako bi se postigao veći kontakt sa spoljašnosti?
We came up with a number of models: economy models, cheaper to build and more compact; membranes of housing where people could design their own house and create their own gardens. And then we decided to take New York as a test case, and we looked at Lower Manhattan. And we mapped all the building area in Manhattan. On the left is Manhattan today: blue for housing, red for office buildings, retail. On the right, we reconfigured it: the office buildings form the base, and then rising 75 stories above, are apartments. There's a street in the air on the 25th level, a community street. It's permeable. There are gardens and open spaces for the community, almost every unit with its own private garden, and community space all around. And most important, permeable, open. It does not form a wall or an obstruction in the city, and light permeates everywhere.
Razvili smo razne modele: štedljive modele, jeftinije i kompaktnije; okvire stanova, kod kojih ljudi sami dizajniraju kuću i stvaraju baštu. Odlučili smo da probu obavimo u Njujorku i okrenuli smo se ka južnom Menhetnu. Napravili smo mapu građevinskih zona u Menhetnu. Levo je Menhetn sada: plavo su stanovi, crveno poslovne zgrade, prodavnice. Desno smo ga preuredili: poslovne zgrade čine osnovu, dok su stanovi 75 spratova iznad. Na 25. spratu se nalazi viseća ulica, javna ulica. Otvorena je. Tu su vrtovi i javne površine, skoro svaki stan ima sopstvenu baštu i svuda je javni prostor. I najvažnije je da je sve otvoreno. Nema zidova koji bi zaklanjali pogled i svetlost može svuda da prodire.
And in the last two or three years, we've actually been, for the first time, realizing the quality of life of Habitat in real-life projects across Asia. This in Qinhuangdao in China: middle-income housing, where there is a bylaw that every apartment must receive three hours of sunlight. That's measured in the winter solstice. And under construction in Singapore, again middle-income housing, gardens, community streets and parks and so on and so forth. And Colombo.
Poslednje dve ili tri godine smo čak prvi put uspeli da u projektima širom Azije ostvarimo kvalitet života kao u Staništu. Ovo je Čingvandao u Kini: stanovi za srednju klasu, ali postoji pravilo da svaki stan mora dnevno da primi tri sata sunčeve svetlosti. Meri se tokom zimske kratkodnevnice. A i u Singapuru se grade stanovi za srednju klasu, bašte, javne ulice i parkovi i tako dalje. Kao i u Kolambu.
And I want to touch on one more issue, which is the design of the public realm. A hundred years after we've begun building with tall buildings, we are yet to understand how the tall high-rise building becomes a building block in making a city, in creating the public realm. In Singapore, we had an opportunity: 10 million square feet, extremely high density. Taking the concept of outdoor and indoor, promenades and parks integrated with intense urban life. So they are outdoor spaces and indoor spaces, and you move from one to the other, and there is contact with nature, and most relevantly, at every level of the structure, public gardens and open space: on the roof of the podium, climbing up the towers, and finally on the roof, the sky park, two and a half acres, jogging paths, restaurants, and the world's longest swimming pool. And that's all I can tell you in five minutes.
Hteo bih još samo da se osvrnem na dizajn javnih površina. Već stotinu godina gradimo višespratnice i još nismo shvatili kako da neboder učinimo osnovnim elementom pri stvaranju grada, stvaranju javnog prostora. U Singapuru smo imali priliku: 929.000 kvadratnih metara izuzetno gusto naseljenog prostora. Iskoristili smo koncept spoljnog i unutrašnjeg prostora, šetališta i parkova spojenih sa urbanom sredinom. Spoljni i unutrašnji prostor su spojeni, prelazi se iz jednog u drugi, postoji i dodir sa prirodom, i što je najvažnije, na svakom nivou postoje bašte i javne površine. Na vrhu osnove, čitavom visinom nebodera i na krovu su viseći vrtovi, 10.000 kvadratnih metara; staze za trčanje, restorani i najduži bazen na svetu. To je sve što mogu da vam ispričam za pet minuta.
Thank you.
Hvala vam.
(Applause)
(Aplauz)