In today’s episode we’re talking about the contentious issue of tall buildings. Some people love them, some people hate them. My guests today have come up with a concept for high rise that could be much more sustainable and adaptable than conventional skyscrapers. 

My guests today are Tomas Stokke and Shonn Mills. Tomas is a co-founder of Haptic Architects based in London and Oslo. He overseas Haptic’s international work and has taught, lectured, exhibited and been published internationally. 

Shonn Mills is Global Head of High Rise Buildings at Ramboll, with more than 20 years experience as an engineer. 

They have collaborated to produce a new concept for sustainable tall building design, which is called Regenerative Highrise. They have taken a really interesting approach in tackling a difficult urban site in Oslo and designing a building that responds to this while being low carbon and extremely adaptable. We talk about all of the interesting details in the conversation so I won’t get into that now. 

Episode 16 of this podcast was called ‘Are Tall Buildings Sustainable?’ and I concluded that typically tall buildings have a huge carbon and material footprint and its is clear that they can have a negative impact on a city’s urban design, environment, economy and social life. So I came into this conversation a bit skeptical and ready to challenge them. We ended up having a really good conversation and I think they have done some really useful work here in pushing the design of tall buildings much closer towards sustainability and taking a long term approach. 

If you are enjoying the Green Urbanist podcast, the best thing you can do to support it is to share an episode with a friend or colleague who you think might enjoy it. I hope it sparks some interesting conversations for you. 

Links:

Dezeen article on Regenerative Highrise: https://www.dezeen.com/2022/05/23/haptic-architects-ramboll-regenerative-high-rise/

Sustainability of Downtown Highrise vs Suburban Low Rise study: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321977968_Downtown_High-Rise_vs_Suburban_Low-Rise_Living_A_Pilot_Study_on_Urban_Sustainability

Haptic Architects: https://hapticarchitects.com/oslo-highrise/

Ramboll: https://ramboll.com/contact/rdk/shonn


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The Green Urbanist podcast is created by Ross O'Ceallaigh.