How to reinvent the apartment building
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0:01 - 0:04When, in 1960, still a student,
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0:04 - 0:06I got a traveling fellowship
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0:06 - 0:09to study housing in North America.
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0:09 - 0:12We traveled the country.
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0:12 - 0:15We saw public housing high-rise buildings
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0:15 - 0:17in all major cities:
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0:17 - 0:19New York, Philadelphia.
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0:19 - 0:22Those who have no choice lived there.
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0:22 - 0:24And then we traveled from suburb to suburb,
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0:24 - 0:26and I came back thinking,
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0:26 - 0:29we've got to reinvent the apartment building.
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0:29 - 0:32There has to be another way of doing this.
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0:32 - 0:34We can't sustain suburbs,
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0:34 - 0:36so let's design a building
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0:36 - 0:40which gives the qualities of a house
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0:40 - 0:41to each unit.
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0:41 - 0:45Habitat would be all about gardens,
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0:45 - 0:47contact with nature,
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0:47 - 0:49streets instead of corridors.
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0:49 - 0:53We prefabricated it so we would achieve economy,
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0:53 - 0:58and there it is almost 50 years later.
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0:58 - 1:01It's a very desirable place to live in.
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1:01 - 1:04It's now a heritage building,
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1:04 - 1:07but it did not proliferate.
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1:07 - 1:12In 1973, I made my first trip to China.
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1:12 - 1:16It was the Cultural Revolution.
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1:16 - 1:19We traveled the country,
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1:19 - 1:22met with architects and planners.
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1:22 - 1:24This is Beijing then,
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1:24 - 1:27not a single high rise building
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1:27 - 1:29in Beijing or Shanghai.
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1:29 - 1:33Shenzhen didn't even exist as a city.
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1:33 - 1:36There were hardly any cars.
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1:36 - 1:39Thirty years later,
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1:39 - 1:42this is Beijing today.
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1:42 - 1:44This is Hong Kong.
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1:44 - 1:46If you're wealthy, you live there,
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1:46 - 1:49if you're poor, you live there,
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1:49 - 1:51but high density it is, and it's not just Asia.
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1:51 - 1:53São Paulo, you can travel
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1:53 - 1:56in a helicopter 45 minutes
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1:56 - 1:58seeing those high-rise buildings consume
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1:58 - 2:00the 19th-century low-rise environment.
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2:00 - 2:03And with it, comes congestion,
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2:03 - 2:07and we lose mobility, and so on and so forth.
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2:07 - 2:09So a few years ago, we decided to go back
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2:09 - 2:11and rethink Habitat.
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2:11 - 2:14Could we make it more affordable?
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2:14 - 2:17Could we actually achieve this quality of life
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2:17 - 2:21in the densities that are prevailing today?
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2:21 - 2:24And we realized, it's basically about light,
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2:24 - 2:27it's about sun, it's about nature,
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2:27 - 2:29it's about fractalization.
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2:29 - 2:33Can we open up the surface of the building
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2:33 - 2:35so that it has more contact with the exterior?
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2:35 - 2:38We came up with a number of models:
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2:38 - 2:42economy models, cheaper to build and more compact;
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2:42 - 2:44membranes of housing
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2:44 - 2:46where people could design their own house
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2:46 - 2:48and create their own gardens.
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2:48 - 2:52And then we decided to take New York as a test case,
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2:52 - 2:54and we looked at Lower Manhattan.
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2:54 - 2:58And we mapped all the building area in Manhattan.
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2:58 - 3:01On the left is Manhattan today:
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3:01 - 3:06blue for housing, red for office buildings, retail.
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3:06 - 3:08On the right, we reconfigured it:
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3:08 - 3:11the office buildings form the base,
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3:11 - 3:14and then rising 75 stories above,
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3:14 - 3:15are apartments.
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3:15 - 3:18There's a street in the air on the 25th level,
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3:18 - 3:20a community street.
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3:20 - 3:22It's permeable.
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3:22 - 3:24There are gardens and open spaces
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3:24 - 3:25for the community,
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3:25 - 3:28almost every unit with its own private garden,
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3:28 - 3:31and community space all around.
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3:31 - 3:34And most important, permeable, open.
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3:34 - 3:38It does not form a wall or an obstruction in the city,
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3:38 - 3:40and light permeates everywhere.
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3:40 - 3:42And in the last two or three years,
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3:42 - 3:45we've actually been, for the first time,
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3:45 - 3:48realizing the quality of life of Habitat
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3:48 - 3:52in real-life projects across Asia.
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3:52 - 3:55This in Qinhuangdao in China:
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3:55 - 3:58middle-income housing, where there is a bylaw
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3:58 - 4:01that every apartment must receive
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4:01 - 4:03three hours of sunlight.
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4:03 - 4:06That's measured in the winter solstice.
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4:06 - 4:10And under construction in Singapore,
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4:10 - 4:13again middle-income housing, gardens,
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4:13 - 4:17community streets and parks and so on and so forth.
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4:17 - 4:19And Colombo.
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4:19 - 4:21And I want to touch on one more issue,
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4:21 - 4:25which is the design of the public realm.
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4:25 - 4:29A hundred years after we've begun building
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4:29 - 4:30with tall buildings,
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4:30 - 4:33we are yet to understand
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4:33 - 4:36how the tall high-rise building
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4:36 - 4:39becomes a building block in making a city,
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4:39 - 4:41in creating the public realm.
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4:41 - 4:44In Singapore, we had an opportunity:
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4:44 - 4:4710 million square feet, extremely high density.
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4:47 - 4:51Taking the concept of outdoor and indoor,
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4:51 - 4:53promenades and parks integrated
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4:53 - 4:56with intense urban life.
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4:56 - 4:59So they are outdoor spaces and indoor spaces,
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4:59 - 5:01and you move from one to the other,
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5:01 - 5:03and there is contact with nature,
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5:03 - 5:07and most relevantly, at every level of the structure,
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5:07 - 5:10public gardens and open space:
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5:10 - 5:12on the roof of the podium,
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5:12 - 5:13climbing up the towers,
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5:13 - 5:17and finally on the roof, the sky park,
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5:17 - 5:21two and a half acres, jogging paths, restaurants,
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5:21 - 5:26and the world's longest swimming pool.
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5:26 - 5:29And that's all I can tell you in five minutes.
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5:29 - 5:31Thank you.
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5:31 - 5:33(Applause)
- Title:
- How to reinvent the apartment building
- Speaker:
- Moshe Safdie
- Description:
-
In 1967, Moshe Safdie reimagined the monolithic apartment building, creating “Habitat ’67,” which gave each unit an unprecedented sense of openness. Nearly 50 years later, he believes the need for this type of building is greater than ever. In this short talk, Safdie surveys a range of projects that do away with the high-rise and let light permeate into densely-packed cities.
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- closed TED
- Project:
- TEDTalks
- Duration:
- 05:46
Morton Bast edited English subtitles for How to reinvent the apartment building | ||
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Morton Bast edited English subtitles for How to reinvent the apartment building | ||
Morton Bast edited English subtitles for How to reinvent the apartment building | ||
Morton Bast edited English subtitles for How to reinvent the apartment building | ||
Madeleine Aronson accepted English subtitles for How to reinvent the apartment building | ||
Madeleine Aronson edited English subtitles for How to reinvent the apartment building |