Building resilient cities: Reflections from three leading experts

Serie Architects' Dr Christopher Lee, master planner Joe Berridge of Urban Strategies Inc., and Nikken Sekkei Ltd's urban designer Wataru Tanaka discuss challenges and possible solutions in building more resilient, liveable cities for the future. 

Serie Architects has designed many green buildings with inclusive spaces. What are some challenges we need to address in building more resilient cities for the future? 

Christopher: One of the emerging challenges that we need to tackle is how to better manage embodied carbon, which is greenhouse emissions arising from the lifecycle of building materials, including manufacturing, transport, construction and disposal. Many of our climate-related policies and initiatives tend to focus on operational emissions from building use while embodied carbon tends to be the more hidden part of a building’s climate impact, which will become increasingly significant.  

In addressing the challenge of embodied carbon, we should now look more closely at the kind of building materials we use and begin to explore more hybrid options. For example, we could explore combining the low-embodied carbon material, timber, with concrete and steel. The other way to look at the issue of embodied carbon is to relook at the idea of density. Is the tall building the only way? Perhaps we should also consider the mid-rise building or a combination of both options to further calibrate how we manage embodied carbon. 

A second critical issue we need to look at more closely is shade. As our days are getting hotter, we need to be more ambitious in how we design our buildings for our future. We could perhaps try to imagine a city of canopies, where we can deploy a variety of different building typologies with canopies that may be suitable for the public realm and in public spaces to make these feel more comfortable. 

The green space at the Marina Barrage has become a popular, inclusive space for everyone. Image: Tan Si Wei. 

The third challenge is in designing more inclusive spaces. Providing inclusive spaces is not just about enabling different types of people to access and use buildings and spaces. We need to also create buildings where diverse groups of people can feel that they are included physically, culturally and socially. This has to do with the way we programme the spaces within buildings and layer deeper meaning and narratives for people to feel a stronger sense of belonging and connection to a building, a place and to one another. 

Building resilience also means looking at how we can layer the old and new in creating a strong sense of continuity in our landscape. An example is the State Courts Towers that you, Christopher, designed, where its open façade creatively reflects the terracotta tiles of shophouses in Chinatown. Why is this important?

Christopher: Creating a strong sense of continuity in our landscape is important as it makes any new building and architecture feel immediately familiar and comforting even as we need to keep redeveloping our buildings and rejuvenating our city to adapt to new challenges and needs. 

Set back from a gridded white framework, State Courts Towers ochre-coloured cladding pays homage to the terracotta roofscape of the surrounding shophouses. This building was awarded the 2023 President's Design Award Design of the Year. Image: Finbarr Fallon/CPG Consultants. 

In designing architecture for cities, I usually do not draw inspiration from the unique parts of the city but instead look for the most common and persistent architecture and patterns in the landscape. This is because such patterns and qualities are what have remained relevant to people and are supported by local culture, making people feel more at home. It is from these local qualities that I draw insights from in identifying fundamental foundations to create new layers and solutions as a response to challenges of the time. 

Toronto manages its density well with neighbourhoods and spaces that enable family life to flourish. What can we learn from this in building our resilience? How can urban design contribute to this?

Joe: When you increase the density of places, you also need to increase the ‘chemistry’ of places, which are the spaces and qualities that make our environments more engaging. While cities are generally imperfect, we can create perfect moments that foster urban delight, interaction and interchange, where community life can prosper. For us to plan and design for such moments, the practice of urban design plays an increasingly important role as the unifying framework and discipline for engineering, architecture and other relevant sectors to come together with the city authorities to make things happen. 

Urban design efforts have been shaping Singapore’s many memorable and delightful destinations and spaces over the years, guided by the above nine urban design elements.

We often take for granted the importance of collaboration and collective effort. Individuals or isolated communities cannot build a great city by themselves. Building resilient cities means investing in building strong communities and networks with the right knowledge and skills to develop solutions and ideas together. 

Part of building a city’s resilience is how well we adapt and sustain our key infrastructure. Japan has been rejuvenating many of its transit-oriented developments in the city and regional areas. What is the potential impact of such efforts in strengthening cities’ resilience? 

Wataru: Many of these regeneration projects around our bus interchanges and train stations are strategically planned to contribute to the rejuvenation of the larger surrounding areas and neighbourhoods. 

Whether it is turning the old Sakura Machi Bus Interchange Complex in Kumamoto into a new transit hub or revitalising the area around the trainyards north of the Osaka Station into a more mixed-use development (known as the Grand Green Osaka project), the larger focus is how can we leverage these improvements to create better public realms and community spaces for people. 

The envisioned Sakura-Machi promenade to be developed as part of Japan’s transit hub in Kumamoto to enhance the public realm and better serve the immediate neighbourhood. Image: SS Co., Ltd 

People usually stop to visit cafes and stores as they pass through the train stations. Residents in the surrounding neighbourhoods also use the stations as part of their daily routines. Fundamentally, the transit-oriented development is a long-term investment that is sustained not by the station and immediate development alone but by how well it complements and supports the wider neighbourhood and context. 

Such developments are becoming critical community and lifestyle hubs in the heart of neighbourhoods. At the new Sakura Machi transit hub in Kumamoto, people can enjoy retail shops, a rooftop garden and use a multi-purpose hall for community events. The road in front of the transit hub was pedestrianised to make way for a public promenade, plaza and park. For the Osaka Grand Green project, besides access to residences, offices, restaurants and entertainment options, the central park in front of Osaka Central Station has become a key gathering point for the community. 

The benefits of such rejuvenation efforts are multi-fold. The introduction of more green spaces especially in dense cities increases our green canopy and cools down the environment. Better public spaces enhance the attraction of the area and create more opportunities to strengthen community bonding. The strong collaboration of public-private-people sectors also help to build important capabilities and networks in sustaining future rejuvenation efforts.

From left to right, Jo Berridge, URA Chief Urban Designer, Fun Siew Leng, Wataru Tanaka, Christopher Lee, URA Group Director, Architecture and Urban Design, Yap Lay Bee, at URA’s inaugural Urban Design Roundtable in 2024. 

About the experts
Dr Christopher Lee – Co-Founder and Principal of Serie Architects since 2008. He leads the firm’s design practice in London, Mumbai and Singapore. Examples of his projects in Singapore include the National University of Singapore School of Design & Environment 4, the State Courts Towers and One Pearl Bank. 

Joe Berridge - Senior Partner at Urban Strategies Inc. He is a leading Master Planner who has led many complex planning and regeneration projects worldwide. He teaches at the University of Toronto and published his first book, ‘Perfect City’ in 2019. 

Wataru Tanaka – Senior Executive Officer and Urban Designer with NIKKEN SEKKEI LTD. He has led a variety of master planning and design projects around the world, applying his expertise in urban design focused on transit-oriented developments and public space designs. 

All three experts spoke at URA’s inaugural Urban Design Roundtable: “Shaping Liveable Cities Through Urban Design” in September 2024, as part of URA’s 50th anniversary and to raise awareness on the importance of urban design in shaping more resilient, liveable cities for the future. The event also saw the release of four Singapore Urban Design Guidebooks by URA, the most comprehensive documentation of Singapore’s urban design efforts to date. Download the books

here

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