Modulverantwortung: Annika Seifert
Lehrteam: / Lecturers: Annika Seifert, Luca Deon
Assistant: Anthony Frank

Cool City – Coping with Urban Heat

Climate change has reached our cities. The question of how we deal with heat has become an integral part of architectural and urban planning. How great is the influence of urban typologies on the microclimate? How do we avoid overheating of urban spaces? What role do cold reservoirs and air flow play? How do we negotiate complex urban design issues such as open and green space, topography, setting, history and morphology or spatial hierarchies of public and private with the pressing additional task of the urban climate? In short, how does the topic of energy influence our traditional understanding of urban design and how do we make the transition from urban scale to architecture?

In cooperation with the city of Lucerne, we are looking at the Ruopigen neighbourhood, which is a singular ocurrence in Lucerne‘s urban fabric: In response to the rapid population growth, large-scale housing developments and a new neighbourhood centre were built here in the 1980s, based on Zurich-based architect Dolf Schnebli‘s design plan. The city is now asking us the very topical question of how to deal with the large, still undeveloped part of the site in the context of this unusual neighbour.

The design work in the semester is divided into two parts: In the first phase, students work in small groups to develop possible urban scenarios, which they examine in terms of their climate behaviour. This is done using a new app developed at the HSLU, which allows architects to simulate climatic effects virtually in a 3D model in real time during their design process. In the second phase of the semester, the students continue their design work individually and in an architectural scale. The focus here is on the topics of façade and typology, which evolve from the urban planning scenario.