BUILDING A FUTURE PLANET
#1 We Want Water!
Thursday, 23 November 2023, 18:00

The kick-off Lab Talk of the new ANCB programme BUILDING A FUTURE PLANET_Water: Curse or Blessing?! in collaboration with Deutsche Bundesstiftung Umwelt, the Netherlands Embassy in Berlin, Winy Maas, MVRDV, and Henk Ovink, former Special Envoy to the UN and Water Ambassador of the Netherlands

This kick-off Lab Talk to the new series BUILDING A FUTURE PLANET_Water: Curse or Blessing!? will look at the whole water cycle and building future resilience. It aims to identify and explore solution-driven, sustainable, water-related architectural and urban development projects. Within this holistic approach, water will be considered as a critical new value, an opportunity for transformation and both a crucial resource and an existential threat. Impulses will be set for the focal points of the following sessions in the series:

1. Water as resource: not enough or too much of it_How do we fight drought and desertification: can we make rain or desalinate? How and where can sweet water be stored and cleaned? What are possible technical options? What is the connection between water, building and climate protection in the wake of sea-level rise and flooding?
2. Water and the city_What are prerequisites and implementations for water-wise cities, including sponge cities, cooling cities and renaturation/shared habitat?
3. Water and building_How can design and construction take water-related issues into account? What needs to be changed on a legislative level?
4. Water and innovation_How to build with new or newly interpreted materials and technologies that promote resilience in relation to water, transformation and circular economy?

PROGRAMME 

Welcome
Miriam Mlecek_Programme Manager, Aedes Metropolitan Laboratory, Berlin
Henk Snoeken_Counselor for Infrastructure, Environment and Water Management, Netherlands Embassy in Berlin

Introduction
Winy Maas_Director and Co-Founder MVRDV, Rotterdam

Presentations  
Justin Abbott_Global Water Skills Leader, Arup, Dublin
Dieter Gerten_Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research | Professor for Global Change Climatology and Hydrology, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin
Rikke Juul Gram_Partner, Schønherr Landscape Architects, Copenhagen

Panel Discussion with speakers, peers and the audience 
moderated by Winy Maas

Front-Row Peers
Britta Deiwick_Landscape Architect, Berlin
Birgit Detig_Cities Director Berlin and Hamburg, Arcadis, Hamburg | Berlin
Anke Hagemann_Habitat Unit, TU Berlin
Theresa Keilhacker_President, Berlin Chamber of Architects
Anne König_Team Manager, Water Resource Management, Berliner Wasserbetriebe
Friedrich Hetzel_Head of Department Water and Waste Management, DWA – Deutsche Vereinigung für Wasserwirtschaft, Abwasser und Abfall e.V., Hennef
Sebastian Schimmelpfennig_Resource Management, Berliner Wasserbetriebe
Sebastian Seelig_Partner BuroHappold | Cities, Berlin

BUILDING A FUTURE PLANET_Water: Curse or Blessing?! 
ANCB's new international, interdisciplinary programme aims to establish new planning processes and structures regarding water, water use and distribution in relation to the built environment. In a series of six Lab Talks  dedicated to building future resilience, Aedes aims to identify and discuss sustainable, water-related architectural and urban development projects that also take into account the (re)establishment of social and economic balance with greater socio-economic coherence through conscious water management. Interdisciplinary experts will discuss the role of water in climate change mitigation: from reducing CO2 emissions and ecological footprint, to adaptation and resilience in the context of cities and states, to water as a common good from source to sea. Water as an element, resource and infrastructure has a far-reaching impact on the living, natural and built environment. In BUILDING A FUTURE PLANET, architects and planners will engage in an innovative exchange of knowledge with experts from the fields of environmental research, science and politics, in order to derive consequences for their work processes, planning, implementation and building projects. 

Series timeline and topics