Table of contents for N. 120 in Topos

With a population of about 2.5 million, Vancouver is Canada’s third-largest metropolitan region and regularly ranks among the world’s most livable cities. One reason Vancouver is such a great place to live is its mild climate. Whereas Canada is usually associated with lots of snow and cold winters, the temperatures in Vancouver rarely drop significantly below freezing point, even in December, due to the proximity of the ocean and the influence of the warm Kuroshio Current. Geographically, Vancouver ticks all the boxes. Not only is the water within easy reach – the city is located in the bay-like Strait of Georgia, well protected by offshore Vancouver Island. The city is also surrounded by numerous forests, lakes and mountains, which are popular travel destinations for Vancouverites. Vancouver’s liveability success, however, does…

Our cities are particularly in demand. According to the United Nations Human Settlements Prgogram (UN-Habitat), cities consume 78 percent of the energy produced worldwide and are responsible for more than 60 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. The big problem here is that for too long we have relied on the steady, never-ending flow of oil, natural gas and other fossil fuels. These are fuels that took hundreds of millions of years to form. For only about 150 years now, with the onset of industrialization, man has increasingly used fossil fuels to power machinery, heating and an ever-increasing flood of electrical equipment. Even within this comparatively short period of fossil fuel use, the greenhouse gases emitted in this way are making themselves felt. That the planet is getting warmer as a…

Albert Einstein’s famous formula describes the relationship between mass and energy and implies that both are inter-changeable. Put into words, the energy(E) of are sting object equalsits mass(m) multiplied by the speed of light(c) squared. Since the speed of light is so great at about 300,000,000 meters per second (and even more so its square at 90,000,000,000 meters per second), the energy content of even small masses is considerable. If one could convert 1 kilogram of mass entirely into energy, this would correspond to the energy content of about 2 billion litres of crude oil.…

Architecture is an ideological field. Some want architecture to be understood as a creative-artistic discipline, others recognize it primarily as a transdisciplinary and society-building practice. Architecture may be many things, but by now and above all it is mostly reduced to its worst aspects due to divergent interpretations in the public sphere. The public sector expects social qualities and aesthetics that attract media attention (keyword: tourism, election), private project developers want efficient floor plans and low-maintenance and cheap construction methods, users want attractive and high-quality spaces for living, working and leisure, and standards are exclusively set concerning safety and building physics. Workers in the field of architecture have no lesser task than to live up to all those needs and demands. The reason for that is topic of a whole…

Jessica Mankel studied History of Art at the Johannes Gutenberg-University of Mainz. She started her journalism traineeship at Baumeister, Garten + Landschaft and topos in 2019. She has joined the editorial team and works as performance manager. j.mankel@georg-media.de Ramona Kraxner finished her studies in architecture with the Graz Diploma Award 2020. She soon started to actively engage in critical discourse and eventually in architecture communication. She is the brand manager for NXT A, The Network for Young Architecture Workers. r.kraxner@georg-media.de Magdalena Schmidkunz studied Landscape Architecture at the Weihenstephan-Triesdorf University of Applied Sciences and Urban Planning at the Technical University of Munich. She began working as an editor for Garten + Landschaft and topos in 2021. m.schmidkunz@georg-media.de Tobias Hager is a journalist and Chief Content Officer and member of the management…

Why not? In a time of multiple crises like ours, there is nothing to stop us from having another crisis on our hands. Admittedly, this crisis is not particularly new. We have been failing at it for decades and it is certainly also partly to blame for the failure of our climate protection efforts. Yes, in this issue we are talking about the energy crisis. At the latest since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the whole world should have realised how deep the grave is that we have already dug for ourselves with a lot of fossil energy. In the course of producing this magazine issue, we had to realise that our research repeatedly led to two very central aspects. On the one hand, I am talking about the efficiency…

Every year, demand for batteries rises by 35 percent, while recycling rates are only at a low 5 percent globally. Most batteries are disposed of or burnt, leading to a dependency on the supply of lithium and cobalt. With e-mobility increasing significantly, the number of batteries in circulation rises too. In 2025, there will be around 6 million old batteries. “If we do not act, there will be a huge waste of valuable battery resources”, explains Felix Wagner, CEO of Circunomics. “Recycling and reusing those batteries in energy storages is key for preventing battery waste. But to make the transition into reuse and recycling secure and scalable, we need a lifecycle platform based on battery analytics”. This idea is the underlying motivation of Circunomics, a German start-up dedicated to including…

Anyone trailblazers of new technology usually have to live with teething problems. This was the case for the Darmstadt Court Theater: In 1888, the new electric lighting was to be ceremoniously inaugurated with an "Aida" performance. But during the opera, the lighting failed several times. A blessing in disguise: the likewise new, battery-operated emergency lighting worked perfectly, as the Darmstädter Tagblatt reported. Darmstadt was one of the first cities to install a central power supply. The Darmstadt Technical University had already established the first chair for electrical engineering in Germany in 1882. When the new municipal power plant went into operation in 1888, the court theater was its most important customer, with more than 3,000 lights taking up more than half of its capacity. Theaters, with their enormous fire load…

Dominos Atlantique wide Angels Benches In a way comparable to the child’s play, it is the imagination of the designer’s pencil that lets the user of the bench play with his environment. With two possible connection angles, the Dominos Atlantique allow all shapes and patterns of the seat, from the simplest to the most elaborate, with unlimited freedom: star- and cross-scaped, zigzag or bordering a planted area. Dominos are an inherent part of Aréa ATLANTIQUE series. They connect in a natural way with the backless benches and allow the city to be designed more playfully with imagination and creativity. Even before life itself takes up this wide-angle bench, its graphics and rhythm already leaves its impression in their surroundings. area-streetfurniture.com BauderGREEN Biotope Extensive green roofs can be transformed into ecologically…

ELKE KAHR Elke Kahr has been mayor of Graz since November 2021 and is sometimes called the serene communist from Graz. Before becoming mayor, she was a residential councillor and then worked in the transport department. She mastered both tasks with flying colours and was rewarded with the mayoral election victory. She thus became the first communist mayor of a provincial capital in Austria. It should be mentioned, however, that Kahr had to distance herself from totalitarian regimes several times, as she was caught in the crossfire of critics and the media on several occasions. In August 2022, the New York Times dedicated the so-called Saturday profile to Elke Kahr – not without reason. From the very beginning, it was important for Elke Kahr to create a new relationship with…

We have an energy crisis. Not only in large metropolises, of course, but primarily there, because a lot of energy is needed here at all times. In many countries of the world, it has been quite easy in recent years. After all, gas and oil still seemed to be available and people tried to expand renewable energy sources calmly and unhurriedly. However, the fact that fossil, primary energy sources remained our primary sources for electricity and above all heat was confidently ignored. In years when not enough electricity could be produced anyway, attempts were made to push ahead with the electrification of everything. But we lack infrastructure, storage facilities and production capacities for green electricity. Even if a lot of electricity can be produced at certain points, our grid is…

Cities are already up to 10°C hotter than surrounding areas. As temperatures rise, here are four ways to cool cities down – saving both lives and energy If you’ve felt uncomfortably hot in a city this summer, chances are it’s not just because of the weather. Look around any urban centre and you’ll see the built environment itself exacerbates summer temperatures. Vehicles stuck in traffic emitting heat. Airconditioners pumping waste heat into the air. Concrete and asphalt across almost every surface, absorbing and radiating the sun’s rays. Urban canyons formed between tall buildings, trapping heat at the street level. All these factors contribute towards a phenomenon called the “urban heat island” effect, which results in cities being up to 10°C hotter than the surrounding countryside. How do we to tackle…

From space, there is probably no sign of human energy consumption more obvious than the lights of the night. The photos shown in this series exemplify how humans have shaped and changed the earth, as urban settlement areas make the planet shine brightly in clusters, streets are recognizable as more or less elongated lines, and coastal areas are outlined by artificial light.…

“Unfortunately, the past has shown that we are relatively indifferent to where our raw materials come from and under what conditions they are extracted” Renewable energies are clean and environmentally friendly - in stark contrast to energy generation from fossil raw materials. To put it bluntly, they are the key to saving our planet, while at the same time serving our ever-growing hunger for energy. The energy transition must come, but it will not come without its own implications for the environment. For a while, the rumor persisted that solar cells were already consuming more energy in their production than they could produce during their lifetime. While this may have been true for the first prototypes, it is no longer the case today. Depending on the type of cell used…