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Future of XYZ is a bi-weekly interview series that explores big questions about where we are as a world and where we’re going. Through candid conversations with international experts, visionary leaders and courageous changemakers- we provoke new thinking about what's coming down the pipeline on matters related to art & design, science & innovation, culture & creativity.
Future of XYZ is presented by iF Design, a respected member of the international design community and host of the prestigious iF DESIGN AWARD since 1953. The show is also a proud member of the SURROUND Podcast Network. For more information, visit ifdesign.com/XYZ.
00:00:04:00 - 00:00:21:14
Speaker 1
Hello and welcome to this week's episode of Future of XYZ. I'm here with Kevin Kennon. He is a guest speaking about the future of urbanization. Based in New York City. So the heart of urban life. Kevin, welcome so much to Future of XYZ.
00:00:21:16 - 00:00:29:24
Speaker 2
Thank you, Lisa. Thank you very much for inviting me on your fantastic podcast, and it's an honor to be here.
00:00:30:01 - 00:01:03:11
Speaker 1
Well, I appreciate that and I appreciate that you're here. You are many times over award winning architect with projects featured in the permanent collection at MoMA, also in New York City, the Museum of Modern Art. And you run a firm called Beyond Zero, DDC, based in New York City, doing projects all over the world, it seems. And you've really kind of pivoted even with that name deeply into sustainability and sustainable visionary status, I think.
00:01:03:13 - 00:01:26:00
Speaker 1
And I think that's an interesting place for us to kind of explore in the future of urbanization. But before I get into all my cool and exciting questions that I'm dying to ask you, we always have to start out by asking our guests in the context of your experience and expertise, Kevin. How do we define this topic of urbanization?
00:01:26:02 - 00:02:30:05
Speaker 2
Well, let's start by taking on the word sustainability. Yeah, I was an English major before I became an architect, and so words matter a great deal. And I think it's something because we're such a visual oriented profession that we sometimes get tripped up in words. And and and so before we talk about urbanization, I think it's important that we talk about sustainability, because unfortunately, I have come to believe that it's overused and it it sort of it's become a term that is losing sight of one of our strengths in architecture or historically one of our strengths, which is to lead the way towards a future because, you know, sustainability is essentially about staying in place
00:02:30:05 - 00:03:00:02
Speaker 2
and sustaining. And you have to ask ourselves what exactly are we sustaining? Because let's face it, the present sucks. And, you know, I like to look at where we're going and in particular how we can reimagine the future. So I'm not really quite sure exactly what the term is that we should be using. But let's just start with regenerative as opposed to sustaining in place.
00:03:00:04 - 00:03:29:23
Speaker 2
So how do we create a regenerative city? And I think that's a very interesting place to start. And I think the question really is, you know, historically, why do people want to gather in a city? You know, what is it about cities that attract people to in the first place? And, you know, I think key to that is an understanding that the city offers a diversity of experience.
00:03:30:00 - 00:03:55:19
Speaker 2
If you live, you know, away from the city and you have a real want to learn about someplace else in the world or you have a particular kind of focus, you know, generally you can find these things by traveling to the city. Today, you know, we do a lot of that just by the Internet we kind of connect ourselves
00:03:55:19 - 00:04:26:15
Speaker 2
globally. So if the traditional way was the reason people got together was because they wanted a diversity of experience. Now what is it about the city now that can keep people there and keep people continuing to there? Because it it you know, every statistics I've seen is that we're increasingly becoming living in urban areas or, you know, at least urban sprawls.
00:04:26:18 - 00:04:52:19
Speaker 1
Well, I mean, I actually have that. Last year, 58% of the world's 8.2 billion people were living in cities or in urban areas. And the trend is expected to continue to rise, with projections suggesting 70% by 2050 and almost 80% by 2100, which seems like the case for the future of urbanization is actually the future of man or human.
00:04:52:21 - 00:05:36:15
Speaker 2
Yes, exactly. I think the future of all of us and humanity itself. And so you can't and this is the key, I think, to reimagine what that city is, because unfortunately, most of our models of the future of the city tend to be a little dystopian and and I think, you know, my profession and our profession has devolved into problem solvers and I, I think we need to get back to our fundamental role in society, which is to lead towards a better future.
00:05:36:17 - 00:05:40:13
Speaker 2
And if that's a little utopian, I'm guilty as charged.
00:05:40:15 - 00:06:16:07
Speaker 1
Well, what are the I mean, you work all over the world. I mean, I'm curious about what this future I think we've defined. Urbanization basically is like the process of a population living increasingly in urban areas and in that obviously there are opportunities and challenges for architects and city slash urban planners for sure. But in your experience working in big cities, you know, from from obviously New York, but also, you know, Tokyo, London, Sao Paulo, whatever big city, Istanbul, whatever big city we want to name.
00:06:16:12 - 00:06:23:21
Speaker 1
Like, what are some of these challenges and opportunities that you've seen that face architects that are unique in these urban areas?
00:06:23:23 - 00:06:54:20
Speaker 2
Well, let's just take one that I know pretty well, having spent a lot of time there in Beijing when I first traveled to Beijing, it must have been in the nineties and Beijing was a terrible place. It was designed sort of Soviet era kind of planning with these giant super blocks. And, you know, there's a mass of people, but the pollution was unbelievable.
00:06:54:20 - 00:07:05:14
Speaker 2
I mean, you could not walk on most days. You couldn't walk out of your hotel room without feeling like you were choking to death.
00:07:05:16 - 00:07:59:00
Speaker 2
And and China embarked on a very, I'd say, progressive and rapid decarbonization, which essentially reduced the pollution levels to today, which is far, far better than what it used to be now. But they just did a study I read last week where that one of the reasons they now think that, they meaning experts in climate change, they now think one of the contributors to the increase of global warming, which which we now I think that the evidence is clear that last year we were we we went above the 1.5 degree.
00:07:59:02 - 00:08:05:09
Speaker 1
Threshold for for for sustainable for sustainable life that was set by the U.N. as the target goal, right?
00:08:05:11 - 00:08:30:19
Speaker 2
Yes. That's good. And and and China contributed something like 80% of that because it's so rapidly decelerated fossil fuel and the carbon that emitted in the atmosphere. But, you know, contradictory had a cooling effect on the earth temperature. So even so so.
00:08:30:21 - 00:08:41:17
Speaker 1
I heard something yesterday that China is actually now running at 70% renewables, which is like whole I mean, that's that's pretty amazing when when we're moving in the opposite direction.
00:08:41:19 - 00:08:45:10
Speaker 2
Yes. Well, that that in and of itself is a whole nother.
00:08:45:12 - 00:08:48:16
Speaker 1
We being Americans because we have audience everywhere.
00:08:48:18 - 00:09:21:17
Speaker 2
Right. Well, and so so the urgency, obviously, of trying to get a handle on what what that becomes because of it, it simply becomes a question of rapid population growth that isn't that we don't use the tools that we have at hand in order to create a more humane city. Then it's it's really going to devolve into something not completely dystopian.
00:09:21:19 - 00:09:48:22
Speaker 1
So interesting because you you've you talked about how, you know, Beijing as an example, but historically ever since really we're talking I mean, way back, but starting in the 1800s and the Industrial Revolution, I mean, cities have been dirty, polluted and polluters not necessarily these epicenters of health and wellness. And of course, that's increasingly what people are seeking in what you were asking, like, why do people come to cities is for diversity of experience.
00:09:48:22 - 00:10:13:02
Speaker 1
But now increasingly there's nature that's desired and there's culture, and there's all these things that are about health and wellness. So I'm curious, like to make, you know, cities these as we urbanize further and further in the future, like to make them habitable for both human and non-human inhabitants and maybe even positive contributors to the surrounding nature or, you know, environment.
00:10:13:04 - 00:10:29:15
Speaker 1
What is their role of architects? And I'm going to add in urban planners and policy makers and things and be more eco friendly in combating climate change and maybe even, I don't know, as you just said, like reducing carbon emissions and being a positive contributor.
00:10:29:17 - 00:10:58:07
Speaker 2
Well, I think part of it is and this is kind of why, what I would say the focus of my career at this point is recalibrating how we how we conceptualize nature. And I think that that's so it's so much of at least the 21st century. There is a sort of false dichotomy between cities, urbanism and nature.
00:10:58:09 - 00:11:40:14
Speaker 2
And they were considered to be opposite. Right? You know, you lived in the rural area that was nature. You came to the city, you know, you lived in a concrete jungle to mix my metaphors, but the but but I think that that in that is a key to to sort of understanding what the city could be. And it should become, which is to to understand that nature is not the it's not the opposite of living in the city, but rather it's sorry, that is my phone.
00:11:40:16 - 00:12:19:04
Speaker 2
So somewhere else. But it's it's not living exclusive to how we live in the city but is in fact a just this thinking of the city itself as a different kind of landscape. It has its own parts of it. And just just to reiterate the conception of nature, historically, we but you know, back in the sort of 18th, 17th century, the conception of nature was that it was the unknown, you know, as the
00:12:20:05 - 00:12:50:20
Speaker 2
and it was it was somehow a unknowable and that was an acceptance of that somehow, you know, along the way that we began to congregate in cities. You know, I think that the philosophy, rational philosophy at least developed that we could tame nature, you know, that this was something that and of course, we we relied on that for our whole economy, our whole supply.
00:12:50:21 - 00:13:17:02
Speaker 1
We've we've destroyed by by taming, we mean destroy and extract for own benefit. But I'm curious because there is and I want to come back to some of how we're we're combating what we've historically done to move into the future. But I mean, I want to I want to touch on something else that the role of the architecture in the city beyond nature and well-being, which is of course like shaping the cultural identity of that urban center.
00:13:17:04 - 00:13:45:08
Speaker 1
You led, I believe, United Architects, who was one of the finalists in the World Trade Center competition. That I mean, obviously, I was in New York during 9/11. What has happened, you know, at the at Ground Zero is phenomenal. One world trade is extraordinary. I couldn't love the memorial more to, you know, 9/11 victims. You were intimately involved in that.
00:13:45:08 - 00:13:57:18
Speaker 1
Like, what role do you believe that architects should be playing in either preserving, conserving, or transforming that cultural identity of a particular place?
00:13:57:20 - 00:14:32:04
Speaker 2
Well, that, you know, so that's a that's a very difficult question and a difficult I don't mean that it's it's so problematic that we shouldn't be discussing it. I mean, it is in essence, the the you hit the nail on the head. It's exactly the questions we should be asking. I'm not sure I have answers, but I do think that it's helpful that we start to frame our view a little bit differently than than we have been.
00:14:32:06 - 00:15:05:18
Speaker 2
And that is to understand and again, coming back to this, this idea of wilderness in particular, that that unknowable part of nature, that the city has its own wilderness and its its own like areas of terra incognita, you know, that has its own areas that somehow have yet to be discovered. And and it just the question of how we start to go about it.
00:15:05:18 - 00:15:42:01
Speaker 2
And that was that was exactly what happened with Ground Zero. I mean, after ground Zero was, you know, in essence an act of sheer destruction. But what it left was its own terra incognita and, you know, and part of that experience was how do you interpret something that itself was at the time, completely unknowable. And, you know, how do you give that some kind of a shape and and direction without necessarily saying this is what it had to be?
00:15:42:03 - 00:15:53:24
Speaker 2
And so that was and that was the spirit that I think, you know, I gathered basically all my friends and, you know, and we came up with our proposal.
00:15:54:01 - 00:16:14:22
Speaker 1
And I mean, if we go back to Beijing or just China, where iF Design, you know, who presents the Future of XYZ and where I work has a huge footprint, especially in the design and architecture space. I think about Shanghai, which, you know, so much of the urban development has come at the expense of historic preservation.
00:16:14:24 - 00:16:29:10
Speaker 1
I mean, is there in addition to the responsibility that architects have for shaping the cultural identity of a city, is there also not a responsibility in that to balance historical preservation with modern innovation?
00:16:29:12 - 00:16:54:14
Speaker 2
absolutely. You know, I think that that's another sort of one of those tropes that that dominated at least the early part of my career was that of, you know, building new was good. And I saw this a lot in Asia where it was, you know, we don't want things that were ancient or old. We want something new.
00:16:54:14 - 00:17:34:11
Speaker 2
We want to be. And if you're a developing country, I understand that that cultural impetus. But but so much is lost. And I think we've now at a point where that fortunately, we've embraced that just to the fabric of what makes those cities interesting, all cities interesting. It's not just building new. And obviously, of course, there are environmental reasons why that can be called into question and that helps support, I think, the argument.
00:17:34:11 - 00:17:44:20
Speaker 2
But but more importantly, as you were saying, the cultural part of it is, you know, why give up part of your history? It helps ground, you know, where you are and.
00:17:44:21 - 00:17:54:22
Speaker 1
It makes every city unique, which is increasingly they're they're becoming more and more I mean, you know, for for lack of a better word, monotonous.
00:17:54:24 - 00:17:56:03
Speaker 2
Yes.
00:17:56:05 - 00:18:19:23
Speaker 1
It's it's interesting. You're coming to something that I know you're an expert in and your firm specializes in, which is adaptive reuse. I guess we probably need to, in your answer, describe briefly what adaptive reuse is for people who aren't urban planners or architects, but what role do you think that adaptive reuse plays in the future of urban development and subsequently?
00:18:19:23 - 00:18:37:15
Speaker 1
I'd also love you to talk a little bit about like repurposing for solving a lot of the housing crisis. If we in fact are going to continue to increase our populations in cities. New York is a great example where, you know, you have a lot of empty commercial buildings right now. Right? And and we need a lot more residential and affordable residential.
00:18:37:15 - 00:18:48:05
Speaker 1
Like does adaptive reuse have any benefit there? Or is it how how is it used and can it be used to solve some of our economic challenges as well?
00:18:48:07 - 00:19:19:09
Speaker 2
Well, yes, I think this is, again why I come back to terms like regenerative. I think that's easier for people to to comprehend because what we're all we're talking about essentially growing new shoots of life. And and let's say, you know, fields that have already been plowed and, you know, you have sometimes you have to let that percolate and and, you know, the word culture itself
00:19:20:05 - 00:20:17:00
Speaker 2
comes from cultivating. So it just to keep going back to the sort of natural roots of our language so that that the regenerative reuse of existing buildings is really where you take a building that's there. And that was originally purposed to say be a factory in downtown New York. Most of Tribeca, for example, it was all factories or like most of them electrical and or where I live in the West Village are all printing factories and the and then an understanding that within that are possibilities of people living in these spaces and how do you transform them and you know, so New York now has a well-established history.
00:20:17:02 - 00:20:31:05
Speaker 2
And I think a lot of it has to do with the the preservation movement that came out of the worst, that types of urban renewal left over from Robert Moses and his generation.
00:20:31:07 - 00:20:40:04
Speaker 1
Which, of course, have an enormous amount to do with racism and dysfunction in economic class system and in cities around the world.
00:20:40:06 - 00:21:21:02
Speaker 2
Yeah, So I think the idea that you don't have to throw the baby out with the bathwater and that there are ways to position existing buildings, especially in what we call now today in New York, Class B office buildings. You know, where they were built. A lot of them were built in the seventies and and they have enclosed curtain walls, some of them glass or a combination of glass and precast or whatever material, but they were completely enclosed or isolated.
00:21:21:04 - 00:22:04:01
Speaker 2
And then the possibility is that some of them, not all of them, can become places where people can live. And and I think even more than that, the whole I thinking at least, is that at least the most enlightened thinking, as far as I'm concerned, is in creating neighborhoods and some of those neighborhoods can actually be inside of a single building where you have multiple uses in that some of them can be offices, some of them living, and some of them, you know, cultural spaces of galleries and things like that.
00:22:04:03 - 00:22:21:05
Speaker 2
So that the more mixture of life that you can bring to the existing fabric, I think that bodes well for the regeneration of the city.
00:22:21:07 - 00:22:44:17
Speaker 1
I think there's kind of this and we're coming really close up on time. So I'm going to ask you to answer a couple of these like little more rapid fire. But like you worked on really, really huge commercial buildings, like the million and a half square foot Barclays North American headquarters, or a bunch of the retail spaces for Bloomingdales, which are, you know, hundreds of thousands of square feet.
00:22:44:19 - 00:23:15:10
Speaker 1
You've worked on cultural institutions like the Rodin Museum in South Korea, but you've also done increasingly a bunch of zero carbon luxury eco resorts in wilderness areas. I'm curious, across all these projects, like there is a very big challenge in my experience in architecture of not only merging design excellence with ecological responsibility, but also selling that in. And when we're thinking about adaptive reuse or culture or bringing nature and all these things that obviously you have passion for, Kevin.
00:23:15:10 - 00:23:25:23
Speaker 1
You know, how do you, how is that balance happening? And do we see a trend moving in the correct direction as far as urbanization goes?
00:23:26:00 - 00:23:55:06
Speaker 2
Well, you know, we do live in the US and the US is, is dominated primarily by economic necessity. And so it's not always a quite, sometimes it's a very, very difficult thing to do. Fortunately, I do feel that that more and more people are at least who live in New York City, become a little bit more enlightened about this.
00:23:55:06 - 00:24:18:04
Speaker 2
But, you know, I was talking recently to a developer in Miami and I was saying, where are you guys putting in sustainable initiatives? And he was like, Nobody's buying it. You know, we live in Florida. You know, this is and, you know, I'm like, wow, you know, this is you live in a in a place that is subject to all kinds of.
00:24:18:06 - 00:24:19:23
Speaker 1
Climate related disasters.
00:24:19:24 - 00:24:54:05
Speaker 2
Climate related, you know, potential disasters and, yeah, we're going to we're, you know, resiliency. That's something we can build into it. And that's an infrastructure problem. It's not a building by building problem. And so that, you know, part of part of why it's important to provide visionary leadership is to change. And it's to some degree, it's political, you know, to begin to change people's perceptions so that they'll demand the things and you know.
00:24:54:16 - 00:25:15:02
Speaker 1
I mean, I'm a little curious how in Miami a developer can't see that climate change is coming for them and that they'd want to. But again, that's America where we say, okay, they're going to claim an insurance claim and everyone will do, you know, and they'll just tear it down and waste it. Whereas if we're talking about the Netherlands, they're building entire infrastructures that are built for, you know, managing waters.
00:25:15:02 - 00:25:22:24
Speaker 1
And in France or in South America, I mean, basically everyone's doing it differently than we are.
00:25:23:01 - 00:25:51:05
Speaker 2
Well, that's the know again, you sort of in and the Netherlands, they've been doing that for a century. You know, that part of their that's part of their historic culture because the US we don't we haven't been doing that. And it's because we don't, again, that the U.S. has been sort of dominated by a thinking of a frontier thinking, you know, of we have to build new you know, we have to leave the past behind, you know.
00:25:51:07 - 00:26:16:08
Speaker 1
What's that mean for kind of the future generation of architects as we look ahead? I mean, you have, you lecture at places like Yale and Columbia. I mean, Yale is one of the I mean, both are one of the top architectural schools in the country, hopefully will still remain despite the current political crisis. But kind of what are the lessons that future architects are being taught?
00:26:16:08 - 00:26:21:07
Speaker 1
And what do you think is the most important thing? If we're thinking about the future of urbanization?
00:26:21:09 - 00:27:00:11
Speaker 2
Well, I think we have to start to understand that there's more to architecture than just solving problems. I mean, so and, and I, I, we're going to have to author the future. We're going to have to provide. And I do think that that I am complete proponent of expanding what it means to be an architect. I think we really narrowed it into something that is I just it's become a kind of a not even a very valuable commodity.
00:27:00:13 - 00:27:32:14
Speaker 2
And I think that means getting engaged, you know, getting engaged politically, getting engaged in in any lots of endeavors that involve your community and understanding that architecture, despite the fact of how it's being portrayed in movies like the Brutalist and just kind of solo Howard or Howard Roark type of endeavor, that it's fundamentally social. And a lot of people get into architecture when they realize, this is great.
00:27:32:14 - 00:27:46:18
Speaker 2
I can hang out in the studio, be with my friends, we can kind of have fun or at least suffer, you know, collectively. So the that, that, that that would be my biggest takeaway.
00:27:46:18 - 00:28:19:04
Speaker 1
And do you think I mean and then I'm going to dive into our last question. I mean I have is you probably picked up on I have a lot of experience in this industry. It's one of my favorite of the design disciplines and that's hard to say. But worldwide architecture is a super sexy, revered profession, right? It's the very high powered work, you know, Ayn Rand Fountainhead, for people who don't know that dominated by these super cool projects and these star architects and you know all of this and yet the majority of you barely make enough to survive.
00:28:19:09 - 00:28:39:19
Speaker 1
You are burdened with immense amounts of schooling. And I know this from multiple countries around the world and then in the U.S. and everywhere else, you have these continuing education credits that almost no one else other than nurses perhaps has anything akin to, you know, is there going to be enough? And then you have developers who think that they're architects, Right.
00:28:39:21 - 00:28:49:16
Speaker 1
So are there going to be enough architects and urban planners to help us carry forward the future of urbanization in the way that the population of this world is going to demand?
00:28:49:18 - 00:29:15:10
Speaker 2
Well, again, this is going to sound contrary, and I have great hope, in A.I. I am not sure if that if that means we're going to have more. I think we're just going to be able to do more if we harness A.I. properly. Architecture has become overly specialized, and that was a recipe for a lot of architects to become moderately successful.
00:29:15:16 - 00:29:47:23
Speaker 2
You know, at least making a decent wage. But I do think that the skill set that's demanded of AI is is really much more a generalist skill set. And and hopefully, you know, that will become something that will be attractive to a number of people, especially those with maybe more of a liberal arts education and who have a broader view of the world.
00:29:48:00 - 00:30:05:05
Speaker 1
Interesting. So second to last question, Kevin, what is if you were pointing our listeners and viewers in one direction for an iconic reference or resource on urbanization, what would it be?
00:30:05:07 - 00:30:27:14
Speaker 2
you know, there's my friend Vishaan Chakrabarti just wrote a great book and, and unfortunately the title escapes me. It's something about urbanism, but it's a fantastic book and it's really very well written. It's got some great and it's, it's, it's, I think it's about less than a year old.
00:30:27:16 - 00:30:30:11
Speaker 1
CHAKRABARTI is the journalist.
00:30:30:13 - 00:30:41:14
Speaker 2
He's actually an architect. Yeah. And he is an interesting guy. He started out at SOM and he was the number two under Amanda Burden when she was.
00:30:41:16 - 00:30:46:10
Speaker 1
SOM being a very famous New York based architectural firm.
00:30:46:12 - 00:30:48:14
Speaker 2
Yeah. And so anyway.
00:30:48:18 - 00:30:51:12
Speaker 1
Skidmore and Merrill, I think is.
00:30:51:14 - 00:31:12:03
Speaker 2
Yes, or SOM for them. So and so yeah it's, I think it's and as maybe the architecture of urbanism or something like that but I'm sorry Vishaan if you're listening but but that CHAKRABARTI and get his book.
00:31:12:05 - 00:31:30:09
Speaker 1
Very cool. And to close, Kevin, I mean, you've touched on a lot of this, but like if you think, you know, far out like 25 years out to 2050, when we think that, you know, seven out of ten people on this planet are going to be living in urban centers, what's your greatest hope for the future of urbanization?
00:31:30:11 - 00:32:18:14
Speaker 2
Well, my my greatest hope is that it's inclusive and diverse, and we accept the diversity of that. And we understand embrace it as what makes cities special and unique. And and that we start to understand that our city is just another landscape. And it's it's it's another kind of nature. And once we start to think of that and think of it less in terms of a polarity, but actually a part of the wilderness that needs to be tamed in its own way by its own set of rules and that we sort of open our eyes to those possibilities and let's not try and rewrite the world, but let's try to understand it first.
00:32:18:16 - 00:32:26:11
Speaker 1
Well, that's a very nice place to end. Kevin Kennon, thank you so much for joining us today on Future of XYZ.
00:32:26:13 - 00:32:31:10
Speaker 2
Thank you, Lisa. Thank you very much for having me as a guest.
00:32:31:12 - 00:32:49:16
Speaker 1
And everyone watching and listening. Thanks for joining us. You know where to find us. If you're listening on whatever podcast platform you love, you can find us also on YouTube if you prefer to watch, but make sure you follow us on social media and leave a five star review. That's how people find us. I'm trying to ask more, it’s not my strength.
00:32:49:16 - 00:32:57:11
Speaker 1
So do it, please. If you like this show and we will see you again in two weeks time. Kevin, thanks again.
00:32:57:13 - 00:32:59:13
Speaker 2
Thanks, Lisa. All right. Bye bye.