Please, read here the interview with Martha Herrera González, Director of Communications and Corporate Social Responsibility for CEMEX Mexico and CEMEX-Tecnológico de Monterrey Center for Sustainable Community Development. As part of its activities, the center has launched the CEMEX-TEC Transforming Communities Award, an annual recognition of research and development of high impact sustainable development projects and initiatives that foster economic growth, technology transfer, social involvement of communities, and preservation of natural resources in Mexico. The winning team of this year's edition will be awarded with a trip to Finland to attend the SB11 Helsinki World Sustainable Building Conference, where they will take part in the International Student Competition Special Forum.
For more information, click on the picture to download Martha Herrera González's bio in PDF.
SuvelaSURGE: How and why was the CEMEX - Tecnológico de Monterrey Centre for Sustainable Community Development created?
Please read here the interesting insights into sustainable urban regeneration and the possibilities of the competition given by some members of the SuvelaSURGE Jury. For more information, click on each picture to download the members' bio in PDF.
SuvelaSURGE: How and why was the CEMEX - Tecnológico de Monterrey Centre for Sustainable Community Development created?
Martha Herrera: The Centre was founded in 2010 by two institutions of great tradition in Mexico: CEMEX and Tecnológico de Monterrey. Throughout their history, both organizations have been committed to social responsibility and the promotion of programs that quite contribute to improve the quality of life of Mexican communities, especially the most disadvantaged ones, the base of the pyramid. Through the CEMEX-Tecnológico de Monterrey Centre, we do research to find different ways to contribute to Mexico's sustainable development by promoting joint and interdisciplinary work between the private, public and academic sectors and creating innovative solutions to the diverse problems in our communities.
SuvelaSURGE: What are the most urgent problems to be faced by Mexican communities in terms of sustainable development?
Martha Herrera: As in most developing countries, communities face the most basic problems, such as water and energy supply, drainage, basic and higher education, inadequate or insufficient infrastructure, the careless exploitation of natural resources, etc.
Most of these problems can be solved by the joint work with the civil society, the private industry, the academic sector and the NGOs. Together, their work can begin to change Mexico´s communities and provide a promising outlook for Mexicans. One point remains clear: sustainable development must be a priority.
SuvelaSURGE: Within the context of the Centre's activities, what's the main objective of the CEMEX-TEC Transforming Communities Award?
Martha Herrera: Because of their own nature, universities are the ideal space for creating ideas coming from different fields and perspectives that develop into solutions to real problems. To foster a culture of sustainability amongst the future country leaders, the CEMEX-TEC Transforming Communities Award opened in 2011 to the student network of Tecnológico de Monterrey.
The Award recognizes and stimulates the development of exemplary projects that represent a considerable impact in terms of sustainable development, that boost economic growth, technologic transference, the social involvement of the communities and the preservation of natural resources.
The Award has a national reach and is meant for the public, private and academic sectors as to promote the creation of innovative solutions that stimulate the development of communities and guarantee a better quality of life for the civil society.
SuvelaSURGE: The winning team of this year's edition will be awarded with a trip to Finland to attend the SB11 Helsinki World Sustainable Building Conference, and they will participate in the Student Competition Special Session that will be organized as part of the official programme. How do you see this opportunity? What does it mean for the students?
Martha Herrera: We believe that the opportunity to attend SB11 will challenge and encourage students. Furthermore, they will have the chance to meet students from other countries, exchange ideas about sustainable development and present their proposals and at the time they compare them with others.
We are sure that this experience will enrich the students, open their minds and foster new ideas that have the potential to become great projects that could even change the outlook we now know. After all, travelling and meeting new people with similar interests can only broaden one's knowledge.
SuvelaSURGE: Is there any similarity between the Mexican and the Finnish competition?
Martha Herrera: The International Student Idea & Design Competition SUVELA SURGE aims at generating tools for rapid and ambitious regeneration and redevelopment of a neighborhood with a history of social housing and poor image. They evaluate projects based on the principles of sustainability (social, economic and environmental), which we also do.
I would say that the main difference between the two competitions is the origin: we talk about base-of-the-pyramid communities in a developing country, while you are now focusing on Suvela exclusively.
Of course, we were delighted to find such a similar competition in a country so far away and so different in many ways. This only speaks of the utmost urgency to think and act sustainable into the future as a global community.
SuvelaSURGE: The Centre will have an exhibition stand at SB11 Helsinki Conference. What will you show there? What do you expect from SB11 Helsinki?
Martha Herrera: We are eager to exchange experiences with other countries and organizations that work to promote the sustainable development of communities around the world. We firmly believe in the never ending process of learning from everyone and everything.
Along the line of sustainability, we understand that we can't reach our goals working by ourselves, locally, but we do know that we need to work globally. This means getting to know other projects, other people and other ideas and concepts that we can use in Mexico. Of course, we also want to explain and talk about what we have learned to others. We are constantly seeking for new ideas, new synergies and best practices from which we can learn. Our final goal in Helsinki is to learn, share our ideas and experiences.
Please read here the interesting insights into sustainable urban regeneration and the possibilities of the competition given by some members of the SuvelaSURGE Jury. For more information, click on each picture to download the members' bio in PDF.
SuvelaSURGE: How important is the sustainability today as a part of your field?
Arja Lukin: It is one of the biggest coming issues in design and construction. Buildings consume a very significant amount of energy, and controlling that is a key factor in slowing down climate change. Controlling consumption in old buildings is especially important.
What is important to understand is that sustainability is not just an issue of energy efficiency. One needs to be aware of its various aspects, even down to the quality of life itself.
Finland has agreed to only build nearly zero-energy houses by 2017. This is a huge challenge, as projects for public buildings often take at least five years, and the increased design and building costs should already be budgeted. Also, within every single building project, the tight energy efficiency requirements should be observed when setting the project goals.
Sebastià Jornet: It has been a long time since the Brundtland Report (1987), which defined sustainable development as meeting the needs of present generations without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. And this declaration also stated that sustainability should address in a balanced way the three pillars of the new urbanism: economic, social and ecological. The work of our office, at different scales of design, aims to develop precisely with this view, complex and multifaceted urban planning, in which the proposals, as far as possible, become options of feasibility and potential reality to set a new socially egalitarian urban life, designing viable and economically sustainable processes, and establishing committed and environmentally friendly models of intervention.
Sakari Toikkanen: The importance of sustainable construction is growing all the time. Clearly, sustainable and responsible operational principles spread and the demand is growing throughout. The need for sustainability comes from three sources: 1) the investors look at companies’ responsibility, 2) the clients use quality assessment where sustainability is one of their criteria, and 3) our own personnel looks after our activities and requires progress.
Sustainability is embedded into the whole concept containing energy-efficiency, service life, performance, etc. as part of end products or services.
Rainer Mahlamäki: I consider it is the most important issue now. My opinion is that sustainability and ecology should be the most important elements guiding architecture and construction.
SuvelaSURGE: Can you give an example of outstanding sustainable designing?
Arja Lukin: I'd rather not give one single example. An outstanding sustainable design has a holistic approach: it combines economical, social and environmental aspects. For designs like this, one can e.g. look at the Holcim Foundation and the projects they have awarded in their international competitions. The Holcim Foundation awards emphasize the variety of excellent solutions found in different cultures and environments: in other words, there is no single solution that fits in every location and situation!
Sebastià Jornet: Not easy for me to highlight a specific example since many are known, like Vauban in Freiburg (Germany), Kronsberg in Hannover (Germany), Viikki in Helsinki (Finland), Solar City in Linz (Austria), Sarriguren eco-city (Spain), etc. to name a few. But most of these are actions related in general to urban sprawl rather than to urban reform, in which issues are always more complex, due to pre-existent elements, in terms of generating a new urban life in a place that already exists. In this regard, I'm more interested in urban recycling than urban extension, as the first basic principle should always be, as far as possible, not to consume more soil than we have used already, optimizing and improving the quality of our cities rather than extending them. In general, I have to confess that I'm quite comfortable with the planning principles that advocate zero growth as the only possible and desirable alternative for urban planning, which aims at integrating sustainability with the utmost rigor in our practice, and although Utopia is not simple, nor easy to achieve, as the distant horizon, we must serve to do just that, to advance as Eduardo Galeano [1] said.
[1] Eduardo Galeano (Montevideo, 1940) is a Uruguayan journalist, writer and novelist.
Sakari Toikkanen: In our own production we implemented in Nupuri a geothermal heat pump system at a neighbourhood scale instead of optimizing it at a building level. In Suurpelto, the waste disposal is collected at low pressure through pipes, thus avoiding the need for garbage trucks in the housing area. In our office, we installed only LED lights on one floor and, when monitoring the performance of building services systems in our offices, we have observed that our LuxCool system provides improved energy-efficiency when benchmarked against other systems. In Viikki, we integrated PVs in the façades in 2003 already, which was then the first solar electricity application in apartment buildings in Finland.
An example from outside can be taken e.g. from Hammarby Sjöstad in Stockholm. We have also implemented solutions that work well there, such as heat recovery from waste water before its purification.
Rainer Mahlamäki: The buildings of Helsinki City centre are a wonderful example of sustainability. They are made of brick or stone, with thick walls. They are still standing and in good condition, and will be still in two or three hundred years. In the same time the new buildings will be growing mould and most of the have been torn down, I am afraid. We are experimenting too much in contemporary architecture and in construction.
SuvelaSURGE: How typical are the challenges Suvela faces today in Finland in general?
Arja Lukin: Suvela is a very good subject for the competition, since similar challenges can today be found all over Finland. In the 1970s the country faced a sudden need for more housing and services, as a large portion of the people moved to cities in search of work. Quick, industrial solutions were used in creating the suburbs, and while they answered the immediate problem, the other aspects were not considered.
Now the buildings have reached the age where immediate repairs should be done. While this gives an opportunity for various interventions, it also poses a big challenge in finding financial solutions.
Sebastià Jornet: During the period of the 60s and 80s, we witnessed a strong growth of our cities, in large part caused by the displacement of rural population towards them, and in this period the response of urban planning, of most of our cities, was the generation of the so-called residential developments (grands ensembles in France), also known as bedroom communities. This phenomenon occurs not only in Spain, but is largely present in many other European countries. These are times of huge construction boom, economic renewal and technological revolution, which generated a lot of neighbourhoods located in the peripheries of our cities, and in some cases, accumulated a certain amount of the different faces of marginalization, as the marginalization of their physical location, in addition to other fringe, such as the social and cultural marginalization regarding economic structures and services, or connectivity with the central city.
Having spent a lot of time recovering our urban centres, I sincerely believe that the great challenge of our cities lies precisely in these neighbourhoods, which may now occupy a place in a new urban geography, not as peripheral, and are better connected than in the beginning but continue to present a quality of life and social composition indexes below those that occur in the central city. I believe that the words pronounced by Oriol Bohigas [2] in the eighties, with a recently inaugurated democracy in Spain, are still applicable and our cities should focus on "sanitize the centre and monumentalize the periphery". That challenge continues be valid, at least what comes to the second part of the sentence.
[2] Oriol Bohigas (Barcelona, 1925), prestigious Catalan architect, founder of the office MBM Arquitectes.
Sakari Toikkanen: Neighbourhoods of that time have a great potential for improving sustainability: the heating energy consumption is high, the lighting control and HVAC systems can be considerably improved. The density of the urban fabric can also be increased in a sustainable way.
I think that far too often the optimization of refurbishment, or even demolition, takes place at a scale of an individual building, or housing cooperative, without studying the impacts at a neighbourhood level. Issues like energy production and energy supply and management systems should be contemplated together.
Rainer Mahlamäki: It is very typical, pattern-like case. I believe, that if we have any luck the Suvela case will be a remarkable example in the country.
Sakari Toikkanen: Neighbourhoods of that time have a great potential for improving sustainability: the heating energy consumption is high, the lighting control and HVAC systems can be considerably improved. The density of the urban fabric can also be increased in a sustainable way.
I think that far too often the optimization of refurbishment, or even demolition, takes place at a scale of an individual building, or housing cooperative, without studying the impacts at a neighbourhood level. Issues like energy production and energy supply and management systems should be contemplated together.
Rainer Mahlamäki: It is very typical, pattern-like case. I believe, that if we have any luck the Suvela case will be a remarkable example in the country.
SuvelaSURGE: What are the most interesting innovations today which will change the way we live?
Arja Lukin: Again, it's very difficult to give a single example. I think the most interesting are the ones related to the way of living. Our current lifestyle is very unsustainable in many ways. There are many different aspects to sustainability where innovations could be made, such as energy consumption and saving, reducing the amount of electronic junk, social issues.
One of the keys, however, lies in financing. The innovations don't mean much if they are unaffordable. Take single-family housing as an example: the house itself is a huge investment, so it is very difficult to get people pay even more just to have a clean conscience. On the other hand, if the costly innovations will pay themselves back in a reasonable time frame, eg. due to lower energy consumption, they will be much more desirable.
Sebastià Jornet: I think we have learnt what we now know as "transversal urbanism", where our discipline, as well as ensure that the cities are beautiful in the deepest sense of the word, must make them socially diverse; comfortable as regards to the urban habitat they organize; interconnected regarding mobility systems; integrated within the surrounding landscape; restrained in the exploitation of natural resources, soil, energy, water; optimized in terms of waste management and consistent with the city and the territory to which they belong. Transversality is, for me and today, the greatest challenge of our discipline. Never before we had such access to information, the world had been as small as now, and never before, we had so many possibilities for communication and exchange. Innovations in the field of urban planning are coming at a time of new disciplines: social sciences, ecology, environmental sciences, mobility engineering, communication technology, etc. and to these disciplines we must be attentive, integrate them in a "concurrent and cross-cutting urban planning" which could be defined as multifaceted, due to the large number of faces, strata and sectors that have to meet to achieve the desired objective of improving quality of life of our cities and their citizens.
Sakari Toikkanen: The lifestyle has an influence on sustainability. In some cases consumers make conscious decisions on individual sustainable goods, but at the same time the overall consumption increases. Energy consumption is an issue that is followed and the increase in energy price has implications. Taxation has a direct influence in human behavior like we’ve noted in the case of cars.
New energy regulations will increase the difference between energy efficiency of the old stock compared with the newly built. We try to be at least one step ahead of regulations – we started in 2008 to aim at 2010 level and now target to the 2012 level.
We also make ESCO agreements for energy saving investments. The payback time for intelligent HVAC control systems and heat recovery may range from one to five years.
Rainer Mahlamäki: Information technology is developing with a speed we cannot imagine yet. I believe that the upheaval caused by it affect the physical environment and architecture remarkably. The forms of the buildings, their comprehensive design and realisation will gain advantage from the better prefabrication techniques. The buildings will become more intelligent – providing enormous capacity for architecture, too.
SuvelaSURGE: What are the possibilities of this kind of a competition?
Arja Lukin: A good proposal should be bold, innovative but also feasible enough.
The key in changing Suvela lies in the residents: they are the potential which is needed for change. They need to be proud of their neighbourhood. If the residents are not willing to commit to the proposal's ideas and ideals, it will not have a lasting effect. The competition should provide a "framework for a better life" in Suvela.
The key in changing Suvela lies in the residents: they are the potential which is needed for change. They need to be proud of their neighbourhood. If the residents are not willing to commit to the proposal's ideas and ideals, it will not have a lasting effect. The competition should provide a "framework for a better life" in Suvela.
Sebastià Jornet: All competitions are an opportunity. An opportunity to rethink the way of urban planning, implementing all our knowledge, to compress and express in a few panels and in texts, ideas, concepts, attitudes... that we all possess. Competitions are acts of intellectual generosity, and because of this condition, are always a chance to compress, accelerate and precipitate the seed of the proposal, which must then mature into an urban project action. At the same time, the competition becomes all the proposals, a kaleidoscopic view of reality, with solutions, with attitudes, with different looks, that enrich the discourse and the reading of the reality on which we must intervene and from which we always get interesting contributions regarding the strategies, processes and actions to be carried out within the marked area of intervention.
Sakari Toikkanen: A lot can be achieved. I think it’s important not to hold to the old traditional solutions. Something new and unexpected can appear like solutions which have not even been tested before. These innovations will not necessarily be implemented in Suvela, but the idea may stick into one’s mind, will be developed further and it may find its application in another case.
Multidisciplinary team leads to thinking out of the box. Discussions between lawyers, economists and engineers may lead into novel resolutions when one has got caught with a problem in his own field.
Rainer Mahlamäki: As a member of the Jury I cannot give any reply here. I keep open mind with the results and with really big expectations. As I told already before I expect something really new kind of openings.
