International Lecture Series Philippe Rahm

Open lecture by PHILIPPE RAHM

Recent urban projects by Philippe Rahm architectes

At the scale of the cities, climate could play a major role in the design of the morphology of the city and in the choice of its materiality. Two recent projects of our office are challenging the climate as the major factor for urban design. The first one is a study for the city of Copenhagen. The second is a new park under construction for the city in Taichung in Taiwan. Copenhagen in Denmark is situated in a cold and dry latitude while Taichung is in a humid and warm climate. For these two projects, we try to give a good quality of life for the public space. But we think that the quality of the public space is not only about the conviviality of the program and the size of the space, but it concern also notion of comfort in fully senses, that means, thermal comfort, heath comfort, silence comfort, etc.

By starting to design the public space from the climate will give sensorial qualities to the city in the same time that it will answers to the new target of energy saving and sustainability. In Copenhagen, we propose to define a new urban network that is no more based on car and visual representation, but on sound quality, reduction of air pollutants and natural increase of heat in the outdoor space. In Taiwan, we propose a urban park which urban composition is based on a real site analyse of the repartition of the temperatures, of the humidity levels and the pollution rates.

About:
Philippe Rahm is architect, principal in the office of Philippe Rahm architectes, based in Paris, France. His work, which extends the field of architecture from the physiological to the meteorological, has received an international audience in the context of sustainability.

Mr. Rahm was visiting professor at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture in 2009-2010, and he started to teach architecture design at the GSD, Harvard University, USA, in Fall 2014.