Negotiating sustainability in urban development : the role of technical building equipment at das Eckwerk

Abstract

Whether or not the buzz is justified, the technophilic concept of the smart city and its promise of unprecedented resource efficiency became the central urban paradigm of today. However, with a few notable exceptions - mostly in the form of prestigious smart or green buildings - the day-to-day praxis of local urban development carries forward its struggle to negotiate the expectations of the triple bottom line. While the advancement of eco-innovative technologies outpaces itself, the way buildings are planned, built, used and demolished has not changed significantly in recent history. Drawing on experiences from the planning of Das Eckwerk, a major bottom-up urban development initiative in Berlin, it is suggested that the bottleneck to sustainable urban development is not a lack of innovative technology but rather the linearity of value chains in real estate and architecture, which often disincentivize the most sensible solutions. With a focus on technical building equipment, this paper reports on the lessons learned of ‘developers by circumstance’ in quest of enabling investment and innovation. In line with the intellectual lineage of the performance economy, the adopted approach at Das Eckwerk is outlined in four stages: (a) a contextual analysis of locally available resources and capacities, (b) the reversal of the demand and supply logic, (c) a recognition of technologies in their life cycles of innovation, and (d) the early involvement of manufacturers in the planning process. Lastly, the structural implications this approach might entail, including a shift in professional roles from producers to service providers, are outlined.