Last week ArchDaily attended the 2016 World Architecture Festival in Berlin. We chatted with Ben van Berkel and asked him about his enthusiasm for bringing more technology into buildings.
“Hello, my name is Ben van Berkel, I’m the founder of UNStudio.
What motivates me at the moment in architecture is to design with knowledge and information. So it’s not any more so that I design building forms alone, but I’m more interested in how with new technology we can improve a sustainable and hopefully healthy environment. Think of it, when it comes down to the environment, we are, for 80% of our time indoors. And think about the bad air. We are often indoors and the way how we with new technology can improve that is my fascination. And of course, I’m interested in the technological side and improvement and expansion of that, but I’m also interested in the cultural side. So the expansion of the profession needs to dare stretch up much more than we ever did before. Because all of these technologies are available right now. On the cultural side we can refer to design, fashion, literature, art and all those aspects of the cultural side so that we can further use it in the integral way of how we can improve our architecture.
The way that I’m inspired by these latest ideas of improving the profession is by teaching a lot, reading a lot— I go easily from neuroscience towards the way how today, the technology of a car has improved by maybe having 40 sensors in the car. Meanwhile, why do we have only one sensor in a building? To regulate our temperature. That technology is not available yet in architecture. So I often read a lot and reflect a lot on the way how we can improve.”
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