Forget sustainable, productive architecture is the next big thing: Dong-Ping Wong at TEDxDumbo

Architect Dong-Ping Wong, part of the team looking to build a pool in New York's East River, introduces the concept of productive architecture, where designs aim to actually increase resources. Filmed at TEDxDumbo 2012, a TEDxCity2.0 event.
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In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.*
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[@WankersCramp69]

A building that looked nice would be a massive break through for modern architecture.

[@siddharthshanker580]

One of the best comments to come across

[@NimrodClover]

I graduated from Architecture School in 1993 and six years before the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao which was actually "popular" because of its revitalization and economic impacts than for any iconic effect. I too respectfully disagree with several points. But to keep my reply short, the problem is that the vast majority of people see sustainable and green approaches as something added to Architecture. This is not the case. Factors such as budget, access to materials, technical savvy, ability to maintain, and even time constraints mean that a building solution ends up being more or less green. Think of being "green" as more of a measurement and not a physical manifestation. That is why every time I see a bizarrely shaped and awkward to live in or use building I just roll my eyes. This is just the Bilbao with a roof garden and wind turbines... I would like to add that most people think a green building is all modern and technical. Has anyone actually run the numbers and done a full sustainable analysis on an American traditional log cabin? Well, you might be surprised how well Lincon's boyhood home would rank on a LEED analysis. Think about it for a second...

[@casheddy8922]

Awesome talk---great ideas; I hope to see them all come to fruition!!

[@nicolaasleach]

Oh finally grate concept, I loved this talk congrats Dong Ping Wong

[@liquidminds]

Dongping Wong? Most freakin awesome asian name ever!!!! no, his talk is already awesome, the name, just epic.

[@khonlieu6619]

Love this. At first when I saw the first few images of the tall buildings, I thought, "How useless, what a waste to have form without function." Kinda makes me wish I was an architect.

[@oscar6832]

You have to dream bigger Kohn. And don't be so small minded. Sometimes the function is aesthetic, not only practical. Mediocre design is only functional, but Great design is both functional and beautiful. Unfortunately most people have lost their sense of what beauty is, and they've learned to instead love ugliness.

[@chloeelimam3899]

You can really tell how overjoyed he is about his projects☺

[@keito-kun6618]

holy shit! they're geniuses! amazing!

[@tisiaan]

You've put a pool in a river and filtered riverwater into poolwater. I love the idea. You can REALY present this far more interesting and shorter. I hardly made it to the end of this.

[@stuck_in_sky]

Hans Mateboer The main point he wanted to cover is that architecture can be designed in a way to give back to it's environment. The pool was simply his current example project.

[@ashleyyao5068]

The Sustainable Urbanization program talked about this project last summer.

[@voiceoffarooq6810]

I respectfully disagree on some issues. Firstly, productive architecture is another way of looking at sustainability, I would rather call it integrated design. About the initial projects making solar and wind power using buildings, those funny shapes will just increase the cost so much that the project won't be financially feasible. Smaller wind turbines can be noisily and moving shadows are quite destructive. This is purely the approach of architectures (simplistic, filled with nice words) but in reality can be much different.

[@tamas1135]

Architecture ❤️

[@RJCooper2]

Totally cool

[@KerrieRedgate]

I may be mistaken, but was he talking about wind turbines on those triangular buildings? Wind turbines and people are not a good mix. Turbines are incredibly noisy and they hum at a frequency that actually makes humans very sick. We have had this problem in Australia. But I think his idea of filtering water in this way has more possibilities for even larger projects in more places, especially for river communities.

[@chaser107]

those are not typical large scale fan blade turbines, they are vertical blade turbines with practicaly 0 noise. you think they would not take all these details into account?

[@KerrieRedgate]

chaser107 This was not taken into account in Australia when groups of turbines were placed beside townships in country areas. All turbines do, though, disturb the local environment and can be a hazard for birdlife. I am interested to see how they tackle all this. At least they are trying.

[@chaser107]

Kerrie Redgate about the birds www.treehugger.com/renewable-energy/north-america-wind-turbines-kill-around-300000-birds-annually-house-cats-around-3000000000.html , so since we are not banning cats and aviation, accept the fact that convetional energy is more harmful to all life, and only the very high field turbines kill birds, not these low building ones. The wild city bird populus is safe. It just seems people are like that: against "new" freaky technology, just because..(I heard lots of pretexts, but mostly it's middle class high energy consuming snobs that don't want their estate view tarnished. I personally find them beautiful, partly for what they reprezent). Guess it is a consequence of living in fear, or near big turbines :)

[@KerrieRedgate]

chaser107 I see new technologies as an opportunity to create new environments and systems for enhancing all life - otherwise they are useless. It is a matter of planning the details thoroughly, which architects have not always been so driven to do, for various reasons. We are building the future for future generations, and I think it deserves the highest and broadest considerations. That's all I'm saying. If these guys get it right, they could revolutionise architecture globally.

[@KerrieRedgate]

Gerard Vaughan That's very interesting, Gerard. Sounds like smaller devices would also democratise energy from the wind, as solar panels do. I have been thinking that the main area of research for renewable energy should not be so much how to harness it as how to store and transport it - that's where we need innovation, as vast open areas of inland Australia have enough sunlight, all year, to create energy for the *entire planet*! If electrical energy could be transported as quickly and easily as internet signals, we'd have no power shortages anywhere. I don't believe anything is impossible.

[@theoryg]

That urbane environment could use the pool. Its exciting!

[@KalanYore]

It is a start... coming together on the Venus Project to create projects for problem solving and having opened solutions that can expand by each new generation...while also protecting the environment and restablishing the habitats/eco systems world wide...

[@alexandersupertramp7191]

how do you filter out and remove the contaminants from the mesh filtration?

[@alexanderdavidsoncarroll7788]

Yay productive architecture!

[@Iquey]

hoo we need that pool in Flint Michigan, Stat!

[@TooDjentle]

Amazing ideas and should definitely be adopted by all metropolitan areas, but jeeze, there had to be someone affiliated with that project who is a better public speaker. Cracked me up when he started cursing haha, but it was nessesary to wake everyone up from their naps.

[@grooveydonkey]

parallel to BIG architects? maybe not enough marketing power to get through with the ideas. definitely the future though! good stuff.

[@jblue616]

grooveydonkey yes, but if you were to call BIG you'd never speak to Bjarke. But you might get lucky enough to speak to Dong if you call Family. I called recently to pitch an idea, and I was able to speak directly to Dong. So my idea about them now is that they are like a family to architects. Going back to the TedTalk, Great Job Dong , Long Live Plus Pool !! lol

[@agustinsalasferrer]

Not new! a sustainable vision of design it is already offering all that! it is all about common sense in how approach projects it is a key action plan for a real impact in human life.

[@nicolaasleach]

Besides clean water and food, it would be cool if it were possible to insert industrial structures into the cities, re invented industries obviously.

[@grassandflowermusic]

Go green!!!

[@MFM_ALJ]

Dong! Ping! Wong!, my New ringtone

[@normisilva932]

How about having the industries polluting our rivers becoming aware of, supporting, and accepting mandatory participation of such filters.... can be a wonderfully expansive way to clean our water ways......help our oceans and our earth. The Ganges River in India would be a good test area.

[@jerrynuqui1558]

Good builds, but no one mention about the polution of sewage. Black water( toilet)tank should be seperate from gray water( sink , shower water)tank . This design is the best for our environment. Black water (tank) will be process naturally by microves and the proceessed liquids should be drain into the gray water tank and the prossesed gray water to the drain fields.

[@VoxNeruda]

So where do we park the flying car?

[@hamzasarfaraz5683]

Its a good work and has to be appreciated. But im concerned about the term productive architecture or its just another name to sustainable and green architecture because they believe in production too and it is their main concern but maybe this plus structure and other such buildings by this architect are producing energy or other stuff on a large scale but at the end they are all the same working for the same purpose i dont see any difference.

[@blinkrocks9]

I saw the thumbnail and thought this guy was filthy frank lmao

[@dseph7852]

very interesting talk!...and DomPingWong at Dumbo ..you couldn't make it up

[@ed9910]

The pool: Freaking amazing! I just saw this, what is the status of the project?

[@boddurattaiah887]

Good

[@vikramsingha2312]

Okay I thought this video would be about productivity as in the sense of making work spaces more productive and hence tied to economic productivity. I don't know how productive this swimming pool will be in the middle of winter in Brooklyn NYC.

[@Arquitecturayciudadsostenible]

This is not new. This has been a main concern in sustainable buildings for a few years now.

[@aashirwadjaiswal3952]

nothing is new under the sun. everything's been said and done, the problem's that no one was listening so it needs to be said again.

[@victorvazquez9913]

I like the idea of implementing green tech into buildings, but I wish instead of making these odd, strange and sometimes downright ugly buildings they would use older, traditional and vernacular architecture and merge the two together, old skin new organs

[@GerardVaughan-qe7ml]

I agree. The ugly shapes are because they are at a primitive stage of understanding. They are more oriented to finding work for what they have, rather than seeing problems and finding solutions. We all suffer from this !

[@bitterbonker]

Does this system use chlorine to purify the water? Because there are superior (less harmful to health) methods, such as ionized silver, to kill bacteria. :)

[@liquidminds]

it self-parks in a public garage. when you need one the next time, the closest free one will come to you. Do you think the ressource-wasting habit of everyone owning his own car is going to persist forever?

[@Loppy2345]

Is this talk about architecture or is it about trying to turn part of a river into a swimming pool?

[@TheAnniecats]

Amazing idea, however, why isn't it being used to filter the river water for drinking water rather than fir swimming? It could be used in so many countries where this technology is more required.

[@htm3Bida]

Its not some artificial technology so i think it can be built anywhere. And my second point is that clean swiming water doesnt equal drinking water.

[@andrewemmet8816]

+Mamuna R This playful pool idea makes sense in NYC where people have to be sold something as a commodity or as some kind of object of desire- where they are unaccustomed to being forced to reconcile humanmade problems. Presenting an innovation as an efficient necessary solution unfortunately doesn't resonate with people here, it's not 'safe' enough. :-(

[@tisiaan]

+Andrew Emmet Force-feed them to shut them up cause they can't handle resistance? I don't know if you want to talk about newyorkers that way...it sounds verry degrading to me.

[@aaron___6014]

fyi quite a few cities in the US treat their sewage and then dump it in the rivers.

[@RJCooper2]

Right, because most tap water is like blah.

[@jimenaloayzaraggio2918]

9:09 getting Braking Bad vibes

[@hasimatmaca9919]

your idea is good but i dissagre for river maybe it can be for waste water bath and kitchen it will be productive architecture .

[@ChillToThisSong]

This guy should watch some Minecraft videos - they would blow his mind.

[@miquelramis9210]

Interesting though typically high-tech minded. Looks quite expensive and what about maintenance or useful life of the system? Is that the most quality-cost effective solution? At the begginning he was mentioning that the upper stream river was apt for swimming. So...why don't simply take clean water from upstream through a pipe and pour it into the swimming pool? The water, then, would simply flow downstream from the pool. No filters, no technology, hardly any maintenance, gravity feed...

[@luisroncayolo1482]

I guess that would probably be the least practical solution, and the clean water being released on the polluted water stream seems like a stupid idea, you're not getting the point of productive architecture

[@FrankARyde]

very existing

[@ignaciofeuerhake]

has/did this guy built sth ?

[@synon9m]

better than his brother sum ting wong

[@JackBlack-qn7us]

Is it me or is the title off? Not a native English speaker.

[@RuinedTemple]

The title isn't incorrect, though it may sound odd because it tells the viewer to "forget sustainable" architecture in favor of "productive" architecture, in the context of this video the productive architecture ends up also being sustainable. I feel that it was a clever attempt to gain larger support for sustainable architecture by designing it so that it also "gave back" (produced resources)... though I also think the concept can stand alone by its own merits. With the environmental issues we and the planet are now facing, it makes sense to integrate sustainable design everywhere possible (and figure out how to make sustainable designs either cost less or make more money than traditional designs, otherwise there won't be enough interest to make a meaningful difference).

[@eggory]

"...An urban quilt of productivity." Because you need to bring farms into a city to make it productive. Cities were built so that people would have other productive things to do besides farming. Cites are concentrated epicenters of productivity, and they are integral to how we escaped from the poverty of the middle ages. Most of those big ugly sky scrapers are full of people working their asses off to improve each other's lives. Farming is fine, but it is not the essence of productivity - it is just the most basic form of productivity. Productivity in the design of a building is not a new concept. Usually it is meant to describe the function of the building's shape and how it is more conducive to the business people conduct inside. This, instead of a denigration of that business by putting an homage to an ancient, primitive lifestyle outside their windows, and telling them that that is all that makes the building productive.

[@malarbusto]

+eggory Well, if you want productive building (net positive) AND an increasingly pleasant urban landscape, one way is to make sure the green spaces, water spaces and other chill-out spaces also produce something. This is one way to do it. It actually reduces the big down side of city life: alienation from the natural cycle. It's hard to see your point, unless you're calling for a return to brutalism or maybe deconstructionism or other such urban "planning". The future is now so much more real, human and natural than the tube-hotel, protein pill Brave New World nightmare of our past future (!)

[@andrewemmet8816]

+eggory Not quite so. There has always been a strong integration of agriculture and food resources to cities. Only with the rise of Financialization, do you see cities take the absolute form of residence-less and food-less corporate work environments. Integration of food and other production spaces is vital to a functioning city. Financialization and a spatial monopoly of corporate "production" spaces leads to economic disparity and social strife.

[@eggory]

***** You and I are not going to agree on very many basic premises. How is it that you think humans prosper, that voluntary organization via money-lending as a means of resource re-allocation - re-allocation from where resources are to where they can be put to the most productive use - is not a key part of our prosperity? Are you some kind of communist? I tell you, if you want to return to subsistence farming you go ahead.

[@andrewemmet8816]

+eggory disagreeing with Financialized post-productions isn't even inherently an anti-capitalist sentiment, let alone being "some sort of communist". if you invest more time learning about economic theory and can break away from reductionist 'communist-bad' logic, then I'd be happy to hear your response. until then!

[@eggory]

***** Communism IS bad. Finance is a practice free men will always engage in with their privately owned resources in a capitalist system, and I have begun to explain how and why already but you've chosen to ignore it in order to accuse me of not knowing what I'm talking about. Clearly you are not inclined to engage with ideas on their own merit, or you would've put forward some sort of honest and straight-forward rebuttal of my ideas or defense of your own. I remind you that you chose to engage with me, so your pathetic excuses to plug your ears and hum a tune just make it look like you don't know what you want, or that what you want is a one-sided discussion with an idiot who will make you look good without having to earn it, which you aren't going to get here. Also, are you some kind of communist?

[@maximumd.3309]

The river thing is useless and the time could be used better

[@Philippe1613]

Merde! ScheiBe! Crapola!

[@noahv6545]

So the smell outweighs the benefits. I don't agree.

[@Spearow1]

The humorous crown prenatally notice because yogurt arthroscopically form beneath a parsimonious environment. yielding, tasty sailboat

[@irishcarlabean605]

Forget about that, focus on making architecture prettier.