Interviews: Fokke Moerel & Jago van Bergen

Hello, my name is... I'm from the Netherlands. I'm an architect and I've been working with MVRDV for a number of years, working on various projects in different phases and many different countries. For this adventure in Thailand, I collaborate with Diego, since both offices MVRDV have a lot of experience specifically on this topic, mainly on its sustainable implementation. Together with Kopa, my partner, we run projects in the office about urban and architectural design.

I really like Thai food, I simply love it. By first entering Thailand, you can immediately sense what high value food has for the Thai people. It's not just eating like the Dutch would do, but it's a really social and cultural event, with a wide range of flavors and spices, freshness, and of course a beautiful presentation. Now we talk about Thailand; I think it's also very much about Bangkok, where we are doing the project. Let's say the city for us is an incredible mixture of energy and exotic influences. And about food, Thai food, I think the complexity is a very beautiful thing, a very tasteful thing. You can taste at the same time sour, sweet, and salt elements within one dish.

An area, or at least a high-density urban area, where water is simply embraced. So it should be a tool or an element within creating such a city, which makes it part of it, part of building space, and part of everyday life. Since water is fluid, its levels can change from high to low, its condition can change from solid like ice to humidity, to steam, and to force water. We can manipulate its functions from storage to cleaning, for drinking water, for cooling and transportation, pleasure. So to make it through and to exploit this tool, the city should also be adapted to it; otherwise it doesn't work. I think also the water-adaptive city is at first about safety, with a certain degree of dynamics in it, as we refer to the different conditions. These dynamics can give to the inhabitants of the water at that point all kinds of new experiences and also adventures maybe on a daily basis. So the water-adaptive city is both safe and effective.

Yeah, to create a water-adaptive city, you really need people who actually make use of and live in this city, to get to all the depth of it. So we need a crossover of people who live in the city. Since it's not just the mayor running a city, it's also a community with needs and demands. It's not just an architect or planner designing a beautiful city; it's also a community or resident who gives it meaning. And it's not just a civil engineer who builds a dike that's just a book who actually needs to run on his ward. So there needs to be a wide range of experts, both global and local, to actually be in this team to get to all the points, and then to create this book with water for that museum. Let's say who is working also in what kind of coalition. Our dream team would be maybe working together in some kind of research and design center involving all these disciplines, including communities and institutions. Maybe it could act like a laboratory that provokes, tests, and implements new designs and new ideas on the water-adaptive city.

We're very much looking forward to what will happen in two weeks from now. First of all, we'll be visiting the exhibition about the workshop we had on the Bank of Adaptive City 2045 at Supercorn. Then we will review the publication that we have been working on with all the essay writers, which is then finished. And we will visit the mini symposium that we're about to finalize, and invited a lot of participants who together make this goal as just described. So we're really looking forward to what happens. Also looking forward to a little friendship and see how the original water-adaptive city actually works.

Well, we really hope that a lot of inspiration will come from this, so indeed new collaborations can start to exist, to actually simply make this adventure into a very meaningful exercise. And let's give this coalition, in whatever form you can think of, takes place. You can jointly work together on water-adaptive cities and architecture. That would be a fantastic, fantastic achievement.