Albert Speer: “The life cycle of our buildings is devastating” – Business Week

Franz Hubik and Matthias dispute

In Germany is built too much new. We need to pay more attention to the building stock, calls Albert Speer. The city engineer Mao Zedong, football in Qatar and why the city of the future just might lie in the Ruhr.

Economic Week: Herr Speer, in the middle of the desert of Abu Dhabi is built on an eco-city since 2008. The goal of Masdar City means no carbon dioxide, no waste, no cars. Looks like the future of our cities

Albert Speer: No, definitely not. The big problem in projects such as Masdar or other zero-emission cities is that a sustainable, releasing on alternative energy city not included in these regions. And not nearly.

So instead of spinning model?

No, this is not spinning. These cities are planned perfectly. But Masdar can not get to his feet, because the fossil energy prices are state subsidized down so that the operation does not pay off financially. Who turns on the fuel prices, risks in these countries a popular uprising. Planning is one thing, but you have such a city so synonymous 50 years and can keep going on acceptable terms. And since it does not matter whether you are moving in communist or democratic systems.

Personal

• Albert Speer

  Prof. Albert Speer is one of the world’s most prestigious urban planners and architects. His architectural firm AS & P (Albert Speer & amp; Partner) developed concepts for the life of tomorrow, such as in megacities in China, the Middle East and in Africa. Speer was 1934 born as a son of the Nazi architect and armaments minister who was 20 was later sentenced to years in prison. Before he turned to the planning of cities, spear trained as a carpenter and has studied architecture at the Technical University of Munich. In 1964, the now 80-year-old his own architectural firm, which now counts 120 employees. He lives with his wife, actress Ingmar Zeisberg in Frankfurt am Main.

Why?

Because you can easily get an investor to rauszurücken money if he can earn any more money. Nothing would be easier than in Egypt to harness the power of the sun and to build solar power plants. But since you get no World Bank to finance something that is not worth it.

already consume our cities, 75 percent of the energy used worldwide and are responsible for 80 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. In China alone, 240 new cities for tens of millions of people planned.

The Chinese are the only ones who are gradually beginning to counteract them. The turn on the power plug. .? But only very slowly

What do you mean

For example, Mao Zedong said: ” water is a food and so it does not cost anything. This has meant that the water consumption in Shanghai is significantly higher than the per capita water consumption in Frankfurt. Now the Chinese are turning their price, and reduce water consumption.

Do they see the situation in Germany as well as dark?

We live on an island of the blessed. The problems with which we grapple lie far in the comfort zone when you compare with China, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Our cities are not so bad.

Even so must change something. Where do you see concrete action?

We must take care of the building inventory and more. This happens in Germany only in a very limited extent. Real Estate eat in this country about 40 percent of energy costs. The ecological balance of our buildings is devastating. And yet one percent of the housing stock per year is only about enhanced energy.

At this rate, it would have last a hundred years to all buildings rehabilitated.

Right. But we do not have these hundred years. Therefore, we show about in Bottrop, such as the turn could succeed.

By 2020 in Bottrop CO2 emissions in a pilot area covering 70,000 inhabitants, is halved. They have developed the master plan. Is this realistic?

Yes, I think so. Bottrop, is such a good example because something happened in the building stock a normal urban structure, as they have many medium-sized cities in Germany. Basically it comes to animate the building owners and those who live in the catchment area. You have to drive by itself Renovations and thus reduce operating costs and carbon dioxide emissions. We have already doubled in the two years since the start of the rehabilitation rate. The personal approach of citizens is necessary and very successful.

How economical is the whole, however, must be questioned. The project is heavily subsidized. Up to 25 percent of the renovation costs are borne by the State of North Rhine-Westphalia.

If that starts right once, which guarantees economically. And we have no alternative. To continue to set energy saving houses and energy plus houses on the green meadow, is not a solution. This is exactly the wrong thing. For these are partly subsidized much higher.