Interview with Mr. Rolf Demmler, Co-founder of SoftGrid China and Europe
As a German architect, Mr Rolf Demmler first arrived in China in 2004 almost by accident when he agreed to work with a Chinese guy in Switzerland who was looking to cooperate with a European architect. “A mere three weeks later, I was here in Shanghai,” Demmler smiled. “It was the perfect introduction to China, about how it makes things happen quickly and flexibly.”
Rolf established SoftGrid Ltd., an architecture, sustainability and urban design firm, in 2008 in Shanghai after gathering professional experience in the EU and China. SoftGrid focuses on projects in hospitality, office and education. It uses Integrated Design strategies to provide unique, future-proof designs and quantifiable added value to clients and communities in line with long term climate goals. He is a regular contributor to professional conferences on sustainable construction and a guest tutor at Tongji University and other universities in China and the EU. In 2020, he co-founded SoftGrid Europe in Germany.
“What do buildings do, and how do we preserve energy?” Rolf asks. “How do we make healthy environments? How do we make livable environments? In an ever-changing society, what are building life spans? If you build something now, what happens in 20 years? These topics are very much what I built my office around, and it’s also what we bring to China.”
The big wave currently influencing design in China is environmental protection. As a result, SpaChina interviewed Mr Rolf Demmler on this topic.
After all these years, what changes do you see as having taken place in China?
Since arriving in China, one of my own focuses has been the complexity of society in the world’s most populous nation and its evolving idea of how to modernize historical assets. When I came here, there were articles in mainstream German magazines about architecture in China, saying: “It’s so big! You can do anything!” This was never, ever, my interest. My interest was always complex issues such as how to adapt older structures and areas for today’s public use and space needs. That made it more interesting for me to be in China.
So my list of major changes would start roughly in 2005, when historic preservation and a sense of authenticity entered the discourse about urban development, not least fueled by the opening of Xintiandi in Shanghai, designed by Ben Wood Studio Shanghai, a firm I worked for from 2005 to 2008 before founding SoftGrid.
Roughly five years later, with the Shanghai EXPO theme “Better City, Better Life” on one hand and a series of food scandals and rising pollution levels on the other, the topics of health and wellbeing came to center stage. And in 2015, with the signing of the Paris Agreement, China formalized a development trajectory for industry, urbanism and architecture, that clearly focuses on sustainability.
While these were all disruptive changes establishing new topics and trends, the latest change I would see as a paradigm shift within the already established topic of sustainability: it changes how people and especially companies and businesses think about and approach it. With increasing political and regulatory pressure (e.g. stricter planning codes) as well as a changing economic environment (e.g. ESG ratings), sustainability ceases to be an optional marketing aspect, but becomes a hard factor in the assessment of business models and a key to future economic success. The EU is a step ahead in this development, but the resulting sense of urgency is also already perceivable in China.
Particularly in hospitality, all of the above changes come together, with the aim to create a unique experience, which in turn is based on giving a sense of place and locality (authenticity), a comfortable, inspiring and relaxing environment (health and wellbeing) and a growing sense of how buildings influence our environment (sustainability).
Please share with us the two most interesting projects you have designed related to environmental sustainability. What are their highlights?
We aim to integrate aesthetic, functional, energetic, economic, socio-cultural, technical and contextual aspects, which is labelled an “Integrated Design” process.
While for projects like BASF R&D Center II and Tianjin Eco-City, we were in the role of sustainability consultants, the following two projects are a showcase of the power and benefits of this “Integrated Design” approach.
SoftGrid was for both the lead designer and single point of contact for an Integrative Design process. For the Shanghai DRC Living Lab, this included quality control and construction supervision all the way down to the graphic design elements, while the Guilin Mountainside Resort included what we have since called “General Planning + PLUS”, i.e. the scope of conventional general planning – architecture, MEP, structural engineering – plus sustainability aspects.
And while both are great examples of sustainable construction, they didn’t start on the premise of saving polar bears or reducing their CO2 footprint. They focused on creating a vivid dialogue with their surrounding context, a comfortable place for retreat (Guilin) and work (Shanghai) and an evocative aesthetic as a result of an immersive, three-dimensional storyline.
The Guilin Mountainside Resort was the first project in the southern China climate to be designed to the PHI Passive House standard. It is also a typical example of conflicting targets. The site is located amongst the stunning Caster Mountains and in a hot and humid climate. An energy consultant would advise reducing window area to avoid overheating, and a conventional architect would insist on 360-degree panoramic glazing. But at SoftGrid, we are architects, but not conventional and we recognized that, in the master plan (done by another design firm in Singapore) full-on glazing would be impossible without largely compromising privacy. So the solution was to strike a balance. We made sure to have panoramic glazing where it is needed and then using every trick possible to reduce heat gains. This is where synergies happen: shading to keep the sun out can be provided by the overhang of a panoramic roof terrace, by deliberately placing vegetation to act as privacy screens and so on. Each component both reduces energy and adds value to the design.
We shortlist options from a storyline perspective first: roller shutters keep the sun out, but they work against the idea of being immersed in your paradise retreat surrounded by the Caster Mountains. But to work out which solutions support this story best, we need metricsand that means we need to, and can, simulate exactly: design decision X saves Y kWh/m2a (Kilowatt Hours per square meter each year) of energy – and Z RMB in operation costs. To put it simply: we always know exactly what we do, when we design.
For the DRC Living Lab (opened 2015), the surrounding context was Shanghai’s French Concession, another evocative environment. And for DRC, associated with Disney, of course, it had to be “magical”. We started by looking holistically at all aspects and creating a storyline for what the building is. The result is that it saves energy, provides an excellent work environment and integrates into the historic urban Art Deco context. Users love working there, and the owners are proud of showcasing what architectural design and construction quality is able to be achieve in China, and the many visitors are impressed by how the building’s façade, its interior and even the design of its technical systems reflect the purpose of the business that is located within it.
The entire building’s aesthetics are hints: instead of Art Deco ornaments, the façade displays maps of Disney Resorts (the object of study). A wall of reclaimed bricks from the original façade, treated artistically, sums up key historic scientific inventions without which the research going on in the building could not be done. The technical system basically performs on its own. It knows the temperature and humidity levels not just of every room, but at different heights within each room, it knows if people are present and if the sun is shining, it knows if someone is using a chair or not, and adjusts the surrounding ambience automatically– and if you don’t like it, just use your iPad to override: open the shades, turn the floor cooling up a degree or dim down that one set of LED lights just above your work space. And how do you keep cool outside? With a shading canopy made out of PV panels. Just an example of storylines, which combine aesthetics, technical purpose and functionality and result in sustainable projects.
There are more and more wellness resorts being developed around the world. From your point of view, what kind of unique aspects are essential to be included in the design process of these projects?
In Europe, we are currently developing a replicable get-away retreat for single occupancy (couple, family etc.). It’s based on a design for a standard module that can be placed in various different sites. This project is a perfect example of how regional and local aspects overlap with general ones. The basic design of the module needs to work anywhere, including being adaptable to the local climate, with changes to the façade layers, insulation thickness and so on. The module needs to be flexible enough to allow for these adaptations. The location is where it becomes really interesting. Each location needs a different placement of the basic module, depending on where the best views are, access situation and such: in a wetland you want to touch the reeds, in a forest you want to be in the tree crowns, in rice fields elevated above them to maximize the dramatic effect inherent to the various landscapes. That’s why we design the “base” of the module to be always location-specific. In this base, we also integrate “wellness” aspects inherently adapted to local characteristics. Some locations call for sports and physical activity, some for contemplation and retreat, most are a combination of both aspects. The bedroom and cooking / dining area, are situated in the standard module, while the wellness and recreational aspects are the most immersive ones.
All technical aspects remain in the background. The standard module is designed as a loft-like open-plan configuration of stacked planes for eating, cooking, socializing and sleeping. It is constructed as a wood structure aiming at a low CO2 or CO2-neutral building life-cycle with minimal energy consumption. These aspects, of course, you don’t see and feel as a guest. But wood doesn’t just save CO2, it also is a pleasant material full of character, and while the customer doesn’t care about the hugely reduced operations bill for the AC, the quality of the building envelope – the façade and outer walls – necessary to achieve such minimal energy consumption will automatically provide an extremely comfortable interior climate. This is one typical example of what we mean by saying, we aim at the immediately perceivable added value first and let the benefits for the environment sneak in as follow-on effects. Or to put it the other way: You can’t feel CO2, but you’ll feel great in a CO2 neutral building.
Our Beihai Marriott project has been very well received for its architectural design, elegant aesthetics and spatial quality, offering sea views to each and every room and an engaging seaside park, with a three-dimensional configuration of flexible activity spaces, chill-out areas, F&B, panorama spa and pools. It is currently under construction.
But this project also showcases a completely different benefit of Integrated Design, this time not aimed at the quality of the building or the user experience, but the economic parameters on the building owner’s side. Essentially, the integration of all aspects from the start led to a very straight-forward decision-making process on the owner side and a seamless integration with Marriott’s business consulting team. This dramatically reduced the need for painfully resolving target conflicts, redesigns and mistakes due to miscommunication. As a result, while our project started design a year or so after some of the neighboring resort developments, we were the first to receive formal planning permission.
At the same time, the building is designed using basic passive design principles, which will directly impact operation costs, a huge factor over the economic building life-cycle in hospitality. The façade does not only look good, it is also deliberately designed to provide very high comfort, save energy and costs. With a good passive design, the “work” that the AC needs to do is considerably reduced. This means that you can implement smaller sized machines and that these machines can run at lower capacity during usage. So the cost-saving effect is double: first on a smaller up-front investment and second on lower operation costs.
“Sustainability”, as we understand it, is not just energy consumption, but also the economic performance, the CO2 footprint, the flexibility to adapt to future needs over the entire building life-cycle. It is the result of multi-dimensional design, and if you do it right, the result is larger than the sum of its parts.
How do you combine artistry with practicality, along with inclusion of the sustainable details, in order to make a project design unique?
The key to a successful project is the harmony of emotional properties and technical, functional, aspects, the latter of which should go unnoticed to the customer, while the first create the resort or hotel’s character and, hopefully, a lasting memory for the visitor.
We start all our design work with a detailed study not just of the geographic site, its climate and surroundings, but also the local culture and economy, people’s everyday life and even local myths and legends. For our very first resort concept in the Hakka region of northern Guangdong back in 2008, we designed the entire look and feel around a golden color scheme, derived from the Hakka double meaning of “gold” referring to the treasured metal as well as the individual family and their ancestors within larger communal society. With the new resort, remotely situated in the mountains, we wanted to both establish a beautiful new project and also offer a new development path for the local community, as guides and aninvaluable source of “local knowledge” – from farming, to cooking, to exploring the nature to stories and legends. We preserved a lot of the existing community’s buildings as part of the new resort public spaces. The aim was authenticity, an immersion in an experience that goes deep into the history and every-day life of a rich, fascinating cultural environment.
On a lot larger scale, we developed a new city district for LiuZhou turning a challenge into an opportunity. Nearly one third of the development area was situated in a 20-year flood plain. Our design answered this not by very costly and spatially unpleasant retaining walls, but instead by working WITH the water. Water landscape and management systems became the driving force of the design, creating a garden city with an organic water landscape network as linear parks, activity areas and civic social spaces. These rivers also connect the new urban center with the surrounding rural farming areas, and offer views to surrounding mountains and a perfect playground for the transition of the local automotive industry towards noise and emission free transport systems. The story here is not the water, but the urban-rural dialogue, which becomes the city’s expression of identity in all different aspects: transport, landscape, waterways, economy, civic space and architectural typology.
Each of our projects has a starting story like this. It can be playful and inventive and it is free of restrictions. It’s simply evaluated by being a good story or not. But once you have that starting point, you need to give shape to it, design the physical form, which is the architectural process.
The COVID pandemic has had a certain impact on China this year. From your perspective, what direction will China’s architectural design industry develop in the next five years?
It seems to me, that the COVID situation is still way too dynamic, especially in China, to draw any direct conclusions from it for the field of architecture.
But generally, I would see the industry moving towards greener, more sustainable and more complex approaches. Many local firms also have this on their list and many have established “green departments”. But the problem is, that these create additional overhead, require additional internal coordination and create, to adverse effect, more internal competition. This is why we have always chosen a network approach to complexity and sustainability, so we can offer this flexibility and individuality with zero added overhead costs.
What I see as even more important than cost – and that is a direct result of complexity of Integrated Design – is to address not just the question of how architecture is designed but how it is communicated. In this regard, our approach to combine quantifiability, rational metrics and evocative storytelling is invaluable in helping project teams to report to decision-makers and helping decision-makers decide confidently by understanding, shaping and owning the “big picture” of their project.
To that extend, we have just started an office retro-fit in Shanghai this week for a German company’s headquarter built in the early 2000s. We approach this project in an integrated design VARIANT COMPARISON. Meaning, we develop comparable design options. These are not divided along meaningless aspects (is it green or yellow?), soft factors (do I like it or not?), but by three different strategies and related KPIs: minimal upfront investment, maximum alignment with Corporate Identity, and CO2-neutral footprint. While aspects overlap, they create three entirely different storylines, and our report will further support each story with its own metrics, numbers, fact sheets and, of course different architectural design solutions and their resulting aesthetics.
I believe this holistic approach to projects with be the key to successful building investments in the future. And feedback from hospitality and office project stakeholders in particular seems to support this view by perceiving a huge added value for resorts, business and other hospitality and office facilities alike.
