sustainable highway, yesterday’ s way to go would be the‘ hardware’ approach. These hardware solutions might incorporate solar panels in street lights, increase the number of windmills, or offer an adventurous system to recover the energy stored in asphalt. Although these still are all valuable ideas, many consider them to be examples of common practice. In contrast, Venturi’ s son would take a completely different approach and probably look for improvements in the driving behaviour of drivers. When design solutions start to persuade drivers to adjust their cruising speed or deal with congestion more effectively, the net effects of this behaviour can be really impressive because they are repeated every single day.
Designers who see themselves as‘ information surface‘ creators will want to make the road communicate. These designers will point their clients, usually in the business of boiling asphalt and spreading it around evenly, towards directions they should think about innovating. These clients also need to reinvent themselves, as their world has also changed dramatically. The redefined brief does not ask for a road, but a service to store, manage, assess, and communicate data.
It may initially seem expensive to develop a system that both reads a car’ s GPS data, extracts engine-metrics from the in-car management system, and provides the driver with feedback and recommendations regarding their driving speed.
These costs, however, should be compared to the costs of milling sensor loops into the pavement, placing displays alongside the road, and maintaining all the traffic lights. Consider the savings resulting from sensible driving behaviour: these costs can be saved once roads collect and communicate information, and will benefit a much larger group of stakeholders than just the road building contractor. These stakeholders must first be persuaded to invest in the project. The people in charge of the asphalt boiler have little interest in these calculations; this discussion will have to take place high up in the value chain.
Recalib our prof com
Gijs Ockeloen— 1957 gijs @ kvd. com
. Partner at KVD reframing. Design coach Eindhoven University
of Technology. Member CRISP project CASD
Social Driver, designed by KVD reframing for Ballast Nedam in the N329 project.