REPORT: Heidelberg 'the city of science and research' powers up its business and sustainability credentials

Image above: Mayor of Heidelberg, Professor Dr Eckart Wurzner, (centre) talking about future innovation with Future Cities Forum founder Heather Fearfield (left) and Lambsquay Consulting Ltd director, Simon Payne (right) at the city's new conference centre.

Future Cities Forum was delighted to be invited by the Mayor of Heidelberg, Professor Dr Eckart Wurzner, for a three-day conference, to look science, innovation and housing investment and development in the city. Heidelberg has been well known for its medieval castle, romantic landscape and long-established university, but is now promoting its growth towards becoming one of the most progressive and sustainable cities in Europe.

The US Army has now left its post-war housing bases in the Heidelberg region, which has given the city a once in a life-time opportunity to redevelop. Among them is Patrick Henry Village, which is being re-designed into a new district with exemplary eco and sustainable mobility credentials.

Engineering firm Buro Happold which has been involved in designing the mobility features of the village describes how the base first opened in 1947, providing housing for military families but closed in 2013. PHV was the lighthouse project of the International Building Exhibition (IBA) Heidelberg, and is now being reimagined as an archetypal district for the “knowledge city of tomorrow”, creating 10,000 new homes and 5,000 jobs,

On life sciences R&D, non-profit organisation, the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) continues to break barriers in the understanding of biology and human life at its research labs perched above the city, while science and business are being encouraged to meet face to face at Heidelberg's new Congress Centre which opened this April adjacent to the main railway station, in the city's new 'Bahnstadt' or 'Railway City' district.

On Future Cities Forum's visit, the Mayor emphasised the importance of growing the international community at Heidelberg's science parks - which includes several of the Max Planck Institutes - while encouraging open discussion on the latest sustainability ideas and modern living at the Congress Centre.

Heidelberg Congress Centre next to the developing new 'Railway City'

Heidelberg Congress Centre

The Heidelberg Congress Centre opened this year after three years of construction and sits opposite the main train station and the new Europaplatz. It has been designed by the Basel-based firm Degelo Architekten in the local red Neckar sandstone, which has been quarried in the region for over a thousand years, and which references the colour of Heidelberg Castle. Some architectural writers point to the different treatment of the sandstone for this modern building and the 'waved structure' which gives the impression of a theatre curtain.

The publisher, Archello, describes the imposing front of the centre:

'... the resulting interplay of light and shadow provides the otherwise solid stone with a touch of airiness. The fluting’s charring – a traditional stonemason’s technique – was honed digitally and then manually broken off. This coarse treatment of the surface results in the fine, yellow marbling of the sandstone being reduced to a background feature. In contrast, the entrance recesses and few, drop-shaped window openings are smooth and finely polished, which makes the marbling clearly visible.'

Walking into the Congress Centre, feels like a vast cathedral or monument to international business, its white walls awash in pink for our visit. In addition to the Great Hall it has meeting rooms of different sizes allowing for nearly 4,000 seats. There is also a fully equipped broadcast studio enabling video productions and streaming of conferences. The message on the tour is that this centre is open for business and would welcome companies to hold their international meetings in these spaces.

Image: inside the Heidelberg Congress Centre

The Mayor was keen to talk about the sustainability credentials of the building, pointing out that the Centre has been awarded Gold-status by the German Sustainable Building Council (DGNB), with points assigned for sustainable construction and the use of environmentally compatible materials. The building has primary energy supply by district hearing/cooling and photovoltaics, optimisation of the microclimate through a green roof and reduction of wastewater through filtration of rain water. Sustainable travel is supported through cycle parking spaces, access to the public transport infrastructure and car parking with electric charging points.

In addition Archello states:

'The supporting structure is made from recycling concrete and is used to store a reduced amount of grey energy, thus providing a thermally inert mass which benefits the energy balance during use. The – except for the generously glassed entrances – mostly unbroken facade contributes positively to the energy balance, as it also acts as a storage mass. The air-conditioning uses a minimum of primary energy and utilises the principles of night-time cooling and waste heat recovery. The fundamental central idea for the energy concept was: to minimise the demand, and meet and generate the remaining demand through efficient use of local and renewable resources. The Heidelberg Congress Center was planned to Passivhaus specifications'

Image: The Congress Centre sits at the middle of an exciting an emerging district, where restaurants are opening up and social infrastructure such as new primary schools are expanding.

Science and technology

Image: The Advanced Training Centre building at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) campus Heidelberg - which was designed in the shape of a double helix.

Future Cities Forum was taken to the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) high above the city and was told about the importance of continuing science investment and innovation that takes place in Heidelberg.

The university and research institutes account for around 17% of jobs in Heidelberg. Together with the university hospital, the university is the city’s largest employer, with over 14,000 full-time employees. In total, significantly more than half the 86,000 dependent employees in Heidelberg work in the knowledge-intensive services sector – including universities and colleges – or the health and welfare sectors. Employment growth in the past decade has been based to a significant extent on these sectors.

The number of people in full-time employment in Heidelberg has risen to 117,500 – a new record. Employees have an above-average level of education, and 35% of employees living in Heidelberg have an academic degree. The average for Germany is 12%. At the same time, the unemployment rate is below average compared with other cities in Baden-Württemberg.

The University City of Heidelberg has long been a global hotspot for science with its high density of research activities in institutes and research facilities. According to international rankings, Heidelberg University is one of the top 50 universities in the world. The European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) is supported by more than 20 European countries.

The city's lord mayor, Prof. Dr Eckart Wurzner said:

'Heidelberg is known in particular for its knowledge-intensive companies. These benefit from their proximity to numerous universities and non-university research facilities. The interplay between the worlds of science, business and every day living that has existed in the historic old town for centuries is now being rediscovered by modern-day urban development, research and industry'.

Image: Future Cities Forum joined the tour of EMBL's Imaging Centre above

The European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL)

The European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) has become a world leader in bioinformatics, through innovative technological and methodological developments, novel biological discoveries, hosting of databases used by millions of scientists worldwide, and the provision of state-of-the-art structural biology services. EMBL has one mission but six sites, including Heidelberg, Hamburg, Grenoble, Barcelona, Rome and Hinxton in Cambridgeshire (on the Wellcome Genome Campus).

Future Cities Forum was taken to EMBL to look at some of the facilities and equipment used in ground-breaking experiments which are shaping today's world knowledge of how the human body functions.

Structural biology investigates the three-dimensional structure of biological molecules, such as proteins and nucleic acids, and tries to understand their function through this lens. The journey of structural biology in the last five decades has been one of continuous technological progress coupled with exciting biological insights, greatly expanding our understanding of how life functions at the molecular level. 

Above: registration at EMBL's exhibition 'The world of molecular biology' and above that - imaging displays and education consoles. Concept design for the exhibition was from specialist consultancy, Haley Sharpe.

In 1975, just a year after EMBL was created, its founders, some of whom were pioneering structural biologists, took the decision to establish the next two sites (then called ‘outstations’) in Hamburg and Grenoble, on campuses with sources of high-energy beams/particles that could be used for structural biology experiments. EMBL Hamburg is situated on the campus of the German Synchrotron Research Centre (DESY), while EMBL Grenoble shares the EPN Campus with the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF), the Institut Laue Langevin (ILL), and the French national Institut de Biologie Structurale (IBS).

Both EMBL Hamburg and Grenoble provide a rich environment for instrumentation engineers, scientists, and service specialists to collaborate and innovate, advancing structural biology methods as well as their use in understanding biological processes.  

Many of these developments have focused on improving and automating techniques related to macromolecular crystallography. Researchers studying the three-dimensional structure of a macromolecule (e.g. a protein) need to first isolate it in its purest form from a biological sample that has thousands of other macromolecules. The isolated protein is then induced to form crystals – an orderly arrangement of molecules – whose atomic structure can then be determined by analysing the way they scatter X-rays or other energy beams. 

Above: Part of the eye of a lamprey - by EMBL scientists Philip Oel, Detlev Arendt, and Henrik Kaessmann

In the early days of structural biology, methods for isolating, harvesting, and analysing protein crystals, as well as for interpreting the data obtained afterwards were manual, laborious, and time-consuming. Over the past five decades, however, EMBL researchers and engineers have introduced an unprecedented degree of automation in macromolecular crystallography, in addition to pioneering new techniques, thus revolutionising both crystallisation procedures and the use of beamlines. 

For example, in 1990, EMBL Hamburg produced the first online imaging plate scanner for protein crystallography, which has been commercialised and widely used. EMBL Hamburg has also been leading the way in a technique called small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS), which was used, for example, by EMBL scientists in collaboration with BioNTech, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, and other partners, to study how mRNA can be better packaged and delivered into human cells. This crucial research supported the mRNA nanomedicine technologies that were necessary for ensuring the quality and efficiency of mRNA drugs and vaccines, such as those developed during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Many new research projects are also underway at EMBL in Heidelberg. One of these is looking at 'gene enhancers'. Enhancers are genetic elements that control when and where genes are expressed in many living systems and genetic differences within them have been linked to diseases; however, how genes use enhancers during different stages of  development is poorly understood. New research from scientists at EMBL Heidelberg has shown that the way genes are influenced by enhancers undergoes a change when cells forming a tissue transition from a precursor state to their final differentiated forms. The study demonstrates how different modes of gene regulation can facilitate flexibility on the one hand, and more deterministic (or instructive) regulation on the other, to facilitate the plasticity and complexity required to develop tissues and organs during embryonic development.

Future Cities Forum was grateful to have been introduced to this vital work and other projects at EMBL in Heidelberg.

Image above shows a section through a mouse brain, viewed from above, in which you can see individual neurons - Jim Swoger/Jurgen Mayer, EMBL/ Centre for Genomic Regulation

Retrofit and renewal of historic military sites for new housing

Image: PHV / Patrick Henry Village's 1960s-era housing

Heidelberg is not unlike other cities in Europe which are tackling the challenges of the re-development of historic sites for modern housing and mixed-use districts. One of these sites lies outside the main city and is called Patrick Henry Village (PHV Heidelberg) and was named after the first governor of Virginia in the USA.

Engineering company, Buro Happold has been working to re-design the complex into a modern sustainable housing district. The firm describes the project:

'First opened in 1947, Patrick Henry Village (PHV) was a site for US military family housing until it closed in 2013. As the lighthouse project of the International Building Exhibition (IBA) Heidelberg, PHV is now being reimagined as an archetypal district for the “knowledge city of tomorrow”.

Images above and below: Heidelberg's senior city planner describes the development of Patrick Henry Village

Buro Happold continues:

'The overarching purpose of this work is to create a diverse and sustainable neighbourhood – both ecologically and socially – that is highly resistant to risks and changing conditions. Covering approximately 100 hectares – Heidelberg’s largest conversion area – PHV will be home to 10,000 people while providing 5,000 jobs.

'Until 2013, Patrick Henry Village was the site of family housing for US military personnel – Patrick Henry was a Founding Father of the United States

'Covering approximately 100 hectares, the revitalised development will be home to 10,000 people while providing 5,000 jobs

As a “knowledge city of tomorrow”, the project will serve as a model for designing diverse and sustainable neighbourhoods

As part of a progressive mobility concept, the district discourages driving by being free of car parks

'The process began in 2015 with the idea of PHVision, which aims to use Heidelberg as a real-life laboratory that provides insight to improve urban development far beyond the region. For the project’s dynamic masterplan, which was led by KCAP, several expert teams compiled reports on development and architecture, diverse urban districts, productive urban landscape, and the digital city. The fifth topic – multi-mobility – was led by Urban Standards with support from our mobility experts. Besides innovative building typologies, individual studies were undertaken on technical infrastructure and open space solutions, implementation strategies, operator models and governance processes.

Above: image of sustainable mobility at Patrick Henry Village, courtesy KCAP Architects

Buro Happold explains:

'Patrick Henry Village will act as a real-life laboratory to provide information for future urban development projects across Germany.'

'Patrick Henry Village’s multi-mobility concept is anchored by the Green City Plan and the region’s targets for sustainable mobility. Heidelberg is also committed to the C40 Sustainability Agenda, particularly as regards the declarations of “Fossil fuel-free streets” and “Green and healthy streets”.

'The aim was to develop a concept for the typology of conversion areas that are suitable for cars, thereby creating a model for sustainable and affordable urban mobility.

'The mobility concept devised by our team consistently adheres to the principles of a “city of short distances”. The central element of this concept is a neighbourhood free of car parks, which will result in less traffic while offering more freedom for “soft mobility” such as walking and cycling. Integrated solutions will enable residents and visitors to get around without need of private car ownership; in addition to trams and shuttle buses, there will be high-quality infrastructure to support bicycles. The introduction of a car sharing system will cater for journeys further afield.

'This highly sustainable new neighbourhood has been cleverly designed to encourage residents to adopt fossil fuel-free modes of transport.'

Image: CGI from KCAP architects of the PHV master-plan

Buro Happold states:

'The concept is based on a push and pull strategy that incentivises walking, cycling, public transport and ride sharing while dissuading car use – via no parking facilities, for example – to organically alter mobility behaviour in the long term. This is also a means to accomplish more far-reaching goals, such as reducing CO2 emissions, while improving road safety. Further benefits include cost-effective construction – for example, no underground car parks are required.

While car ownership within the neighbourhood will be subtly discouraged, a car sharing system will cater for journeys further afield. Image: KCAP

'In helping to develop this progressive concept, Buro Happold’s transport and mobility experts have provided Patrick Henry Village with a mobility strategy completely in tune with the project’s ambitious, internationally minded intent.

Patrick Henry Village will become a beautiful and sustainable home to 10,000 people.'

The importance of culture at PHV and in Heidelberg

Part of the re-development of the site, is to create a go-to place for music and nightlife. The army stores building has been turned into such a venue. Each year, the internal walls are re-painted to provide different murals. The performance areas are vast and lead to outside space for events, with a reminder of the site's history with a re-painted US world-war tank on display.

Back in Heidelberg itself, there has been a series of special commissions to use the talents of local and international artists providing murals for some plainer buildings and infrastructure. Power stations, bridges and houses have all been 'treated' with careful designs. Some brighten up the landscape, some require the onlooker to look anew at buildings while others demand the viewer question our environment and climate change.

Image: mural at the former US military PX at Patrick Henry Village

Above: inside the former PX (Post Exchange) at PHV, looking at artwork as part of the Heidelberg street art tour

Above: US Army 1940's Pershing tank outside the former PX, now a music and art venue at Patrick Henry Village

Image: Graffiti artists are being commissioned in the city to enhance the look of buildings and spread messages about sustainable living. Above the butterfly can also be viewed on a digital app to explain how to protect our living environment.

Future Cities Forum was grateful to the Mayor of Heidelberg for being able to take part in this exceptional weekend of lectures and visits.

It enabled an understanding of the importance of innovation and scientific discovery as well as the development of sustainable living, that is taking place in Heidelberg.

Future Cities Forum hopes to continue to report on future projects and wishes the city well with its attraction of international business to the Congress Centre.