An internationally recognized architect, author, and educator, UNLV Professor Steffen Lehmann is our guest this week on Nevada Week In Person.

♪♪♪♪♪ Support for Nevada Week In Person is provided by Senator William H. Hernstadt.

-Welcome to Nevada Week In Person.

I'm Amber Renee Dixon.

Born in Stuttgart, Germany, his academic career spans three decades across multiple continents.

Sustainable urban development is what drives him, and he hopes Las Vegas can become a model of this for other desert cities.

Steffen Lehmann, Professor of Architecture and Urbanism at UNLV, thank you for joining Nevada Week In Person.

-Wonderful to be here.

Thank you.

-So from what I've read, you grew up in Germany where your best friend's father was an architect, and that's how you were inspired.

What do you remember?

-My neighbor.

-Your neighbor, okay.

(Steffen Lehmann) Yes, as a kid, I played in his office and built models, and I thought, I want to become an architect.

And when my school friends wanted to become astronauts or drivers of trains, I wanted to become an architect.

They always thought it's very boring.

-Do you know why?

I mean, did you see the importance in it at the time?

-I just loved it, you know, to create and to make drawings and models and to really have a positive impact in the way that you build a building for somebody else to have a happy life.

-And did you know at that time you'd be making the kind of impact?

No, of course you didn't know.

-No.

-Okay.

1993 you become a licensed architect in Berlin.

-That's right.

-This is just four years after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

When I put this together and then realized that you worked in that area-- -Oh, yes.

- --did you understand the magnitude of this at that time?

-Oh, yes.

I was first working overseas for a very famous Japanese architect, Arata Isozaki in Tokyo, and I worked there three years.

I was looking at what's going on in Germany, and I wanted to be back home and be part of that.

And then I was very lucky.

I won two competitions that I did from Tokyo in Berlin, and I then was able to set up, establish my architecture firm.

And it was very busy, very exciting time.

We were able to redefine, reinvent the city center and stitch East and West Berlin together, you know, making history.

I'm from West Germany, but I went many times to East Germany.

And they really had the collision of two different systems, communism on one side and kind of soft capitalism, looking at America, on the other side.

And so I was very lucky building at the three big Baroque historical squares, Potsdamer Platz, Hackescher Markt, and Pariser Platz.

All three are very famous squares, and I have buildings in all of them.

So I think there is only one other architect who has built in those three squares.

It had a big impact on Berlin, what we call the New Berlin, but then I became an academic.

They made me a professor, and so I sold my office.

I'm still involved in practice, but not as intensely as those 10 years in Berlin.

-And is that the-- are you referencing the studio that you opened around that same time that had a concern for sustainability?

-That's right.

Sustainability was always big on our agenda.

And it goes back a long time in my life story.

You know, when I was something like 12 years old, I went fishing with my brother in a lake close by, and we had a great time.

We were fishing many fish, and we pulled out over a dozen of fish, small one, big ones.

And we came home and we were very proud of our catch, and we showed it.

And my father was very angry, and he said, You only take what you need from nature.

You never take more than you need from nature.

And we had to eat fish the whole week.

I remember that.

It was a warning.

It's a simple story, but why do I tell it?

It really embodies the need for living in harmony with nature.

We are part of the same ecosystem and have respect for nature, and only touch the earth slightly and maybe don't leave a trace, if possible.

That's all-- of course, that sounds like contradictory to architecture, to want to do buildings that last for a very long time.

So we have to completely rethink, especially in a desert city like Las Vegas, how do we make climate-responsive buildings that deal with the extreme heat and you still can live comfortably?

-When you opened this studio, what did your peers think of this sustainability idea?

-It was growing at the '90s.

It was early.

Of course, we were, you know, pioneers in my office, and we were early embracers.

But we saw clients come around and said, You know, that new thing, sustainability, we really interested in it, and we want to make the greenest building in Berlin.

-Wow!

-Yeah, we were very fortunate to have fantastic clients that would pay the extra for green roofs and all the other things that we put in there, which costs maybe 10% more at the end.

But it makes a payback after seven or eight years; you save so much in energy costs.

-I imagine that's still what you face today, people saying it's going to be too expensive to do this.

-Yeah, but we have the economic model on our side.

We can make a quick economic calculation on the napkin and say, Look, that's how you save.

In seven years, is going to be a payback of all those solar panels or whatever we do, yeah.

-You talked about becoming an academic.

You have done an impressive amount of research in this area.

-I was very fortunate to meet very interesting people, the most smart, the smartest people you can think of and the most interesting people in my life the last 30 years, and work with them.

And a lot of other pioneers in sustainability, early embracers.

And it was fantastic.

And we coresearched.

We published books together.

I've published 24 books.

My new book is coming out.

It's called Designing for the Desert: Living in an Extreme Climate, and it's my Book 25, and then I'm gonna take it easy and slow down a little bit.

That's the plan.

This book is taking all my energy, because it's 300-400 pages, big book with 30 chapters.

And it's half done, and it's very exciting and I'm looking so much forward to launch it.

-How would you describe this task, urban development in the desert?

I mean, is this something that your career has been building towards?

-I believe so.

You know, I've been working in deserts a little bit in Australia and then I moved back to Europe and then I was offered the position to come to Las Vegas to lead the architecture school at UNLV.

And I was very interested, what would it be like to live in the driest city, in the hottest and driest city in the United States in North America?

What would it be like?

And so I was very curious, and it's great.

I mean, I'm here since seven years.

I'm still here.

I'm still interested.

I'm still trying to understand the desert.

I love the desert.

I go out hiking with my dog in the canyons and so, and we do wonderful tours.

And I think the desert is magnificent.

Of course, some people love the beach or the mountains, but I think the desert is a very interesting place to be.

It puts you back in your perception, you know?

If you go and have headaches and problems, daily problems we all face, and you go to the desert, it all looks irrelevant suddenly, less important.

-You know, I want to bring up a quote from 2019 from you.

At that point, how long had you been in Las Vegas?

-Maybe two years.

-Okay.

You said, "The future of Las Vegas will depend on the acceptance of a more strict growth boundary and on intelligent urban infill."

-Yes.

-So five years have passed since then.

-Yes, I still believe the same.

We have to stop growing the footprint of the city.

I mean, how big do you want Las Vegas to be?

It's already 30 miles from North Las Vegas to Henderson, and 20 miles east to west.

It's a huge footprint compared to, let's say, 50 years ago or 20 years ago.

In the last 20 years, the footprint of Las Vegas has grown by 35%, and it looks like it's out of control.

-I'm sure you've heard the argument that more land is needed for affordable housing.

-Yes, but there is a lot of land vacant sitting within the boundary of our footprint already.

And you know, if you build a compact city, if you densify inwards, not outwards, and if you, if you grow compact and maybe you go up one or two stories, and you have all these vacant lots everywhere.

If you drive down Flamingo Road or Russell Street or any street, you have so many vacant lots that could still be infilled first before we start encroaching further and further into the vulnerable ecosystem of the desert.

-Has progress been made in those areas that you mentioned in that quote?

-I think so.

I think people waking up to infill, and there are better models of prefabricated modular housing that helps also with the price.

If you want to achieve affordable housing, you have to think very hard where do you put it.

The location is very important.

Obviously, if you are in an already built up area, it makes everything more efficient.

The infrastructure, everything is already there.

You have the network, you have the sewage system, you have the gas, the electricity--everything's there--the roads.

But if you keep building out into the desert, you have to build all that new, and that comes with a high cost.

And that drives up, of course, cost leader of the unit price.

-It negates the term "affordable."

I want to go back to the research that you've done.

You have informed local governments across the world, corporations as well.

Among the influence that you have had in that area with your research, what stands out to you?

What are you most proud of?

-A couple of things, but maybe one that comes to mind is when I was UNESCO Chair of Sustainable Urban Development for the Asia Pacific.

I traveled a lot for those four years, and I met many mayors and politicians.

And I instilled the idea of sustainable urban development in their brains.

And we had a huge impact at the end when we developed the Sustainable Development Goals, which, you know, is a set of 17 goals.

And goal 11 is, SDG 11 we call it, is the cities goal.

And it wasn't in there before.

And I was part of the reference group.

We developed SDGs, and they were launched in 2012.

Everybody's using them today.

And this was a big impact, because a group of us said we have to have SDG for cities.

Cities are so important, and 40-50% of all greenhouse gas emissions are emitted by cities.

And why wouldn't we have a particular SDG goal, Sustainable Development Goal 11, which is called Sustainable Cities and Communities.

That wasn't in before.

-Really?

-Yes.

Now, of course, when it was launched 2012, we managed to get it in.

And I believe it's one of the really important sustainable development goals.

As an urbanist, of course, I think so.

But it's been a very impactful, positive impactful maneuver that we did at that point at that moment of magnificent consequences.

We weren't aware at that point.

-Has that goal or those goals been accomplished?

-No.

The SDGs are 17 SDGs, like do away with poverty and hunger and many, many things are in there that are very ambitious.

And in some areas with the wars we have now, we actually are not making any progress.

But on others, we have.

You know, medical health care for everybody in the world, also in Africa and other countries, there has been a lot of progress made.

So it's not fair to say there's no progress.

It depends on the SDG.

-But for that particular SDG that involved the cities?

-Yes, it is.

A lot of studies based on that and a lot of outcomes.

Yes, I think that was successful.

-You describe yourself as an eternal optimist and radical pragmatist.

How can both things exist at the same time?

-I always say, I don't believe fairy tales; I believe in dreams.

So what I mean is, if you're an architect, you have to be an optimist.

You have to think positive.

It's very, very important.

We never-- my research institute at UNLV, the Urban Futures Lab, we never engage in climate alarmism or doomsday messages, hysterical doomsday messages, the world is going to end in 12 years, or anything like that.

What we do is we provide the scientific evidence base for better decision making, better informed decision making by governments and cities and developers worldwide.

So we work worldwide.

We have a project at Australia, one in Dubai.

We have just completed one in Costa Rica.

-And why not involve yourself in that, in the doomsday?

-Yes.

And so you have to be positive.

If you don't have a positive message, nobody is going to want to be part of it and buy in.

And if you have climate alarmism that's not backed up scientifically, it's just nonsense.

So we want to have the scientific evidence, the evidence base that other people know exactly how to plan forward in urban development and make sure they do the right thing.

And therefore they have to have the scientific evidence.

-So you are not a believer in fear as a motivator?

-No.

No, never.

I like to have incentives.

I like to inspire and incentivize to do the right thing in architecture and change the way we develop buildings and cities, for instance in Las Vegas with a growth boundary and stop growing the footprint indefinitely.

We can't keep doing what we're doing here.

-Steffen Lehmann, thank you so much for joining Nevada Week In Person.

-It's been a great pleasure, Amber.

Thanks.