Peter Marcus Bach — Field Index

I grew up in Singapore, in a city surrounded by the jungle. Nature formed a big part of my childhood. I remember building my first cities out of sand, on a beach while on holiday in Malaysia, and watched the tide take them apart every evening without fail. It never occurred to me as a child that this was a lesson. It just felt like something worth doing again the next day, a little differently at a grander scale. When I was not at the beach, then LEGO had to do.

At 16 I moved to Malaysia, horizons opened as I finished high school, mind filled with creativity, but also struggling on what to study. If I could draw better, then it would have been architecture. However, I was good at math, so engineering it was! Regardless of disciplines, I spent most of my teenage years playing Sim City and building dream environments in The Sims.

Australia is where the sandcastles turned into something closer to a discipline. First a Civil engineering undergraduate degree and then a PhD at Monash University, spent mostly on urban spatial planning and water-sensitive design. One interested glance at a design chapter on bioretention systems became the foundation for what would later grow into my bigger journey of bringing nature back into cities. Fifteen-plus years later I still think in the same basic shape: model the system before you touch it. All that Sim City and other computer games came back to light... because this time, I could design the model.

Switzerland is where the practice actually became a practice. Founding EdenCT in Dübendorf meant accepting something I'd half-known for years: I'm not the person who should be drawing the final design. I'm the person who should be handing someone else the evidence, the model, the diagnosis, so their design is better and faster than it would have been without it. That connector role, not architect, not final decision- maker, is the whole premise my consultancy is built on. It also best represents my passion! I love thinking across disciplines. I love building fantastical, sustainable, resilient and liveable future worlds. And for the moment, helping cities and other specialists undersatnd the science and practicalities behind this can have a major impact.

I am a consultant, researcher, educator and podcaster. I love connecting the dots and diving deep into many topics so that we can better understand just how interconnected this world is. I am an interdisciplinary creative because I love both the artistic and the scientific, the human and the technical. Switzerland is where I currently am, running my company EdenCT, hosting my podcast The Grand Challengers Podcast and bringing my vision to the world in my own unique way. I like it when I get to ask people the obvious question nobody else will... and if that moves the needle, then that is music to my ears.

Four continents, one commonality through it all. If there's a version of this story that fits on a business card, it's probably: building cities that work with nature instead of against it, bringing an age-old technology that has stood the test of time back into our environments and improving our lives in the process.

My Story

CV

Publications

EdenCT

The Grand Challengers Podcast

Substack

YouTube

LinkedIn

Book Recommendations

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