Architecture without Architects
Today we exclusively design buildings with computerised 3D models. Views are primarily intended to promote projects. I am therefore concerned with the question of which path architecture will take when its creative process is no longer determined by direct sensory perception, by human imagination, classic drafting techniques and by formative force of craftsmanship, as well as reference to a living cultural tradition. We believe we can create a Greek vase with artificial intelligence. But in reality, we only succeed in recording a hypothetical moulded shell that can be confusingly similar to the real vase. It is precisely the current debate on Baukultur that raises critical questions in my mind as to whether sufficient preconditions can still be reactivated today to build this new building culture on.
Extinction of Form
Today's inflationary use of shapes numbs our sense of form and the visual acuity with which we perceive our environment. Reinforced by the jungle of regulations, we obscure the objective of pure, good form when designing our buildings and everyday objects: innovation, usability, cultural integration, comprehensibility, material justice, consistency, longevity and environmental friendliness, personality, above all diversity and personal passion. Furnishings, even "functional" kitchens, have become technical gimmicks. In its thousands of years of cultural history, mankind has always struggled for form, expression and beauty and incorporated these into the essence of the design of objects. Only a generation with a sharpened sense for form can build a broad-based building culture.
One-size-fits-all Housing
Just 200 years ago, travellers on our planet discovered an incredible variety of building forms and partly grown, partly planned settlement structures. Today's aerial photographs, whether in Vladivostok, Mumbai or Lima, show how huge new neighbourhoods are overgrowing and threatening to suffocate the historic city centres. Whether in the form of high-rise buildings, apartment blocks or carpet developments, these suburban neighbourhoods consist of similar flats all over the world. But poverty has also moved into the cities in the form of slums, offering no opportunity for real architectural diversity and inventivenes. These slums are similar all over the world because they are presumably patched together from the same detritus of our affluent society and traditional building materials and construction methods are out of reach for their builders. So it seems as if, with the unstoppable growth of our cities worldwide, humanity has agreed ona few typologies of dwellings, regardless of climate, tradition and level of technical development, which are marketed together with their furnishings as the ideal of living. Of course, the digital world comforts us with an infinite number of superficial design options. But these no longer stem from existentially or culturally independent ideas of life. The cultural and architectural history of mankind is based on crossovers and amalgamations of cultural currents. Today, this dynamic cultural-historical fertilisation has slackened in the global cultural stream of unity.
Regression through technology
The construction industry usually only sees the path to a more sustainable future in the innovative power of technology, new products and materials, but also in even more complex and capital-intensive production and control systems. The latest remeasurements show disappointing overall values in the overall balance, including grey energy and sustainability of building materials. Building culture must work towards a building production that can be understood, practised and repaired by as many people as possible, with intelligent use of local building materials in manageable production processes, flows of goods and recycling. This is the only way for architecture to regain its expressiveness, regional character and personality.
Compulsion for Comfort
If we assume that everyone is entitled to building culture, the demands on our built environment should also apply to everyone. However, if the demand for space and comfort in our western countries were to be transferred to the whole of humanity, neither global resources nor settlement space would be sufficient without serious damage to the environment. Sacrificing comfort is a taboo subject. However, all considerations regarding the implementation of building culture must begin with a differentiated analysis of our own demands on building. Our holiday adventures in tents and the simplest accommodation, the desire for an archaic way of life and a more intensive, self-determined attitude to life show us the way.
Building shame
Term projects and examinations at our schools show a tendency to do architecture without building and to reject form aesthetic quality. This means renounciation of building whenever possible. And if you do build, then convert and recycle what is already there and integrate it into a circular economy. Form is perceived as a seduction. It is more a result of a theoretical process than a consciously designed creation. However, building culture requires the will to design, responsibly and the desire to create. This kind of loss of form and lack of desire for form in architecture reminds me all too much of the mistakes we made in 1968.
Useless Diversity
Building culture demands diversity of form. That's right. But there is also too much variety in our built environment. In our single-family housing estates, no two houses are the same and they all vie for attention with their individual design features. Even new-build neighbourhoods are often designed house by house or block by block by different architectural firms according to their own design approaches. Contemporary architecture is driven by the need for individualistic expression. Meanwhile, we admire Mediterranean settlements built entirely in white, medieval towns created from a common understanding of materials or the strict unity of entire streets in19th century. Good building should not only rely on unique visual selling points for themselves, but be ready to enter into a dialogue with others. Good architecture must originate from a collective spirit, make a differentiated contribution to the settlement as a whole through appropriate individual character and understand itself as part of a millennia-old local building tradition
Building culture
The Davos Declaration, the subsequent debate and the formulation of criteria for its implementation have officially established building as a cultural activity. In numerous discussions, studies and concrete building concepts, the understanding of building culture has been refined and more deeply rooted in our society in recent years. However, the pursuit of good architecture and good urban planning is countered by a dramaticand unstoppable decline in culturally relevant values, in the preconditions that would make a high-quality building culture possible in the first place. The reverse conclusion, that good building can effectively influence these preconditions for the future in its favour, also seems hardly realistic to me. The International Style was intended to create a common modern design language among architects. Comparable to a doctrine of salvation, the modern concept of life was to be carried into even the most rustic regions with long-established building traditions. Today, we must conclude that only a few of these original and formative sources of our building tradition have survived in such a way that they can serve as starting points for a new building culture. The rest of our global settlements are already overgrown with dull commercially driven building structures. We must save what can still be saved, but a coherent building culture as we know it from history will no longer exist.
Human creativity
Everything built, even high-tech architecture, ultimately consists only of transformed earth from our planet. But it is we humans who decide how this transformation is accomplished and designed. In 1982, I had the opportunity to watch the restoration of the first three lunettes of the Sistine Chapel from the scaffolding. Some clearly visible chalk lines left a deep impression on me. Michelangelo, probably because the intonaco dried too quickly, was forced to spontaneously turn the face of a figure towards the wall, thereby realigning the message and balance of the composition, an ingenious combination of planning, discipline and spontaneous intution. Despite state-of-the-art equipment and an unlimited budget, photographer Takashi Okamura, commissioned by Nippon Television Network, struggled to capture the true impression of the perhaps overly brightly restored frescoes with his camera. Those frescoes are not only the result of a highly developed craftsmanship and subsequent post-processing. They develop their effect mainly through the properties of the materials and the layers of depth, i.e. ultimately through the human creative process, which cannot be imitated even by the most modern digital representation techniques. That is why I still believe in the craftsmanship of architectural design as a tool of human creativity.
