Overdose & underdose

Sustainability, adaptive re-use, building for demographic decline, and devising strategies for surviving the current recession: these are just four obvious themes for the coming years.

It can also be fairly safely predicted that the economic crisis will lead to more draconian cost cutting in the glamour & entertainment department. It was in already in the air, for there were already signs of a dip in appreciation for the kind of architecture that is intent on being spectacular and scarcely bothers about supplying a concrete need, let alone necessity. The aversion to projects that are just as authoritarian and imperious as their clients – and sometimes also their designers – will only increase (it must be said that this statement is not entirely free of wishful thinking).

Anyone who assumes that there is nearly always a symmetry in these things might also surmise that the love affair with the polar opposite of all that iconic architecture might well start to cool. Recent years have seen a spate of publications, exhibitions and studies in which informal urban development and architecture took centre stage. Against the architects who are susceptible to the Faustian temptation to build something never seen before, there are those within the profession who have looked with an interest bordering on self-contempt at all manner of architecture and urban development where no designer is involved, whether it be the favelas in South America or illegal building practices in the Balkans. In this light, the favela can be seen as the symbolic antithesis of the architectural icon. Where the icon has received a fatal overdose of architecture, these anti-icons suffer from an unhealthy underdose. Both are interesting as phenomena, and might even, with a bit of good will, be called fascinating, but neither does much to improve the health of the built environment – or of architecture for that matter.