What the future holds

Although the debate, with Nanne de Ru and Charles Bessard of Powerhouse Company, Pierre Hebbelinck, André Kempe of Atelier Kempe Thill, Jo Coenen and Jeroen van Schooten, was not all doom and gloom, there was no escaping the fact that the suffering is not over yet. There was even talk of predictions that it would take four to five years for the market for architecture to recover. At the same time, it is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore the question of whether the demand for architecture, and thus for architects, will ever again reach pre-crisis levels. The combination of the current crisis, European demographic trends and the global environmental impact of construction make this highly unlikely.

The crisis in architecture is the biggest problem in countries where real estate played a crucial role in economic growth in recent years. But this is not everywhere the case. Some countries, such as Poland, seem to be withstanding the current turbulence pretty well. But across the board, the picture is bleak. It is not at all certain whether there will ever again be as much work for architects as there was before the crisis.

During the debate in Maastricht, there were soothing assertions that new opportunities would undoubtedly arise, that architects, as generalist problem solvers, would be eminently suited to other types of work, that there is more for architects to do than designing buildings. If that is indeed the case, it lends a sense of urgency to the question of whether architectural education needs to be reappraised. Should the academies continue to train so many students to become architects if there will no longer be any demand for them on the labour market? A negative response to this question, incidentally, has immediate implications for all those architects who derive at least part of their income from providing that training. Such musings on architecture, architectural practice and architectural education will not lead to the end of architecture per se, but they may well herald the end of architecture as we know it.