Architecture in permanent overshoot mode has little to do with architecture as a profound human capacity to create balance. It speaks volumes not only about the predicament of architecture, but more so about the weakening agency of humanity itself to be its own guide and determine its own destiny. Over the years I have tried 8 times to position architecture again as a medium of humanity and as a faculty of critical thinking. This is a kind invitation to explore this legacy.
How could architecture repurpose itself?
By seeing itself as an answer that aspires to relevance, hence completely opening itself to the needs of society.
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- Netherlands Architecture Institute, 2007-2012
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I was director of the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAi) between 2007 and 2013, when it was blindsided’ by a government-induced merger with two other institutions. During the NAi’s final six years, I calibrated the mission of this publicly funded institute to unequivocally embrace the idea of architecture as a response to what society needs, and in so doing, thereby re-charging the social relevance of architecture in a time of deep economic malaise. Accordingly, everything the NAi undertook in those years, exemplified this pursuit: the building became more sustainable and more intensively used. A new wing for children presented architecture as an activity for all, explicitly addressing tasks for architects. The exhibition program and collection policy were geared to the same idea, proving the point of architecture as a highly intelligent solution to complex problems. An innovation agenda aimed at inspiring architectural practice was launched, to show the degree to which architecture could directly respond to the climate emergency, public health issues, the energy transition, and other major issues of contemporary society. Additionally, the NAi launched a smart phone app to disseminate the NAi collection and support the public debate on past and future architectural quality.
Archis, (1996–2005) was a professional journal aimed mainly at architects. Under my editorship it evolved into a cultural magazine that presented architecture as a direct reflection of unfolding history and explored its power to participate in that history. This direction was rejected by the owner, the Netherlands Architecture Institute, who wanted to terminate the magazine. Through the intervention of the Dutch parliament, and the establishment of an independent foundation, Archis was able to continue its mission to investigate the rationale and opportunities for architecture as spatial intelligence – rather than just presenting what happened in the built environment, presenting how things were made, or providing exposure to the people who designed it. In this way, Archis returned to a tradition cultivated by such predecessors as R.K. Bouwblad, Goed Wonen, Tijdschrift voor architectuur en beeldende kunsten, Wonen TA/BK At its best it queried the very raison d'être of architecture as a medium of culture, exploring the cultural motives within the architectural dimension of society.
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During the past 15 years, the Archis Foundation has continued with the completely internationalized publication, now titled Volume, in collaboration with Columbia University and the architecture office OMA. In the wake of a massive disruption of architecture due to globalization, digitization, neo-liberalism and the introduction of technologies interfering with the essential features of the architectural discipline, Volume went beyond the question of “why” per se and began to explore how architecture could find new territories beyond itself. An agenda to stimulate a new self-confidence for the oldest human endeavor: creating a place on earth.
How could architecture be presented as the ultimate medium of culture, with the potential to change it?
By building a discourse of “what”, “how”, and “why” to first understand then strengthen the metaphorical power of architecture, and ultimately use that for active proposals for change.
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- Archis/Volume, 1996-2007
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How could architecture rediscover its inner strength?
By resetting architecture’s own agenda by means of conviction and unsolicited actions.
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- Unsolicited Architecture, 2007
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I coined Unsolicited Architecture in the first editorial of the new magazine Volume, founded in 2005. It pointed out architecture’s ability to reclaim its autonomy, this time understood not as a free zone for disciplinary experimentation, but as an exercise to develop an ethical agenda of its own. The idea was further developed in a studio taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2007, run as an imaginary Office for Unsolicited Architecture, later renamed Unsolicited Studio. Some students who joined this office concentrated on exemplary unsolicited projects, others on the strategic and managerial aspects of such a practice. The results and the underlying manifesto were published in Volume 14. Between 2010 and 2012 the Studio continued as part of the NAi program, actively pitching strong architectural proposals for solutions to societal issues, publishing “bid books”, and arranging match-making sessions aimed at finding the right “clients” for those solutions.
Architecture of Consequence was a multiyear (2009-2012) agenda for the Netherlands Architecture Institute that claimed an inspiring role for architects by showing how their profession was ready to address the existential issues of the planet and its people: food, energy, health, space, time, social cohesion and value creation. A book, a traveling exhibition, a studio for unsolicited projects, national submissions to global biennales, and many other initiatives, embodied this program to tackle climate change and social tensions through design. The project was punctuated by another exhibition, Testify, the Consequences of Architecture, which switched the focus entirely from intentions to results.
How could architecture use its worst crisis in living history to once again completely prove its point?
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By taking a leading role in system change, by addressing the urgent questions of our time and so proving its indispensable qualities and undeniable relevance through helping the world to drastically reduce overshoot.
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- Architecture of Consequence, 2010
How could architecture rescue and reinstate hidden value?
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By tapping into the resources brought together a long time ago and recharging them with new meanings and effects.
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- Re-Set, 2010; Value Factory, 2013-2014
Between 2008 and 2012 I either curated or commissioned the Dutch entry to the Venice Architecture Biennale, located in the Dutch pavilion. The three editions were dedicated to a thorough recalibration of the relevance of architecture, starting with a deep reflection on its future after a major fire at the Architecture Faculty in Delft (Archiphoenix, designed by Stealth), through an extensive unsolicited proposal to revamp and reposition the wealth of beautiful but vacant building stock (Vacant NL, designed by Raaaf), to a proposal to redesign buildings as modifiable units, using the techniques of stage design to multiply the various uses a building can have, and in so doing release architecture from its ex nihilo syndrome and find beauty in what already exists (Re-set, designed by Inside-Outside).
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The Value Factory started out as the venue of the 5th Shenzhen Urbanism and Architecture Bi-City Biennale in 2013-14, subsequently curated into an actual “Special Culture Zone” poised to become an important place for cultural production in Shenzhen for the years to come. The actual transformation, and hence reanimation, from an old glass factory, i.e. a place of mass production, into a place for ideas, was threefold: a physical transformation to expose and amplify the unique qualities of the building and site and so showcase the power of design; temporary inhabitation by a range of global cultural institutions, to study, expand, show and leverage their work in China; and the organization of a wide range of public activities to bring the factory alive on a daily basis, including the running of a design school for the duration of the Biennale.
Strijd om Tijd (Battle for Time) was an assignment by a Dutch publisher to investigate the social consequences of the ongoing atomization of our time experience, in which people have less and less reason to encounter, understand, let alone engage with the other. Written in 2003, the essay focused mainly on technologies that allow people to define their own agendas, anticipating the imminent exacerbation of the situation by the rapid rise of mobile services that on the one hand distract from the here and now, and on the other allow people to actively bypass the other. The essay concluded with a manifesto to return to a culture of mutual acknowledgement, listing several measures, techniques and policies that would restore common ground via a deliberate synchronicity.
How could we conceive of an architecture of time that helps us to recover quality of life?
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By considering the many ways to design and synchronize our daily rhythm.
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- Battle for Time, 2003
How could architecture once again become a place for civic life and a stage for societal innovation?
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By turning a world-famous, architect-designed urban monument into a design museum – or, even better, an active agenda to design society.
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- Design Society, 2015-present
Design Society began as a collaboration between the Chinese state-owned enterprise China Merchants and a major British museum, the V&A. I began working to turn this into reality in 2015. At the end of 2017 it opened as a creative ecosystem of civic, cultural and commercial activities, situated first in an iconic building, then proliferating through other projects as a design platform for general and professional audiences. By abstaining explicitly from the term museum and choosing “design society” instead, the mission was defined as never to be finished, and open for everyones participation.
Imagine, the revolution has broken out and architecture has nailed its colours to the mast. It has opted for change.
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Architects have laid out the facts about the inequality in landownership, inheritance law, capital accumulation, and the resulting segregation, an inequality they have observed first-hand for many years, have helped shape or even profited from. These experiences from direct spatial practice now lend legitimacy to the revolution.
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Architects have demonstrated remorse for their part in global heating, the depletion of raw materials, the decline in biodiversity, the excessive mobility of people and goods and the
failing energy transition. They have introduced a professional oath “to do no harm, any longer” and “to respect life above matter”.
How can architecture navigate the pandemic and directly contribute to system change?
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By escaping from its solipsism and pursuing change in the architecture of architecture itself.
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- incoming projects, since 2020
The Solipsism of Architecture
2020
Architecture, not just as a discipline, but as a human virtue of being true to oneself, can bring back the sense of measure we so badly need. What do these proposals reveal? First of all, decades of work. I’m glad it can be archived. But hopefully they also show that architecture still has all the potential to regain its original meaning as a unique symbol of our human agency, and as a mechanism for providing measure in our life. Reconnecting with society, repurposing as a discipline, proving its power in actual projects and becoming a creative and healing time machine for overcoming the present and finding alternative futures that help us not only to survive, but to live life to the full.
Granted, it is already a practice to indicate the power of architecture in a positive way, in words and exemplary results, in the hope that it will be leveraged to wider practice. But projections may not be enough to make a real dent in the Great Acceleration in our era, dwarfing any good intention by its lethal direction. In seeking to rediscover our proper measure, it is more important to understand that if only we start to change the fundamentals of our society in order to reshape it and to make it sustainable for the long term, we will come to rely on architecture much more profoundly than as a set of pilot schemes and demonstrations. We can be inspired by examples, but we ultimately need to deal with necessity and turn the exceptions into the rule. We need a different architecture to lead system change.
