Architecture, Design and Conservation
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Aarhus School of Architecture // Design School Kolding // Royal Danish Academy
Engaging through architecture Unterrainer, Walter
Publication date:
2014
Document Version:
Early version, also known as pre-print
Link to publication
Citation for pulished version (APA):
Unterrainer, W. (2014, Dec). Engaging through architecture.
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Download date: 01. Aug. 2022
Engaging through architecture means engaging with people. Architects have the ability to affect people's physical surroundings and everyday life. For this reason, architects have an aesthetic and social responsibility to participate in the development of a sustainable future. In over 30 years of professional practice, I have strove combined user involvement and participation, the questioning of mainstream building methods and the search for solutions of low environmental impact, regardless of how much other professionals have smiled at what they considered as naïve design ideals.
On a global scale, architects are needed like never before in the history of humanity: Not as decorators, show masters or technocrats but as professional actors working to solve global spatial challenges. Briefly to mention a few of these challenges: Urbanization is growing exponentially, streams of refugees are at an all-time high and ask for basic shelters, in one day 10,000,000 people had their homes destroyed by a typhoon in the Philippines, 2,000,000,000 people have no access to basic sanitation. The building sector produces a gigantic 60% of global waste and 40% of energy is consumed running buildings (without calculating energy used in construction). The challenges are gigantic.
Architects must act as public intellectuals and this is defined by the manner in which they act, by the values they uphold and not just by the job they do.
In strong contrast to these increased challenges, the professional impact, societal position, self-esteem and economic status of architects are in decline: This is visible from the billings index of American Institute of Architects and in the results of questionnaires from Architect´s Council for Europe. The further south in Europe, the more critical the situation and in Asia like elsewhere, more and more building design is done by engineering companies.
Engaging through architecture is about minimizing this diverging gap between the growing urgency for spatial solutions and the downwards trend of conventional practice in many countries.
A growing number of high-profile ´conventional´ architectural practices have changed outdated working modes, implemented new design tools and revolutionized their project teams, some have even built up serious research departments which inform sustainable design rather than provide empty marketing strategies.
Very much in contrast to the predominant architectural education model, young, versatile and inspiring ´alternative practices´ are emerging. Their common approach is to address and investigate relevant problems of space and architecture which initially have no client.
In this way they extend the methods of traditional architectural practice and create a new relationship between the design processes and the users. Some of these practices work as ´guerrillas´ while others have established ´spatial agencies´. Their outcomes are not only relevant and unconventional design solutions but also these new practices are creative in generating new forms of financing public projects as well as their own efforts.
Both developments give hope. Engaging through architecture does mean engaging with people, engaging with the challenges of humanity. Architects neither need to prevent nor to initiate revolutions, a better use of their time would be to act as not corrupted specialists and investigators for constructive spatial developments on all scales.
