What is good architecture? Is it a building designed by a starchitect, fancy looking house, a landmark or a nice little house made from eco friendly material? It is a question you could answer in many different ways just like the work that the architect faces each day at work. There is a job to be done but you can do it a million ways, that's the beauty of architecture. It says a lot about the person behind the work, how it's executed. At the same time the architect is not a dictator and he / she / it has to work with many people that want different things from the architect. It could be the contractor that wants it to be built fast or the one who finances the project that wants to grow the investment as much as possible. So the architect faces many challenges and they are only becoming greater as we enter an age where it's a do or die situation when it comes to climate change. As it is with the projects that the architect faces, this question can be answered in many ways. In this essay I will try to answer it one way or another.
Climate change is a threat that is real and everyone, not just architects and designers have to start thinking about that and what they can do to have less impact on the climate and nature in general. But one aspect of good architecture is and will be how it affects the climate and the earth. The building industry is one of the most polluting industries in the world. We will always have to have a place to live so this is something that we need to find a solution for.
We tend to be always looking ahead when many answers wait for us in the past. Of course technology and new design will be a key in moving forward in making our life more eco friendly but the Earth is 4.5 billion years old and humans have existed for 6 million years but we have made this terribel situation only in the last 260 years or from the beginning of the industrial age. That makes me think what changed, the most obvious change is the change of pace in the world. Everything changed from manufacturing to how people traveled to and from work and around the world. At the same time, people's lives drastically changed and we would not want to go back and live like the world was. Life expectancy has gone up and all sorts of great things that man has made and enjoyed over the years but at what cost? Maybe there are opportunities for people to change their pace of life with the help of technology. Working fewer hours can help with living a more eco-friendly lifestyle, where you have time to pick up the kids as a walking pedestrian, you have time to grow some of your own food and etcetera. Reduce, reuse, recycle is a saying in the world of green living. This is something that will play a big part in the future of architecture. We must use the buildings that exist and reduce the act of building new if it's not necessary, reuse buildings that we already have and recycle materials from buildings that have to be torn down. Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal Receive the 2021 Pritzker Architecture Prize. They have worked with reused buildings that they have made into a better place to live in after some relatively small changes. It is fascinating and hopefully a step into a new era in architecture.
Through their design of private and social housing, cultural and academic institutions, public spaces, and urban developments, Lacaton and Vassal reexamine sustainability in their reverence for pre-existing structures, conceiving projects by first taking inventory of what already exists. By prioritizing the enrichment of human life through a lens of generosity and freedom of use, they are able to benefit the individual socially, ecologically and economically, aiding the evolution of a city. (from the website of the Pritzker prize)
Planning as a tool for a bigger purpose than placing the buildings in the most efficient way. Architecture is not only designing the house itself, planning is a big part of the field of architecture. With planning you can have a real impact on how people will live in the area you are designing. Iceland has an extremely short history of planning towns and cities, or only about 100 years. Hildigunnur Sverrisdóttir Head of the Architecture Department at the Iceland University of the Arts says in a new article about the history of planning in Iceland that you can really read the politics and vision of each time period in the planning of neighborhoods. Politics about equality and wanting people to have decent homes.2 As before many Icelandic people lived in very bad housing. The capital region in and around Reykjavík was built up relatively quickly and at a time where the car was the answer to everything. You could live in your quiet neighborhood and then drive to everything else, your workplace, store and other activities. This of course sounds pretty nice, the noise is outside of your home, a place for a garden and privacy from others. It is and will be very interesting to see how and if it's possible to work with the layout of the city and change it making it better for walking, biking and using public transport. Most cities and old towns were built when the car hadn't even been invented and was then planned around the walking pedestrian, not the car. In the book Townscape, Gordon Cullen writes about this idea of the zoning by function
we are in danger of losing the great unities of social living. The west end gets more and more offices to the exclusion of theatres and houses, vast armies of people commute, people object to having a church or a pub built in their street because of the noise. Some magistrates even say that you are breaking the law if you stand still on a pavement. But true living accepts the joys of togetherness along with the setbacks. On balance it is worth it. (Gordon Cullen, Townscape)
This is something that we need to think about, what kind of community do we want to live in. Many people feel lonely, of course that's not only because of how the cities are planned but it could be one factor. We have never in the history of mankind been as connected to each other but at the same time the connection is different, we can be having conversations with people you have never met and it can lack intimacy. The human senses are thrown out the window, touch, sight, hearing, smell; this is all gone and instead we read black and white text on a screen. Architecture can be a tool to fix that problem and make a space where people meet and have human contact. As with general health of people in the book Happy city by Charles Montgomery it's written about how city planning can Improve physical health.
First we shape our streets, then they shape us: a white male living in Midtown near Atlanta's downtown, is likely to weigh ten pounds less than his identical twin living near Mableton, a sprawling suburb. This is partly due to road geometry and land use mix: a ten-minute walk from a home amid the traditional grid in Midtown will get you to grocery stores, churches, schools, bus stops, restaurants, cafes, a dry cleaner, a bank and the glorious lawns of Piedmont park. But the spread-out and homogeneous system of Mableton pushes destinations beyond walking range, which means residents are likely to drive whether they like driving or not. (Erick Villagomez, From the book Happy city by Charles Montgomery)
Having thing in a walkable distance is a straight connection with better physical health which is extremely important today as we have changed from the dawn of human race from being animals that spent their day hunting their food and fighting for there life to being animals that sit in front of a computer screen for 7-8 hours a day for work, drive to and from work and then spend the night in front of the television.
The thing is that architecture, like other types of art, is subjective. A lot of the things we judge architecture on is a person's thoughts. Questions that can't really be answered with a firm answer with a rule of law behind it, for example things like beauty or other things that are merely built on someone's ideas. What makes good architecture for me is something that changes the way we live. It guides us in the right direction and makes communities rather than cutting off connections to the people you live around. It is fundamental that architecture has those two elements. It has to pose as little threat to the environment as it can and it has to think of the health of the humas that choose to live there. Everything else can come after that, colors, shapes and form. Architecture can have a real impact on people's life if these things are thought out and executed well. It's going to stand for a long time so it better be good.
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The sound of a place will tell you a lot about it. A photo will not tell you the same story, the smell could even help you understand the place better. Elliðaárdalur is a place where two types of atmosphere are at a sound war.
If you close your eyes and listen, you would maybe think you are in a middle of a street rather than a green space with trees and wildlife. As different they are from each other there is truly a common rhythm, how the stream of cars and water runs through the pathway of one’s own. The sound of the stream, tiers, the road, movement, speed and a power that unites them.
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Urban Lab - Design Agency