I suppose having a blog titled “I’m an architect but I hate buildings” gives you quite a bit to live up to, hence the need for a wee discussion on the title. Considering for what reasons buildings exist and what they do for people It would be nothing short of genocidal to really hate ‘em. Actually even considering a society without buildings would be so strange it is almost unimaginable. Therefore the short answer is, hell no, I can’t hate buildings, not more than one can hate a close family member, a love-hate relationship is perhaps what I share with the buildings.
So, why this title?
Gradually of the course of my education I’ve started to feel that there is something disturbingly shallow with the architecture profession and perhaps especially building design, at least the way it normally is carried out. One way this became apparent to me was from going on several school study trips to different cities and afterwards contemplating over what made the strongest impressions on me, and actually just about every time it has not been the fancy Le Courbusier or OMA or whatever famous architects works that supposedly should be the highlights of the trips. It has rather been completely other things like the coffee bars with excellent icecream in Rome or, stumbling upon weird streetart, squatted houses or getting lost in the plattenbau zones of Berlin, for two clichéd and perhaps not excellent examples. Sure enough there are example of extremely beautiful or fascinating buildings, but then again what fascinates me with them has had more to do with how they relate to norms, people, culture or traditions. And that is perhaps my point for today, it is relatively easy to decode and reproduce different styles that will make you as an architect reasonably successful and respected by your collegues. But what I’ve felt during this education and what I firmly believe in is that in order to create genuinely interesting architecture one has to step outside that comfort zone and start to question things. The outcome of such a process might very well be a building, park, square or some other known typology, or perhaps something completely different, but regardless of which, if the building is only designed to look good on glossy paper well then I might stick to the original claim “I’m an architect but I hate buildings”, or just simply, “I’m an architect and I am pretty indiffernt to buildings”.
/per
