Those who think about the present and future of architecture

Questions for those who reflect on the present and future of architecture
Please answer the following questions in 500-1000 words, being as specific and detailed as possible. If you need to slightly modify any of the questions to think more easily about them, feel free to do so. You can also answer one question that you come up with yourself. You do not have to respond to four of the given questions.

Zaha Hadid & Patrik Schumacher

1) What do you consider to be the most important problems or tasks for architects, landscape architects, or urban planners in your country, and why?
There are no typically national tasks for architecture today. Our diverse cultural backgrounds are indeed gradually fading as we grapple with the task of creatively presenting the new level of our internationalized post-industrial civilization. We operate globally - albeit only within the most developed metropolitan centers. We are true cosmopolitans, and therefore we would like to avoid speculating about the influences of individual national experiences. Such speculation can only divert attention from the state and problems of contemporary metropolises.
      The primary task we pursue in our work relates to the architectural contribution to a multi-faceted, layered, and dynamic urban society. We must engage with a social picture that is exponentially more complex compared to the social programs of the early modern period. The apparent chaos of megacities, such as Tokyo, emerges as a paradigmatic assumption. We see it as our task to develop a rich and distinct architectural language that is clear and helps to recognize and organize this evident chaos. Instead of simply enjoying chaos or retreating to a minimalist reduction of complexity, our goal is to process and assemble a multitude of information into a complex order that facilitates orientation despite the greater informational burden.
      Therefore, in our work, we focus on the attempt to develop a new architectural language that can organize and combine the rising level of social complexity. This involves attempts to organize and express dynamic processes within spatial and tectonic creation. This effort can manifest on many levels: from organizing entire urban districts to buildings of diverse scales to interior fittings. The task is to enhance the possibilities of architecture to "spatialize" and express the complexity of the current process of life with its many interdependent agendas.

2) Which projects or types of projects in contemporary architecture, landscape architecture, and/or urbanism do you consider to be the best and/or most important, and why?
We agree with the distinction between the avant-garde and mainstream architecture. This distinction is essential for assessing projects. Different (albeit related) criteria must be established. Mainstream architectural projects must be evaluated based on whether they are capable of leveraging the best possible standard solutions for a given assignment. The significance of an avant-garde project cannot be reduced to how much it contributes to a given life process. Rather, it aims beyond any specific task to create new universally applicable possibilities (formal/organizational repertoires) for future questions that will determine the possibilities of the field. Its value lies in its manifest character. Originality and innovative potential are more important than the relevance of its actual realization. Such projects are investments that can pay off for the practice of the next mainstream.
      We operate in the avant-garde part of our field and profession. Discourse in architecture, accompanied by numerous publications, sufficiently recognizes original and prescient projects. If we were to choose a specific example here, it would not help us much. After all, the right examples are generally well known. No surprising revelations can be expected here. Important work tends to be recognized, although the articulated reasons for its appreciation are often somewhat confused and fetishistic. This fetishism corresponds to the sacrificing of the value of immediate feasibility for the mere potential for future utility values.

3) What projects or types of projects do you consider to be overrated, and why?
No comment.

4) Do you think that the power, social, and cultural influence of architects is increasing, decreasing, or remaining the same? How would you describe the level of this power and influence? How far apart are reality and the ideal state?
It is very difficult to generalize in this case. In fact, we have quite different experiences with individual projects. The power of the architect greatly depends on how the commissioning party is set up/organized and on the strength of the regulatory environment. In the USA and the UK, architects are usually called into a very tightly structured process with clear goals and leadership from the client. On the European continent, architects are expected to take on a more leading role - both in terms of conceiving the project and in terms of managing the project development process. However, there is still a difference depending on whether you are working in France, Germany, or Italy. In Italy, we had the freest and most satisfactory opportunities to develop a project in fruitful collaboration with a public sector client (the Ministry of Culture).
      In China, we are facing a very interesting client who, despite his firm opinions, greatly values our expertise. In this case, it seems that we have a wide scope for far-reaching, diverse experiments - but only if the project can be linked with an effective marketing strategy.

5) To what extent can design [1] (consider all other components as equivalent) influence or affects the quality of life of an individual, small groups, and/or large groups (such as city inhabitants)?
As architects, we must work with the hypothesis that design matters immensely. This is the only viable interpretation for architecture. The importance of design is most apparent in the area of rapid, massive development as represented today by China. Here, the market is growing and differentiating at a breathtaking pace. Three years ago, a mortgage system was introduced here. This triggered a huge wave of real estate purchases. There seems to be an unusual need and desire driving the housing construction boom. Buying a house has become a new national sport. People's life goals are directed towards the character of their homes and their environment. The purchase of a house signifies a significant event in the lives of young couples, who form the largest demographic group of buyers. The immense pressure on the market, along with the ability to allocate land and newly create vast urban or semi-urban environments, places architecture in a leading position. This is not only about individual units, but also about shared spaces and the entire environment of newly designed urban areas. Subsequent market strategies are validated by attracting the hard-earned resources of buyers, which form a very important aspect of these people's endeavors. It is very exciting to be invited to compete in such a lively and energized market.

6) Do you think architects can and should play an important role in protecting and/or turning away from the degradation of the natural environment? If so, what role? If not, why not?
We do not believe that the field of architecture could truly take on the agenda of nature protection. Architecture is the creation of the artificial; social spaces - mostly urban. Architecture can utilize and co-determine the natural environment when it creates an effective environment for various social processes that require space to thrive. The natural environment becomes the domain of architecture only to the extent that it plays its role in the overall construction of the social habitat - not to the extent that it should be left alone. Certain aspects of the effort to create a sustainable natural environment can be represented in the design process by involving relevant engineering professionals. For architecture that seeks to facilitate life in society (and its certain parts and provisions), the sustainability of the natural environment presents an additional obstacle (in terms of budget, or limitations of construction methods, etc.) that can create further limits. This does not exclude that some architectural research may primarily address these limitations to develop models of sustainable buildings. Such attempts are useful experiments. However, viewed from our perspective, if such considerations were at the forefront of our interest, it would rather be a distraction from our primary goal of exploring the possibilities of equipping our discipline to manage social complexity.

7) What do you see as promising positions, activities, and areas for architecture, landscape architecture, and urbanism in the next decade?
There are two ways to find the most interesting and beneficial areas for avant-garde architecture. Innovation is always secured between two poles: exploring the area of tasks on one side and expanding the area of potential solutions (and the techniques for developing solutions) on the other.
      On the side of techniques and solutions, there is still much to discover in the expanding field of digitally based design and the creation of working tools. One of the most exciting areas on the side of questions and tasks of architecture could be the reorganization of society as a whole, where new concepts (matrix organization, network organization, self-organization) and new complex and dynamic models of cooperation are still searching for suitable transference into the spatial system.
      At the same time, the restless society pressures architecture by presenting new bundles of characteristic problems and tasks. New digital design possibilities and the microelectronic revolution are leading architecture into even uncharted areas of possibilities. The key question is whether exploring new creative opportunities can be directed to offer new architectural resources that may help address the tasks set before current architects. Within architecture, this polarity of innovation has often provided an opportunity for fruitful division of labor between analyzing new social/programmatic requirements on one side and expanding the spatial repertoire on the other. Embodied in the Dutch avant-garde and later also in the avant-garde of the USA, both aspects have been carried out semi-independently, and with considerable success. However, this leads to two opposing ideologies, likely equally one-sided. The reality of two independently created areas brings forth the question of their synthesis. Synthesis, however, requires an unbiased and also keen movement between both areas. This is not a simple matter, but it is already an act of creative intelligence in itself. There are no simple matching items between "problems" and "solutions." No obvious matches emerge on their own. Solutions can seek their problems, just as problems can seek their solutions. What we call architectural research is an attempt to systematize this movement within the proper framework, which narrows both the problem area and the solution area.
      However, this requirement for synthesis should not be understood as a demand to eliminate either the original or the parallel bifurcation of research programs. This bifurcation is necessary in the effort to master and process the challenges posed by a rapidly evolving society.

8) What do you see as the strengths and weaknesses of architectural education? How could it be improved?
Although both of us teach, we are probably not the best positioned to comment on the needs of education. Learning - for us - is more of a research than education. We utilize various postgraduate programs that are taught as semi-independent research departments. Of course, in this process, young architects also develop their skills and architectural intelligence in ways that make them interesting collaborators after their student period ends.
      Teaching architecture has traditionally been done according to the way of learning the craft. To some extent, this still continues, inevitably, because architecture is an occupation as well as a discursive discipline. Since the Renaissance, this practice of learning (apprenticeship) has been combined with the production of theoretical writings. On this basis, formal education was first institutionalized in France with the establishment of the Academie de l'architecture in 1671. Academic teaching was adopted in England and America at the end of the 19th century and today this mode of professional training prevails everywhere. Yet even today, architectural research is still not institutionalized. Instead, innovations within architecture are left, on one side, to the "avant-garde," which is just a small part of architectural practice, and on the other side, to postgraduate architectural education. Both of these substitutes have their own limitations. Avant-garde practice, as a professional practice, struggles to turn specific assignments into opportunities for exploring new architectural principles that could subsequently be abstracted and generalized. This shift requires surrendering complete focus on all aspects of one specific task. Additionally, establishing a coherent research program within incongruous assignments is quite complex. An academic institution is indeed unlimited in establishing a coherent research program, but it requires special effort to manage the course so that it remains focused on societal concerns. A considerable limitation for research in educational institutions lies also in the short-term stays of student-researchers and the associated burden of recruiting a new generation of student-researchers every year. Nevertheless, further education institutions seem to be the most promising option for creating systematic research in architecture.

9) Do you think that architecture today is more subordinated to profit-driven business than it was thirty years ago? If so, how is this evident, in your opinion?
In today's world, everything is more subordinated to profit-driven business than it was thirty years ago. The causes of this situation can be found in a very deep layer of contemporary civilization - both in terms of patterns of material reproduction and at the level of fundamental social relations connected with these patterns. The era of state-planned economic prosperity is over - also concerning the creation of the built environment. Commodification continues. However - not all parts of the architectural market are subject to this logic in the same way. The avant-garde part, of which we are a part, has more room to maneuver than the main commercial current. This is because our work is considered a kind of multiplier. Economically, our buildings work as investments into the marketing agenda - e.g. branding a city - with a value that sometimes significantly exceeds the budget allocated for the project itself. Of course, we also have a set budget we work with - we only occasionally have the chance to adjust it. Either way, our projects are usually not evaluated according to industrial standards of production costs. Our work is paid for with money that has been drawn from the circulation of profit-driven investments - either as public taxes or as sponsorship money managed by a board associated with a cultural institution. Of course, this money also indirectly contributes to the overall business principle. But as architects, we can enjoy and utilize the relative distance from engaging in immediate profit and develop our experimental program.
      We are aware that this position is a privilege of only a small group within our profession.
    
10) What do you think about the gap between popular and intellectual taste, and how do you think architects should respond to it?
This distinction has been declared dead so many times, yet it has lost none of its imposing presence and impact. The distinction is a tangle of inevitable, as well as dubious components. It is inevitable to distinguish between the avant-garde and the mainstream, given the unfortunate social logic based on class distinction that serves only as a barrier in communication. Due to the intertwined and contradictory nature of this distinction, taking a principled position is very difficult, perhaps outright impossible. Celebrating populism seems equally incorrect as retreating to connect with an exclusive elite. Nevertheless, discourse (and practice) within and about architecture must be stratified and requires several interconnected and overlapping modes of communication. Instead of embracing the idea of division, it would be better to replace it with another idea of concentric circles or rather multiple intersecting ranks (sections). In each rank, we can assume a tendency toward popularization, although without diluting the narrower circle focusing on a more lasting endeavor requiring more thorough, expert discourse and practice. The distinction between avant-garde and mainstream is beneficial in the constant transfer and selection of ideas from the avant-garde to the mainstream. However, this does not exclude the opposite direction of transfer from the mainstream to the avant-garde, i.e., to the reflection of phenomena that spontaneously emerge within the mainstream (retroactive manifest). In this way, this distinction helps in a certain sense to structure cultural practice/communication.

The end.

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1) In most cases, I translate the term design as architecture, because in the Czech context, the term design refers more to the creation of objects. Here, for the most general designation, I retain the term design, which, however, also includes architecture.