What Conversation Do I Want To Have In April?

During our last meeting, Andrew posed the question "what conversation do you want to have with the jurors in April?"

Since my travels in Europe this past spring and summer, I've become fascinated with "permanent" architecture. This encompasses monumental buildings that continue to move people generations and centuries after their construction. In most cases their initial use has shifted and the buildings take on new meaning over time, this meaning may or may not be relevant. In most cases it is simply for historic curiosity and generating money through tourism.

Today, little built implies permanence. The only permanence we have today is rapid change, change which many can argue is unsustainable. We build under the idea that what we do today won't matter down the road, make your money now and enjoy it while it lasts. This sets a rotten precedent and if this continues we will reach a turning point where our quality of life will not be sustainable. We will soon be entering "a period of consequences" as Churchill put it decades ago.

If monumental building had great meaning for the time it was constructed, meaning that continues today (if in different respects), meaning that continues to benefit society, can monumental building be part of the solution to today's problems?

If architectural landmarks benefit society today through education and revenue from tourism, can today's architectural landmark benefit society through educating the public and regenerating the local or national environment. Instead of simply revenue from tourism, can it send energy back to the grid? Can it encourage others to do so?

Can architecture be a political statement which states that we have learned from our past mistakes (in this case, environmental disasters), and that we will no longer foster a society whose practices encourage these mistakes to happen again?

more to come