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Why does everyone hate modern architecture? (lecture by David Chipperfield at TEDxMarrakesh)

date added: 07.01.2012

The film presents a lecture by David Chipperfield who is a very experienced architect and also an owner of a well known architectural company David Chipperfield Architects. His firm won a lot of international competitions and many international awards, including the Stirling Prize 2007 and the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture – Mies van deer Rohe Award 2011.

The title of this lecture is quite provocative but almost from the beginning of his speech Chipperfield explains the deep meaning of this title question. He recalls first years after he graduated the Kingston School of Art and the Architectural Association. Just after graduation most of the former architecture students felt quite disappointed, because they wanted to change the world. Unfortunately, everything they got after studies was ignorance and general distrust. In his opinion, that distrust is profound because apart from great architects like Norman Foster, Zaha Hadid or Frank Gehry, there is no healthy dialog in architecture. The lack of this dialog has a strong influence in quality of our city design.

He realizes that some can say that there are examples of great architecture in our cities. Chipperfield agrees with that statement, but he explains there is still a number of architects who produce those buildings like concert halls or museums and this is great architecture indeed. However, these stunning examples are less than 1% of the entire architectural projects and we should worry about the rest. In Chipperfield’s opinion, the collaboration is most important in architecture. He explains that architects should fight developers, plans and expectations of public and that the atmosphere of attrition has a negative influence on our cities architecture. He gives a few examples of that weak effects of collaboration which show that even good architects could make ugly buildings.

Chipperfield convinces that good collaboration is possible and it has great results. Unfortunately, it often requires more work, but the effects are worth it. As a confirmation of his words, Chipperfield points out the example of a positive way of collaboration. He mentions his project of museum rebuilt in Berlin, where he had to take a few fights with the investors and a public opinion. Nevertheless, at the end of the project both sides were pleased with it.

Source: news.arcilook.com

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