The Big Rethink

First up on Christmas morning, I opened up the Dec/Jan issue of Architectural Review for the first time for a while; by the end of the Editorial I realised that 'The Big Rethink: Towards a Complete Architecture' was my secret Santa. The editor writes "Over the next 12 months, the AR will publish essays on various topics of critical concern with the aim of stimulating new thinking and debate. No other architectural publication is attempting anything similar (too right!). To open the pages of our competitors is to get no sense that this is a pivotal moment for architecture and architects."http://www.architectural-review.com/essays/the-big-rethink-towards-a-complete-architecture/8624049.article

What is all this about then? Well, Climate Change. The first Big Rethink essay by Peter Buchanan explores what many of us have been thinking for a while, that, however brilliant the techniques, much 'starchitecture' has lost touch with the real world and certainly with the urgent obligations of mitigating the effects of climate change. (Is there a parallel with the Bankers, who are so busy in their own self-fulfilling bubble that they dont understand how the rest of us see them?).

He starts with the proposition that modern architecture could be said to be have at last reached full maturity and identifies three practices "whose buildings display an admirable breadth of design concerns , responding to history and context, and are aptly inventive (without being contrived) formally and technically,as well as in social organisation and environmental strategies." He goes on to suggest that two of them" Hopkins and Cullinan are among the world leaders in green design."

Many thanks Peter and I look forward to the following articles with interest.