year out essay

Upload: silviya-aytova

Post on 10-Apr-2018

216 views

Category:

Documents


0 download

TRANSCRIPT

  • 8/8/2019 Year Out Essay

    1/17

    Silviya Aytova

    Bartlett year out essay

  • 8/8/2019 Year Out Essay

    2/17

    Are recessions good for architecture? Discuss this in relation

    to your experiences during your year out

    In recent years there have been several external forces that

    have influenced the nature of the professional practice in

    architecture in my country Bulgaria. The current recession was

    almost inevitable after the building boom since 2002 that led

    Bulgaria, especially through the construction industry, to become

    the leading magnet for investment in Europe. And I am saying

    inevitable mainly because of the mass production of projects andtheir realizations based on poor design, bad urban strategies or

    even none of them and extremely bad accomplishment due to low

    qualified construction firms. All of those elements, combined with

    the World Financial Crises lead to an immense downturn in the

    architecture field as a whole. During my practice in a small

    architectural firm in Bulgaria for the past two years, I have

    observed a movement towards a more radical and critical

    rethinking about the future of architecture and the way it shapes

    my country. It is probably true that only through taught times, welearn from the mistakes we have made and something new is born

    afterwards I think that from this crisis will emerge another

    moment, says Alvaro Siza, when talked of a return to austerity

    and consideration in architecture An architecture that is essential

    and not reliant on things that are not needed.

  • 8/8/2019 Year Out Essay

    3/17

    Bulgarian Black sea coast

    In this essay I will argue in three different directions, mainly

    emphasizing on the positives that are coming from the current

    recession. In my practice through the projects and the attitudesobserved in clients and developers this recession was necessary in

    terms of chastening what came to be once one of the most beautiful

    sea resorts on the Black Sea- Sunny Beach. In my practice I

    worked on several projects in Sunny beach and Nessebar, which

    are two of the best-known summer resorts in Bulgaria, just 10 km

  • 8/8/2019 Year Out Essay

    4/17

    from each other. Also my family has a house in Nessebar and I

    usually spend my summers there, therefore I have a lot of

    opportunity to gain insider impression that this recession will help

    bring architecture to another level in my country: It is a good

    opportunity to evaluate the work done, and how it can be donebetter in the new future that lays in front of us. In the second

    part of the essay, that is looking at the practical side of the matter

    and deals with short term opportunities, I will argue that recession

    is frustrating for the architects and thus this can transfer to the

    architecture itself. I think this will be the Renaissance Age all

    over again, with many of us reinventing ourselves, and going from

    Architecture, to more generic design, to other completely different

    fields of work.

    I cannot consider this as a completely negativeaspect of the recession. This brings me to my last argument which

    will have no clear answer on the positives or negatives of a

    recession and will just address some issues that might or might not

    bring architecture to a greater standard in terms of esthetics,

    efficiency, sustainability, feasibility, comfort, social aspects, ect.

    Are recessions good for architecture? As painful as

    downturns may be, a bracing change often betters the built

    environment. A go-go economy licenses too many complacentideas, and too much overwrought styling. Fewer buildings go up in

    a recession, but those that do are subject to more thought and self-

    examination, and they tend to be more sensitive calibrators of a

    changing culture. In other words, a recession is often the moment

    when architecture finds its future. I agree completely with thisstatement and given the current situation, there is no better time to

    move towards a brighter future for the architecture. I have been in

    a small architectural firm of eight people when I joined the practice(now they are five). We were mainly working on residential

    projects at the Bulgarian seaside resort Sunny Beach and other

    office and residential buildings in the capital Sofia, where we were

    based. The building boom in Sunny beach started around 2002

    when many foreign investors saw Bulgarian market very attractive.

  • 8/8/2019 Year Out Essay

    5/17

  • 8/8/2019 Year Out Essay

    6/17

    Quick and easy money was the main objective of the developers

    wanting to invest as little as possible and gain as much as possible.

    On the other hand more and more architects pumped out of

    nowhere without any experience and vision to gain a good name.

    They were solely interested in the money they can get, alsocombined with no high requirements from their clients other than

    low cost and short time to complete a project. All these factors led

    to the creation of not well thought and expedient buildings that

    were poorly designed, poorly built, not efficient and destroyed

    nature. Traditionally, Bulgarian buildings are made from

    unreinforced brick with concrete stucco, or more recently, from

    steel-reinforced concrete with brick infill. They are energy

    inefficient, heavy, and take a long time to build. Wood and steelframe buildings are almost unknown. This situation offers many

    opportunities to promote high-tech building materials based on

    advanced technology combined with sustainable solutions. The

    idea of promoting new ways in construction would not be possible

    without the massive escape of the tourists in our resorts not merely

    due to the recession but also to the building up of the resort at the

    expense of green areas and wide virgin beaches. Fall between 20

    and 25% were reported in our seaside hotels, even third line and

    deeper into the complex are virtually empty. I believe this

    period of time, where no buyers for properties although the prices

    has fallen twice since 2007, is a good lesson to learn for the future.

    As others have pointed out, there's an upside to recessions. They

    give people time to step back from the frantic pace of a boom

    economy and think hard about what it is they want to do. In a time

    of limited resources, architects and their clients will focus again on

    solving the practical problems of making an environment that is, in

    every sense of today's overused word, sustainable. I haveattached several photos of showing how built up is Sunny Beach at

    the moment.

  • 8/8/2019 Year Out Essay

    7/17

  • 8/8/2019 Year Out Essay

    8/17

    Indeed I think that recession is good thing about architecture

    and brings the automatic question of what went wrong or what can

    we change and how we can improve the quality of life, attract

    investment and be at the same time ecologically friendly with the

    buildings we design. Although that is a big step to make from whatwas before, the Bulgarian architecture is starting to address all

    those issues in order to respond to the need. I consider that the new

    architecture will be much more thoughtful, taking into account

    social and environmental problems, really talking and considering

    sustainability and sustainable methods of design. There's nothing

    like a recession for bringing architecture back to its senses. With

    less being built, there's time to think. It is the end of the era ofeasy money and profits over 100%, earned without investing in allthose aspects of a building, which makes it modern, environment

    and human friendly. The new market is screaming for architecture

    that responds to the needs of this century and a society that has

    evolved over the centuries.

    When I joined the firm Modus 313 they had already started

    a project of a residential building in Nessebar, near Sunny Beach,

    which I see as a reasonably good design in terms of esthetics but

    not addressing the issue of sustainability and the wider context ofthe area.

    Kristal, Nessebar

  • 8/8/2019 Year Out Essay

    9/17

    Integrating those issues in the design does not always mean more

    costly projects but is a question of motivating the client to seek it

    and be one step ahead of its time. The challenge will be to

    convince the clients that good design can add value without cost.

    The architecture will need to be considered It is also a timeto re-think where are the public spaces and weather we have

    thought about them, is there something missing. Now is the right

    time and opportunity to re-look at how we practice architecture.

    One group of people who always look on the bright side during a

    recession is the conservation lobby. Less good existing stuff gets

    knocked down. This is another example of how not only therecession has a tendency to create good architecture for the future

    but also to protect the existing historical one. In Sofia there was acommon practice with the help of the municipality to wait for a

    historical building to get so destroyed through time, so that they

    can knock them down and build a new office building in an

    attractive central part of the city. This recession brings a lot of

    questions and provocations to the world of architecture and that is

    only the starting point of a much desired change that will lead to

    the creation of a better architecture tomorrow. The original report,

    authored by AMION Consulting and Taylor Young, concluded thatthere was strong evidence that economic, social and environmental

    returns increase with better design. Equally, the costs of bad design

    can be very substantial in economic, social and environmental

    termsDespite the current economic climate, high quality design

    is still critical, perhaps more so, to maximize the benefits of

    investment in the physical landscapeThese benefits include the

    commercial returns of new development as well as a range of

    wider economic, social and environmental benefits. Moreover, thepromotion of good design has an essential role to play in place

    making, which is emerging in government policy as a key strand

    of the regeneration process in our towns and cities."

    But is recession always the good scenario, we might argue in adifferent direction. The recession creates high levels of

  • 8/8/2019 Year Out Essay

    10/17

    unemployment among the architects and in the other design

    specialty areas. That really means no work, no design, no

    stimulation to continue being an architect at that particular

    moment. In short term these negatives could be transferred even to

    the few project that are currently in progress. When there is nomoney in the field and a great fear of the upcoming return that the

    developers can expect there is a tendency of investing even less

    then before so they can get back the money they have put

    considering only the situation now. This is more true to a greater

    extend for the projects that were design before the crises end are

    built now. Clients are cutting cost even further, sometimes

    ignoring the requirement of the already designed building in order

    to retain the expected profits. In Bulgaria, only developers thinkingahead of time will see the investment in sustainable and delicate

    architecture as reasonable and such that will pay its money in the

    future and will be appreciated by its users in the long term.

    In my architectural practice this winter we worked on the

    design of a restaurant-bar-lounge on the beach in Sunny Beach that

    comprises of a first floor kitchen for the restaurant with a bar at the

    front, also outside seating places and a second semi open terrace

    for the restaurant. What actually happened without the knowledgeof the architect was to cut cost dramatically down resulting in the

    creation of one floor bar that has a bare connection with its

    original design. This attitude is damaging the architecture but I

    believe is an approach only for the short term as more and more

    people will run away from bad design.

  • 8/8/2019 Year Out Essay

    11/17

  • 8/8/2019 Year Out Essay

    12/17

    A lot of people are going to look again at schemes on the drawing

    board and work out how they can become more efficient, and how

    to get costs down In our case getting costs further down willnot be the right move, given the fact that projects usually are

    already with low budgets. There is a need to move toward higher

    quality design, investing more and decreasing profits respectively,

    if our clients want to compete in even more demanding market.

    However, thinking back through architects point of view, that will

    be a really hard time. Now, having shrunk, firms may decide to

    stay smaller. Rather than hiring experts in special building types,

    they may rely increasingly on alliances with other firms. Andrather than adding full-time staff when work comes in, they may

    continue to hire temporary employees. In support of this

    observation, our office consisted of eight full time employees,

    however, in May we remained five when I decided to leave instead

    of waiting, unknown how long, for projects or any other work to

  • 8/8/2019 Year Out Essay

    13/17

    come at all. Very likely others can consider completely different

    professions: Young architects will find that the traditional entry

    provided by drafting jobs has been foreclosed by computer-assisted

    design. Thwarted by the economy and technology, they may

    forsake traditional design work entirely for careers in real estate,government, teaching, construction, environmental preservation or

    nonprofit organizations. Its not clear if the limited

    employment opportunities in the architecture industry will lead to

    positive or negative influence. On the one hand the positive will be

    that when there is a wide choice of architecture offices now

    competing for limited number of investors, only the best will

    remain. Architects have to offer a more varied knowledge, skills

    and abilities in addition to be competitive and to sell their ideas.That will take the architecture produced and the methods of

    creating it on another level. On the other hand some very talented

    and potentially good architects can change their direction of

    professional realization forever. "We're in a new business," said

    Richard Roth Jr., chairman of Emery Roth & Sons, a 94-year-old

    firm. "We saw the handwriting on the wall that architecture is not

    going to be the bread and butter of the 1990's, so we formed an

    interiors company."

    Interiors has always been the secondchoice of an architect as merely interior projects, but they become

    more and more desirable during a recession where people prefer to

    renovate the old they have and need interior solutions rather then

    building new. That is the case in Bulgaria as well: Bulgarian

    construction stopped, but not the household repairs But still is

    the architect who can make the most of the rising tide of interest in

    good design, while it is accompanied by a tightening economic

    climate. But how? By selling the idea that it is architects who arebest placed to design the interiors that will survive a downturn, an

    upturn and whatever else the future brings. When architects design

    interiors, they respond to both the space and the client, producing

    designs with an integrity that will long outlast the 3D branding

    concepts. Architecture is the sustainable interiors solution and

  • 8/8/2019 Year Out Essay

    14/17

    thats worth paying for in a downturn more than ever. But

    weather a swift towards interior design will help architects

    improve is debatable. Some will experiment in trying to promote

    new architecture while other will stay where the safe option is. As

    a whole architecture is regarded as not essential in our culture andespecially in an economic crisis so it will be the last to recover.

    Indeed, it is very difficult to be sure of where the future will lead

    the development in architecture, but yet there is a tendency for

    architectural action to be followed by reaction, and reaction by

    further reaction. Therefore, I think those reaction will be crucial in

    understanding where should the architecture head on. Still

    Architecture, more than most arts, requires, and even demands,

    optimism even in the face of the most severe economic

    downturns. And this positive attitude should precede a more

    critical examination of the work done and a more clear vision for

    the future. It might be a difficult sell to the thousand or so

    architects now claiming the jobseekers allowance, but the

    economic slowdown will force the design community to take a step

    back and examine the work it is doing in more detail. A recession

    is indisputably bad for architects, but it could be good for

    architecture. Architects should explore new kinds of buildings

    and technology sometimes accepting smaller but architecturally

    challenging commissions so that they can offer something new and

    promote this idea. Although it is sad that so many of them have to

    continue without some of their best employees, it is a time when

    firms should rethink their structure and philosophical approach. A

    moment to step back and evaluate the work done, a moment of real

    search and change. In conclusion, I agree with the statement that

    Recessions are a time for architects to rethink their game. Theyneed not despair but, rather, regroup for the next boom. For a

    while, I think there may well be a reaction to the fireworks of the

    past decade. Architects such as the Tokyo practices of Toyo Ito

    and Sanaa point to one highly inventive, yet gentle future. Andthat is in a world perspective! How much more the architecture in

  • 8/8/2019 Year Out Essay

    15/17

    Bulgaria needs a much gentle approach, a future in which we have

    to consider its wider aspects and responsibility to the society and

    the nature. Unfortunately, human nature is such that we learn the

    most important lessons only through hard times like now. With

    respect to the creation of architecture that is not merely pleasingthe esthetics or solely investing in practical solutions I believe that

    the architecture will become more adequate in ways combining

    them, as well as looking into methods of addressing new vital

    issues. It is a way that sometimes is unreachable but the pure

    pursuit is the one driving architecture forward. It needs

    provocation and if this happened to be the current recession I am

    welcoming it with open hands, with all the negative impact, until

    the moment we are ready for the next incitement.

  • 8/8/2019 Year Out Essay

    16/17

    Bibliography:

    1.http://www.building.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=31358922.http://archrecord.construction.com/news/economy/survivalgu

    ide/0903strategies-1.asp

    3.http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/art-vs-design4.http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/michael-

    cannell/cannell/do-bad-economies-produce-great-buildings

    5.http://www.investorsprovident.com/europe/bulgaria/bulgaria-property-market.html

    6.In the Bulgarian newspaper Monitor on 27.7.20097.http://www.boston.com/ae/theater_arts/articles/2009/01/11/marking_the_end_of_the_bilbao_decade/8.http://www.hughpearman.com/2009/01.html9.http://www.building.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=313589210. http://www.hughpearman.com/2009/01.html11. http://www.nwda.co.uk/news--events/press-

    releases/200901/places-matter-report.aspx

    12. http://www.building.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=313589213. http://blueverticalstudio.com/go/?p=21030

    14. http://blueverticalstudio.com/go/?p=2103015. http://blog.archpaper.com/wordpress/archives/175116. In the Bulgarian newspaper "Trud" on 06.7.200917. http://www.bdonline.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=31224

    95

    18. http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2009/mar/06/architecture-rogers-foster-recession

    19. http://www.building.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=3135892

    20. http://architecturaltechnologies.blogspot.com/2009/03/architecture-of-recession.html

  • 8/8/2019 Year Out Essay

    17/17