Archi.ru:
- What, in your opinion, should be a high quality urban space?
Peter Ebner:
- If we turn to historical cities, including Moscow, they initially understood how the urban space should look like. Vincenzo Scamozzi, a student of Andrea Palladio and one of my favorite architects, wrote in the early 17th century. treatise "The idea of universal architecture" - including, and about urban planning. This book was read by a 22-year-old prince-archbishop who ruled Salzburg at the time. Impressed by this work, he built hundreds of houses, creating a wonderful sequence of squares and streets, the public space that we still enjoy in Salzburg today. The quality of this historical example is in a wide variety of sizes. This alternation of horizontal and vertical dimensions is very important. And it doesn't matter if it is a shopping center, housing or something else. But, unfortunately, we are now building in the same style and size - endlessly repeating, repeating and repeating. Initially, however, there was diversity in all cities. This is not something that we create anew, but something that has existed for hundreds, if not thousands of years. And a similar quality in urban planning has been lost.
During the Gründer period, in the second half of the 19th century, new buildings began to be erected more and more densely, occupying almost 90% of the site. Due to such dense buildings and impeccable hygiene, diseases have spread in cities. For example, Siegfried Gidion and Walter Gropius have written about this issue, and medicine as a discipline has taken a key position in the discussion of urban planning. It turned out that it is necessary to maintain a distance between the houses so that a sufficient amount of sunlight gets into the interiors. Based on this fact, Gropius and his colleagues created their "new" urban structures, which influenced the entire practice of urban planning. They were simple structures, very economical, but with a great sense of space. Today, there is no need for such urban planning decisions, since the "medical reason" has disappeared. But we have forgotten how to create high-quality urban spaces. The discipline of urban planning has become very weak, and, in most cases, is limited to graphics.
Something like "carpet graphics"
- Exactly. It's no longer about the quality of the spaces. Developers like this situation: everything is very rational and cheap to implement, because only requires repetition of straight lines. But initially, cities, except for Roman and American ones, which had a rigid grid of streets, had a different layout, as they developed from a historically established context - different owners of different-sized plots, different relationships between them. And this created the quality of the space that we love so much today. As a result, urban planning has become the weakest discipline in architecture in modern Germany. And, if you are on the jury of an urban planning competition and talk to its participants, then they mainly discuss graphics, not thinking about urban spaces and not understanding where the difference is between these concepts.
In Germany and in German-speaking countries in general, one of the best-selling books in the field of urban planning is Camillo Sitte's Artistic Foundations of Urban Planning, and by the way, it is also the least read. This means that everyone has it in the library, but most have never opened it. But if you have studied it, then you understand what the quality of the square is, how people and vehicles cross it, what happens if they move differently, why different sizes have different qualities. When you sit on the jury, the term "Piazza Camillo Zitte" is used only as a marketing device. The only answer that can be given in this case is "Sorry, but this idea has nothing to do with Camillo Zitte, and it is simply stupid." The main problem today is that we are too used to marketing, branding and no longer imagine a three-dimensional space. When you look at the layouts from above, most of them look pretty. But, as a result, it has nothing to do with reality.
It turns out that the quality of urban space depends on its diversity. Can you give an example on this topic from your practice?
- In the urban development project in Berg am Laim, one of the districts of Munich, we developed the concept of diversity. It was originally a working-class area with many families. We held an international competition for a complex with housing, offices, shops and two kindergartens, where we won, as we used the ideas of Vincenzo Scamozzi in the project, adapting them to modern standards and lifestyle.
We brought in the different qualities of spaces and variations that we all love so much in historic cities, adapting them to modern times. And we always try to follow these principles, wherever the project is located - in Munich or Mexico City.
But, of course, we take into account the context. In Mexico, for example, the situation with the sun is very unusual: its rays fall on the earth almost vertically. In our multi-functional PM Steel complex in the Polanco area of Mexico City, due to the sun situation, the hulls had to be placed close to each other.
At the same time, it was necessary to take into account the historical grid of the city block. Therefore, we continued the rectangular grid in the outer outlines of the quarter and made its internal structure as flexible as possible.
Another example is the project on Regerstrasse in Munich, where we tried to create plazas and public spaces of various properties along the street in order to bring the complex closer to a human scale. As you know, I have researched housing and housing economics a lot. For example, we interviewed over 1,500 people who wanted to buy an apartment in Munich. We asked them questions not only about the qualities of their future home, but also about urban spaces.
It is interesting that people prefer houses with 5-7 floors, and that each of them looks different. In German contests, sometimes the problem is that the jury likes buildings 100-500 meters long, exactly the same along their entire length, which is very boring. It has nothing to do with what the townspeople like. But the question is always the same: why have we lost this diversity and why do we prefer the “minimum program”?
The answer is obvious, isn't it? In most cities, after the war, architecture became simpler, and then it remained at this level
- I think the main reason is that we are all lazy as architects. If I look at the historical drawings of baroque buildings, I think most of us would not even be able to draw them today. This is why we all love the slogan “less is more” so much: it allows us to be lazy. Interesting housing plans have become a rarity today. So I wrote a book
Typology +, where all building plans are scaled specifically for people to copy. If they can't come up with good plans on their own, then at least make good copies of good projects. It's better than copying the bad ones, or what?
When I just arrived in Munich, and I was invited to the jury of competitions, it was like this: one architect wins and makes the whole project. I opposed this. I find it much better when several architects work on the same project: this way you "automatically" get variety. In this regard, I am impressed by the Dutch system. In the Netherlands, an architect who wins a town planning competition can invite colleagues of their choice to join him. I think this principle ensures the quality of projects in Holland.
The development of Potsdamerplatz in Berlin, which was carried out by several architects, can hardly be called successful
“This is because each of the architects in this project is a“bodybuilder”. The problem is that there is a daunting number of "bodybuilders" in architecture today. Everyone is trying to make the building cooler, crazier than the other. By the way, the project on Potsdamerplatz can even be accepted, since it was once the city center, a significant place. It's another matter when such things happen in the suburbs. Architects come from Denmark, for example, and make the architecture of "bodybuilders". It looks great in print but is terrible for people. As architects, we have lost the ability to design for people: we work for magazines. And initially architects were the “voice of society”. Previously, it was they who said: “People need this,” but now we have lost it all. I strongly recommend architects to visit the objects themselves, to see them in reality, and not only in photos in magazines, where they are processed in Photoshop, like supermodels.
Now there is a trend in Moscow - to invite foreign architects to participate in competitions. What does it mean for a city when a bureau, which knows very little about the "scene of action" and has only a superficial idea about it, comes there to do projects?
- I will answer this way. Munich, for example, is a very “closed” city. Foreign architects are practically not invited to work there. Salzburg, a city much smaller than Munich, on the other hand, attracts a large number of foreign architects. Both options are positive. However, there is a practice in Salzburg: almost all foreigners who design there initially serve as advisors in the town planning department for several years, and during this period they are not allowed to design in the city. So first they have to get to know the city thoroughly. For example, when Massimiliano Fuksas was making his project in Salzburg, he did not just “fly over the city in a helicopter, making sketches”. At first, he was an advisor in the urban planning department, and only then was he invited to carry out projects. By that time, he already knew the city and, more importantly, he had learned what distinguishes this city from all others, even before he started working on the project. From my point of view, it would be wise for the chief architect of Moscow to introduce such a practice, since it would allow him to see the situation from several sides and learn new opinions.
