continued

The fact that construction, which by definition creates durable objects that resist time, carrying with them the values of a society, should be caught up in the vortex of the immediate and designed with the same consumer mindset as items of food, is a matter of concern.

After having been consumed, food leaves no further trace, while construction treated in the same way leaves a heavy baggage of poorly designed buildings that age prematurely and are difficult to reuse.

We would like to believe, we would like to hope, we dare to wish that the public authorities have the ability, like in Flanders, to create the conditions that would make practicing architecture in such a summary and servile form more difficult and less attractive.

On the contrary, currently everything tends to lead to architects being thwarted by naive people, wholly ignorant of the fundamentals of the trade, who have never practiced it seriously, trying to intervene with arguments of a bewildering simplicity.

Imagine singing "Frère Jacques" to a composer to teach him how to compose, or a scientific researcher over whom we allow the opinions of a halfwit to prevail. This is the permanent fate of architects to whom we repeat C1émenceau's words, adapted to their sad situation: "architecture is too serious to be left to architects."

This quotation may well be true of politics, but when transcribed to the professions cited above, it reveals its inherent absurdity, especially for architects, as their daily efforts ceaselessly illustrate.

Running the Gauntlet

As they leave their offices, in quest of vital administrative permits, they are confronted with pedants with naive convictions, riddled with obsessions raised to the rank of dogma, sometimes displaying a surreal authoritarianism, imagining the future of architecture from the world of outmoded forms, struggling to see the space in two dimensions, reducing what is to what seems, the building to its facades, cravenly attached to supposedly noble materials, believing that they can weigh economic considerations by perpetually applying formal schemes and templates.

This means that an architect who submits a request for a building permit, passing through a series of bodies, enters into the turbulence of a debate that he is convinced is wholly unrelated to the realities of the profession, leading him astray from the real aesthetic, technical, ethical, social and urban development issues.

He or she is ground down by discussions based on falsehoods, pretexts and illusions seized upon in political negotiation and horse trading. The architect has to run the gauntlet of all of the control and consultation bodies, to-ing and fro-ing, backtracking and maneuvering until finally, little by little, from correction to amputation, from naivete to absurdity, from administrative sloth to blockage, from conviction to bad faith, from ideals to compromise, from combat to capitulation, the building is gradually reduced to the norm.

The hideous and banal norm of insignificance, the hateful norm of life devoid of meaning, the norm of obedience, is governed by the thirst for power of those who wish to give it the trappings of democracy according to their whim of the moment.

And this norm is quite simply that of constructions that lack conviction or architectural grace, molded by the rules of the market.

We would like to be able to expect more from those whose task it is (lest they forget) to contribute to the conservation of the heritage. Have they never studied history? Do they not understand its origins? Have they no concern for its continuity and perpetuation?

One might expect them to be capable of suggesting new approaches that simultaneously preserve the existing cultural heritage and create significant works that complement them.

Alas, the main element of their opinions, their directives and their blocking behavior is the imposition of mimicry, disappearance, or fakery, procedures for classifying facades, or even identical reconstruction, strategies where history is an alibi, a pretext for visions, for ideological reconstructions of history leading to a travesty of fossilized images.

An Audit Of Absurdity

Over several decades all of the procedures for controlling building have been set up, amplified, structured, and regulated, so it is perhaps time to draw up an audit of almost a quarter of a century of influences.

These are unfortunately littered with complete failures, constructions of arcades without depth that pretend to enliven a street, windows supposed to express urban activity.

These are just heaps of noble materials sheathing insignificant forms and insipid patterns or inappropriate functions that could have been rejected. They use architecture as a crutch to express their essential vacuity; shimmering palaces faded by dust topping buildings designed to conceal forms or floors, with false roofs tacked onto several levels.

What a sad anthology of errors and ugliness that have dragged many architects in their wake, absurd creations to which they had to attach their names and for which they carry heavy decades of responsibility.

Without the power to vigorously tackle the root of the problem, the organization of functions in the city and the suburbs, lacking the power and the intellectual capacity to grasp the realities of property and finance, failing to deal with the real issues of urban development, without the ability to imagine the means of rigorous action, this control activity has been exercised subjectively, by amateurs lacking rigor, taken in by appearances that mask the content, engendering a sham architecture.

It is a triumph of "how it looks": it looks old, it looks urban, it looks lively, it looks solid, it looks pretty; an ongoing festival of prejudice and piecemeal reasoning.

And this little world that fiddles around trying to concoct a landscape that it has still not yet mastered, despite the number of persons in its ranks, all professionals (in no small numbers) living and prospering from this activity, in the end only tinder those who, despite this disastrous scenario, are still trying to think in terms of architecture.

However, they in no way hinder those who, reduced to silence and conformity, have finally capitulated without regret. Indeed, what could be easier than to bow down soullessly and without conviction to absurd desires, to execute them in a servile fashion, or even invent them, provided that the imperatives of floor space, profitability, price, and deadlines are satisfied, provided that the profit targets are met?

This situation, which has become institutionalized, therefore plays into the hands of architects who have completely capitulated or have always lacked conviction, those who have renounced architecture, or at least thinking in terms of architecture, content to produce buildings solely for the profit of financiers and themselves.

Perseverance and Tenacity

No profession can go on bowing to the naivete, cheek, or impudence of a few supposedly untouchable manipulators. Nor is it obliged to distort all of its output in the direction of nonsense, on which it will later be judged. This situation is unique, and particularly worrying.

The merit of architects and engineers is best measured against those who have intractably followed their vocation, aware of their responsibilities, obstinately finding a way through the maze, those who were able to convince, overcome difficulties, argue, persuade, disarm, never standing down, taking risks, restarting projects and then starting over again, never losing heart, displaying determination, shaking the tree, kicking over the traces, raging until they finally obtain the right to express themselves, with all the risks that this entails.

Pierre Loze, writer, and Joel Claisse, architect, are editors, with Liliane Knopes, Geraldine Claisse, Francoise Dupont, and Charlotte Brunko, of Belgium New Architecture.

This article is excerpted from Belgium New Architecture copyright © 2001, available from Prisme Editions 45, av. Wielemans Ceuppens, 1190 Bruxelles, Belgium, +322-346-13-19.

General Contractor: Belim Bouwteam

Quadrat Medical Software is built on a deep site on the busy Kortrijksesteenweg in St. Martens-Latem, Belgium. Photo: Marc DeTiffe Ground floor, Quadrat Medical Software. Image: Corbeel + Catteeuw + Platteau Architecten Upper floor. Image: Corbeel + Catteeuw + Platteau Architecten Section looking south (top) and section looking east (bottom). Image: Corbeel + Catteeuw + Platteau Architecten North elevation (top) and south elevation (bottom). Image: Corbeel + Catteeuw + Platteau Architecten East elevation (top) and west elevation (bottom). Image: Corbeel + Catteeuw + Platteau Architecten Inside the glazed head, the management office looks out theatrically over the Kortrijksesteenweg through a framed window. Photo: Marc DeTiffe Belgium New Architecture, published by Prisme Editions. Pictured: Denis-Ortmans House by architect Daniel Dethier. Photo: Jean-Paul Legros   Click on thumbnail images to view full-size pictures.