By no means am I an expert on the issue of land use and development and I certainly don’t claim to be, but I found an interesting article today I wanted to share with you. Dresden, a City in the former East Germany who’s been on the UNESCO World Heritage Site Register got its designation dropped yesterday.
UNESCO has dropped the German city of Dresden from its list of world heritage sites for constructing a disputed bridge that UN officials say will ruin the city’s historic Elbe Valley landscape.
The reason for being dropped from the register, which only happened once before is because the city planners felt the need to build another bridge over the river Elbe that’s cutting the city in half. Often I have conversations with people here in the US confessing that they think Europe is doing everything better in their eyes and the people are more enlightened, concerned and sustainable focused.
Now, my response often is that people in Europe are more forced to be concerned about the environment, due to a higher density in population and therefore lack of space for expansion, the unsubsidized and highly taxed gas prices among many other things. Another obvious aspect is that in Europe people have to be caretakers of an architectual heritage and history that is not just decades old but rather centuries. Cities were built before the car etc.
But, what I find more often than not while following modern-day European decision-making when it comes to land use, people-centric building and sustainable decisions that the same power-struggle, identity crises and serious lack of vision for todays world is at hand.
Skyscrapers, the symbol of yesterday’s economy are dead.
Someone once pointed out that the tallest buildings in a city always represented the entity that was in charge at the current time in history. First the churches build tall towers, then came the civic and political structure that were soon to be overtaken by tall skyscrapers of banks and corporations.
Architecturally and intellectually we certainly can find a solution to build smarter, smaller more efficient. Rem Koolhaas build the Seattle library a structure as impressive to look at as it is to learn about the thought-process that went into designing it. Passive Hause is a new trend from Germany that builds residental housing with the highest level of insulation and with very little need for central heating systems. LEED certification is becoming a more and more a standard more even while people critique the process involved, calling it a sales strategy more than anything else. All those efforts are smart, technological solutions too our globalized world threatened by climate change.
But, where is the soul?
Where’s the architecture that people can fall in love with. Designs that are smart, responsible and beautifully stunning. We don’t need shock value like so many modern artists resort to in their search for identity. What we need is a pattern language for a new generation, for people with different values and different priorities then their parents.
Who will start this conversation, collect the worlds, emotion, thoughts and dreams that can help shape this new world that might seem inconvenient and scary but is still our and our children’s common future?
