after a year in which environmental and societal
issues have been hauled up the political agenda across the world, even
within architecture - supposedly the form of culture most connected to
social and political topics, yet so often one ruled simply by money and ego
- the AR awards, with their tendency towards good honest, well made, but
still ambitious projects, seem not perverse, but stunningly prescient.
China, Dubai, Moscow or Kazakhstan apart, there’s a shift among many young
architects away from flash, if lucrative, bling buildings and towards, what?
The uniconic? The spiritual leader of this not-quite-movement, Swiss
architect Peter Zumthor, calls it slow architecture. Like slow food, this is
about local produce that tastes good. It’s about that hard-to-define idea,
integrity. Architecturally, it means back to basics building: providing
beautiful shelter, addressing human needs with architecture which has
longevity and presence, undeniably modern but also showing the mark of human
hand. Its response to the bombast, fakery and crash-bang-wallop of
globalisation is radical in its reactionariness.
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