In this fraught period of multiple emergencies we are presenting a book about architecture. This may sound like a flippant diversion, a pause to contemplate the magnificence and reassurance of a beautiful building in an era that is growing more and more menacing. But the profession has no time for such relaxation as it is evident in retrospect that architecture has contributed mightily to a spread of global crises. If architecture is to demonstrate its added value, and to shed its burden of guilt, it needs better arguments than its ability to offer shelter.

Upon closer inspection that burden turns out to be massive. Conjure up images of the crisis and what you see is architecture: jammed roads, packed airports, automated transhipment centres, vast cowsheds, battery farms for pigs and chickens, meat factories, fast food outlets, shopping malls, hypermarkets and quarantine zones, worldwide material transportation, urban sprawl, condominium cities in the desert of Arizona, no-go areas and security walls, abandoned homes in ghost towns like Detroit or Sesena Nuevo. And it all started with design.
But here the argument cuts both ways. Couldn’t these images of the crisis until recently be considered as exemplars of the unprecedented success of globalization? And still. Think of an internationally acclaimed architect who is constantly jetting around the world, designing as many unique buildings as possible that in turn help generate an admiring mass tourism. Isn’t this the one-off architecture that comes from far away to put the city on the world map? Hasn’t this practice brought architects to a pinnacle of unparalleled fame? How can that pinnacle become an overnight symbol of cultural bankruptcy?

The reason for this can only be found in the equally rapid awareness of the crisis. Architecture, design and construction are increasingly seen as part of the problem. The way in which this branch organizes and presents itself is now often taken to be a social debit – buildings that pay no heed to how they can be reached or accessed nor to what they contribute to society, how they can be adapted for use, the reduction of fossil fuel consumption, the provenance of their materials, the efficiency of the building process and their future management. Some people can already see the looming spectre of a totally irresponsible profession that seems bent on pricing itself out of the market, whatever the consequences. A profession that bases its efforts to win cultural respect on mere spectacle is living dangerously.

But the solution cannot dispense with architecture. The architect as sinner can only be redeemed by the architect as saviour, in the person of an architect who faces up to the challenge.
That is why this book is in particular about Dutch architecture. The Netherlands is in some respects harder hit than the average by the present crisis and will have to strive more than most other countries to find a solution. If this country ignores the challenge it will cease to exist. Without innovation the Netherlands is doomed to disappear as an independent country. Just look at the facts. The high population density has forced the Netherlands to become a leader in the industrialization of food production. The growing elderly population is a challenge to health care. Without a permanent supply of energy the country will be flooded. It needs new land to accommodate demographic pressure and to cater for changing lifestyles. It needs time to prove the value of innovations. It needs social peace to pursue its many desires. And as a crucible of capitalism, it is involved in and stands to gain more than any other country from a new benchmarking of the global economic system. If the Netherlands, under all this pressure, fails to think up something new, what is new will come up with something for the Netherlands.
The question now is whether Dutch architecture is up to the task. That is by no means a foregone conclusion. After all, the pressure just to keep plodding on is enormous. For example, a lot of energy in professional circles is still wasted on old feuds such as that between the modernists and the traditionalists, a controversy rooted in the notion that the essence of architecture is about style, external form, and that the architect therefore opts for the school to which he or she wants to belong, that of the modern era or that of providing „what the customer wants“. This supposedly life-and-death struggle has been dragging on for most of a century by now.
A more recent notion is that a building can only be architecture if it is the embodiment of an intelligent concept, based on an extensive analysis of context, programme and the current architectural and philosophical debate. Didn’t Dutch architecture become world famous with SuperDutch, the work of a generation that profiled itself with an unprecedented conceptual strength? This approach has certainly made a group of extremely intelligent designers famous, but it is debatable whether this is reason enough for architecture in general to continue along the same lines in future.
Now, past mid-2009, it is doubtful whether the architectural profession in the Netherlands has enough resilience to turn the tide and seize new opportunities. According to a recent investigation by the Royal Institute of Dutch Architects (BNA), one third of the architectural firms have succumbed to the crisis in less than ten months, and the Chief Government Architect has announced an emergency programme to prevent the emergence of a lost generation as a result of the economic depression and the drastic cuts that are taking place in the building sector.
The architecture in this book has little in common with typical Dutch architecture in this sense, neither does it have any connection with an emergency programme. Its aim is nothing less than to be a radical part of the solution. This architecture presents solutions to questions that are both much larger than architecture and impossible to tackle without architecture. This architecture is not about the desired form or the possible analysis. It is above all about necessity, about architecture’s capacity to resolve pressing problems. This architecture is not distracted by the current market situation, in which the question is whether there is work for architects. It is about a vision of the future and the focus that is required to keep that picture sharp. So it is also about the speculative minds of architects young and old which are essential for a vision of this kind and about their design research.
This book begins and ends beyond architecture, presenting a unique opportunity for architecture today, the rediscovery of a social necessity that consistently produces worthwhile architecture. Such moments are historically rare. They occur only when the old procedures are no longer adequate and the new ones have not yet arrived on the scene. This crisis is too valuable an opportunity to let slip by, a chance to turn back to where architecture starts, in the creative spatial organisation of life – not in style choices or concept analyses, but in the identification of new spatial constellations; not in the spatial allocation and accommodation of a given programme, but in helping to create a spatial organization for multiple programmes; not in making things in space, but in organizing processes in time; in short, not in the object, but in performance. This architecture is not about superficial beauty, but about results. Eventually, architecture turns out to be an unparalleled field of innovation.

This insight probably comes as a surprise to the reader. Anyone who explores contemporary theories of innovation will soon notice that expectations about future social breakthroughs and thus future economic prosperity are mainly concentrated on high tech: information technology, biotechnology, nanotechnology and neurotechnology. In other words, bits, genes, atoms and neurons. That is where the vast resources for research are concentrated, where social relevance and social respect are located. Nobody in this global knowledge field is still betting on architecture – the profession of stones, soil, space and slowness. Nether is it logical to expect that breakthroughs in the technologies mentioned above will have immediate architectural outcomes as earlier technological revolutions did: the church, the palace, the factory, the station, the bank. How can architecture today benefit from progress in genetics and nanotechnology? Architecture is not just suffering from an economic crisis but also threatened by a crisis of motivation. If that lasts too long it will be faced with a crisis of talent too.

What can architecture do to avert this scenario and unite its social role in the present with its future mission? Simply put, it must start with what is necessary. More than any new technology the old technology of architecture provides solutions to problems associated with food chains, healthcare, energy flows, lack of space, time management, social tensions and the present economic system.
What is needed is a spatial organization that allows people to achieve self-sufficiency again, that constructs healthier environments, that produces energy rather than merely consuming it, that does not cost space or time but creates them, that promotes cohesion, a spatial organization whose value is defined as a unified process of design, building and maintenance. This is an assignment with the appeal of an Apollo project, or, in the Dutch experience, the symbolic force of the Delta works project. Architecture has been presented with an opportunity that is seldom available.
An architecture that focuses on the many possibilities of intensification and combination is a realistic proposal. Rather than an architecture of monoprogrammatic zones, single issue spaces, zoning plans and highly individual, unrepeatable statements, it would be an architecture that derives sustainability from the sharing of space, services, energy, transport, the public domain and of values, an architecture that through that sharing achieves wholly new typologies.
This book is full of examples of that kind of architecture, from CO2-neutral to energy-producing buildings and landscapes, from high-quality architecture for lower income groups to a villa made from refuse, from temporary hotels in demolition zones to the redevelopment of existing social housing, from unique business alliances at the regional level to cooperative, productive teams involving local residents.

Architecture is already presenting this vision for the future, as this book demonstrates. The architects presented here, though often rivals in daily life, display a striking unanimity in their ambitions for their profession. Theirs is not a pact or movement in which all noses have to point in the same direction, but rather a competition in which the participants are driven by the same innovative motivation – their profession has set out to solve the problems it helped create.
Visions of the future, images to lend force to that vision, strategies for getting there, the force of conviction to follow those strategies can all be found in this book. The only thing missing is effective implementation by decision makers. We hope that this book will help to find them. (Introduction Essay of the catalogue of the exhibition „Architecture of Consequence“, Rotterdam 2009) Ole Bouman

Einleitender Essay zum Katalog der Ausstellung „Architecture of Consequence“, 2009. Übersetzt von Sigrid Szabó