„There are good reasons to refrain from attempts at defining cool“, says Tom ­Holert in his introductory article to this issue of archithese. At the same time, curiosity incites us to trace the meaning of commonly used phrases. While Literary and Cultural Studies as well as art historians have long been known to undertake such ventures, architecture theory and discussion have been surprisingly reluctant in following suit.

The present issue picks up on the groundwork done by the liberal arts, which has mainly focused on emphasising the importance of the term for the urban culture of modernity and exploring its manifold roots – be it the 19th-century dandy, the distance resulting from movement and masquerade of the Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) or cool as a strategy of passive resistance in Afro-American culture.

The abundance of aspects and references already shows that a definition, in the sense of a differentiation, must be difficult to achieve, further complicated by „cool“ being continually used as an expression of consent and a marketing tool. What this shows as well, however, is that cool, on a social and cultural level, has become a fundamental code of conduct in modern times. Does the same apply to architecture?

The preview to this issue saw the complexity of an assessment of „Cool“ on one level with that of beauty and elegance. Compared to these classic categories of aesthetics, cool is a young term that finds its legitimation less in ancient Greece than in today’s modern world and in recent history.

Cool can embrace the ugly, repudiate the beautiful – it keeps its distance to the morally charged „good“. If elegance stands for the selected and refined, cool stands for distinguished coarseness. However, the word is not limited to outer appearances and superficiality, or the architectonic „shape“. Cool determines virtuosity in demanding a mastery of the arts. At the same time, the word as an expression of the containment of emotions describes the sober factuality of architecture, finding its expression particularly in buildings from the 1950s and 1960s. Nevertheless, many buildings that are considered cool today came about by means of creative heat once. Photography and mediatisation – the reception of pictures – brought a cooling effect and coolness.

The present issue explores the foundations of this tempered theory and allows for new associations to be made and conclusions to be drawn that, especially in retrospective on the 20th century, have a clarifying effect. The digital architecture from around the turn of the millennium, for example, with its guiding principle of a global culture, with its focus on spatial flow in the plan as well as the architect’s life, with the computer as a distancing element between human and design proposal, can be described as a neo-objective late modern style, whose products can thus with good reason be called cool.

This opinion might not be shared by everyone and coolness, consequently, has its adversaries. The following archithese issues of this year explore the questions how materiality gains in importance in (digital) architecture (3.2013, „Weak Materiality“), how reform movements rediscover 19th-century concepts (4.2013, „Pre modern is post modern“), and how men as well as nature are regarded with a new significance (6.2013, „Nature“).

Until archithese might thus contribute to a warming in architecture, let us open the door to the age of cool with the words of architecture aficionado and rapper Jay Z from On to the next one:
„I move onward the only direction; hold up, freeze, hey.“
The editors

04 Editorial

Architektur aktuell
10 Barock und/oder Moderne? Preston Scott Cohen: Erweiterung des Tel Aviv Museum of Art | Hubertus Adam
18 Klare Kante, klarer Klang. Delugan Meissl Associated Architects: Festspielhaus Erl | Hannes Mayer
24 Subtile Extrusion. prs architects: Mehrfamilienhaus, Lausanne | Frédéric Frank

Architektur
30 Cool I. Tom Holert
33 Cool II. Vom Dandy des 19. bis zum Hipster des 21. Jahrhunderts | Ulla Haselstein
38 Martini Modernism. Los Angeles und die Fünfzigerjahre | Klaus Leuschel
44 Cool in Retrospect. A conversation with Dion Neutra about his father and their architecture | Hannes Mayer
48 Frozen Dynamics. Ezra Stoller’s Industrial Cool | Nina Rappaport
54 Alle Schaffenden aber sind hart. Friedrich Nietzsche und die Konstruktion des Künstlerselbverständnisses um 1900 | Hubertus Adam
60 Il nuovo Cinema Corso. Eine Entdeckung in Lugano | Eleonora Bourgoin und Eberhard Tröger
68 Degré Zéro. Über «Graue» und gewöhnliche Architektur | Benedikt Boucsein
74 Tausendjähriges Reich und Tausendfüßler. Die kühle Kontinuität des Verkehrs von der Neuen Sachlichkeit bis zur autogerechten Stadt | Hannes Mayer
78 Der Bau zu Schwabel. Schwabylon – Eine Münchner Geschichte | Julia Höck
82 Kalte Krieger und dicke Torten. Frontbericht aus Westberlin | Florian Dreher
88 Bonjour Tristesse oder: Wie cool ist die Pappelallee? Eine ästhetische Spekulation | Christian Gänshirt
94 «Degenerierte» Coolness: Vom Keller zum Dach. Über das strapazierte Verhältnis von Architektur und Street Art | Rémi Jaccard
96 Sternstunden der Menschheit. Rafael Horzon und Mathias Rust im Gespräch mit Stephan Trüby

Rubriken
102 fsai
106 Neues aus der Industrie
114 Lieferbare Hefte
116 Vorschau und Impressum