The Inevitability of the Triangle

When dissecting the building process, we found that we could pindown three main intervenients; client, architect and user.

The client is the source of the process. It is the will and the birth of the whole discussion. Without client, there would be no project, no building.

The architect is the means to an end. It is the negotiator between the client’s wishes, the user’s needs and his own views.

The user is the end, the one that gives meaning to the built environment, that projects itself onto it, appropriates and lives in it, with it.1

These three entities are always present even if they are absent. This is possible due to the collective and societal nature of Man, which allows individuals to assimilate an empirical knowledge about the built environment and to take an active role in its construction. The built environment, and its language, are the result of the constant, either conscious or unconscious, dialogue between this trinity.

If we were to understand the role of the client as a specific entity that starts the project, follows it through to its conclusion and ends up profiting from its use, we could argue that, for example, in the “Torre de David” project2 , the figure of the original client was replaced by an informally organized group of people that started taking over an unoccupied structure. For them, the project started as soon as they moved in and had to transform the raw structure into livable quarters.

We could use the same example to discuss the absence of the role of the architect. Even though there was no architect involved in the planning and execution processes of the “finished” structure, the concept of what architecture is, is extremely present. The materials used, the disposition of the rooms, the placing of the household amenities, these are all decisions that are deeply influenced by the perception these people have of their built environment that is, in turn, influenced by architects.

In this same situation, the final user was not the originally intended. As the original project came to an halt, a new potential user started started to appear, a user that would be detached from the one idealized by the client and the architect but still a very valid one. The people that took the Torre over gave purpose to this otherwise dead skeleton, they won it over and brought it to life by projecting onto it their needs and wants.

This realization of the inevitability of the triangle is both comforting and disturbing for architects for even though it is known that architects will always be indirectly present, it is also known that they do not have to be present, per se. This reinforces the strength and responsibility of architecture as a social event but questions the role of the architect as a persona.

In our present situation, these figures have become decomposed to the point that, for instance, an investor from Suriname that is unknowingly backing a real estate developer in Zurich, via his stock-market portfolio, might end up being the end-user of the luxury housing complex this developer builds in Italy. The Triangle can be multiplied but, at the end, it is just a matter of proximity, it can always be brought down to the three original vertices.

With this issue, Santísima Trinidad, we aim to take a picture of the current conception of the client-architect-user relation, the influence it has on our reality and how it is influenced by it in return.3 As one might see when reading it, the presence of the three entities is mostly volatile; sometimes the three vertices have been exploded into multiple dots becoming blurry, sometimes one of the vertices is engulfed by the other two4 , other times all of the vertices becomes a sole point.5 But again, it is a matter of proximity, the triangle is always there.

Few architects may understand the complexity of the relationships between the client, the user and the architect as well as Marco Serra. As a chief architect for Novartis, with a robust trajectory behind him, Serra has engaged at an eye level with most of the vertices involved in architecture, acquiring an unrivalled understanding on the completeness of the architectural process and his different actors.

 

Italian & Swiss, born in Zürich in 1970, he studied architecture at the ETHZ, graduating in 1996 with Prof. Hans Kollhoff. After working in the office of Prof. Adrian Meyer from 1996 – 1999 and for Diener & Diener Architects from 1999 – 2002, Serra started working at Novartis in 2003 and is responsible for the Campus master planning. From 2002 – 2005 he architect in charge of the design for the main gate and the car park project of the Campus in Basel. Since 2006 he is the responsible design architect for the conversion project of the Abadia Retuerta into a hotel with spa in Valladolid, Spain. Since 2014 he is the Global Novartis chief architect.

 

RV: Thinking about our current call for papers1, what is your opinion thinking about the architect, the client and the user, the way they relate to each other and the different situations between them?

 

MS: Rather than a trinity, it’s a new form of Architect.

 

RV: One single entity that would produce its own architecture for its own usage?

 

MS: More than one single entity, what I have in mind is how I consider the ideal Architect should work. Today’s culture has the tendency to see architecture equal to design. Unfortunately the tendency goes more and more into this direction, and I consider this a problematic development.  The basis of the architects has been reduced to a very thin area and has been detached from the construction sites and from the implementation. The practice shows that architects are involved, depending on their profile, first of all on a very high level and in the very beginning. This presumes that architecture can be reduced to the elegant movement of the architect’s hand. The architect as a complete, universal actor is more and more disappearing.

 

RV: Whether we see the architect as an entity that manages all the different parts of his discipline or as a person that builds a language through architectonic gestures. How would you define your position within your personal work, in relation to the trinity of user, client and architect?

 

MS: First of all I would like to define my ideal character of the architect. I think the architect shouldn’t be neither a manager nor a coordinator, nor would I reduce him to a coordinator of disciplines. The important part in an architect’s work is to be able to absorb the different disciplines and make them become one, in what is the result of his activity. The architect should be able to discuss with all disciplines at the same eye level without falling into the trap of becoming a superficial generalist. If you have a look at the way medieval monks used to build their facilities, you will be astonished by the exemplary way they did their work. What fascinates about medieval architecture is its coherence.

 

RV: Probably the coherence comes from the fact, that the architect was the user and the client at the same time?

 

MS: Having had the opportunity to work for a decade on the restoration of an ancient monastery, I saw that the coherence did not at first, come from an architectonic will, but from the circumstances under which the projects were set up. The monks would define the strategy and the location of the monastery. They would define the architecture including details, construction and materials. They were also the constructors themselves and last but not least they were also the users. Their buildings do nothing else than reflect these circumstances. That is where the coherence comes from. Having said this, I do not argue for regression. I argue for completeness in the architect’s work. Les pierres sauvages, written by Fernand Pouillon, describes the life of a monk building a monastery in southern France, which I think it is a fantastic illustration of the topic.

 

RV: Going back to the Santisima Trinidad subject ; In your position as a global chief architect, what would be your role in this wholeness of the architecture?

 

MS: First of all, I’m far away from being a modern monk, overarching all disciplines. But one of the particularities of my work is that the first discussions in projects do not happen about architecture, but about project circumstances. Also, having the possibility to see into different areas and stages of the project gives me the opportunity to see things that as an external architect you generally don’t see. Take the start up or the hand-over phases of a project. These are important phases, but despite of this, often architects are not present during these discussions. The start-up is the phase in which you lay out the project basis and therefore you have the most influence over it. The hand-over is the moment when you can learn from all the mistakes. These are very valuable insights.

 

RV: Talking about design and experimentation, have the usage and building restrictions of the campus been in contradiction with the architects will to experiment?

 

MS: There is no general answer and it varies from project to project. It also depends how much engagement the company has put into the project. Beyond that, it is not only about the architect, but about the whole team: the general planer, the user and the client. Depending on the cooperation and the energy the stakeholders have put into the project, the result is better or worse. The better the team, the higher is the probability to find good answers to what you call restrictions.

 

RV: So that in order to achieve a satisfactory building you would need to work again as a single entity, the client the user and the architect together?

 

MS: Considering that the cooperation is crucial to the result, the question is how you set up teams. Good projects begin by picking the right members and this is why the choice of the architect and his team is so important. You can mitigate mistakes and improve quality by setting up a good structure, but much more effective is the right choice of people. The other aspect you can influence the quality with, is how you set up roles and responsibilities.

 

RV: So more precisely, how do you chose an architect?

 

MS: Probably the most important aspect in the choice of the architect is trust. Also reference projects are good but more important is experience. The only way to understand these qualities, is to interview and talk to people. Particularly in an environment of a very sophisticated communication, face to face talks become more and more important. Think about the extraordinary ability of studios to visualize projects. It is really hard to distinguish what has been built and what not. This brings us to the next point which is important in the choice of teams, and this is the visit of projects. Only by looking at realized buildings you can distinguish the quality of the studios. This is why I think that competitions do not a priori lead to the best result. Independently of whether you do a competition or a direct commission, I prefer as a first step the discussion. We had the experience that competitions are not simple because the immediate interaction between planner and client is lacking. Also, in competitions you need to have a very clear briefing, this is why some companies begin with intermediate discussions in competitions.

 

RV: Since early twentieth century, different companies like Olivetti, Nestle or Ford have had a wide research in the working space, its consequences on productivity and its social implications. However, they often chose one architect in long term collaboration. Having worked with such a vast group of different architects in the same campus, has added an extra level of difficulty in developing the project?

 

MS: I think that the choice of architects is linked to the overall philosophy of the company. I have a very high respect for long term thinking, but the longer the timeline, the more difficult is it to continue working with one structure over the whole project. The highest value of working with different architects is that you can learn from them. The challenge is how you transfer these learnings from project to project. We have tried to do that by keeping continuity within the teams, therefore integrating experienced employees in different projects. You can integrate learnings into guidelines, but the best way to transfer learnings is through people.

RV: So in this sense you would say that the client has a constant learning from different practices and that enriches its existence as a client?

 

MS: Yes, I would say so.

 

RV: Thinking about the building in an international and local context, apart from the users inside of the building there is another kind of user that perceives the building from the outside. How would this constellation of architects and clients insert itself not only in a Basel context but in an international context ?

 

MS: To what do you relate it, what kind of perception?

 

RV: Of course there is an image of the values that the company wants to present. By hiring several different architects you send a complete different message than just hiring one.

 

MS: I think one of the important messages that you send out is the care for quality. This is both internal and external related. For the external aspect, I think it is related to the company’s expectations, which is to attract talents. By setting high expectations onto yourself, you also set high expectations towards the outside. Working with the best teams sets the expectations that we want to be attractive for the best employees, and this is related to the ambition of becoming the most attractive company for the best people. Good people create good companies. The same is true for internal.  By caring for the people you send a strong signal, that people is important to the company. The first target of the project is not architecture, but the employees. The idea of attracting and working with the best employees has been instrumental to the idea of working with the best planners. We believe that the best work environment will create and retain the best people.

Thinking about the relationships between clients, users and architects really comes down to examining the « relations de pouvoir » that takes place between those three entities. Of course, in some cases, the wills of the three might align for the best or for the worse. But those scenarios do not provide interesting case studies for this paper as we are unable to distinguish the strategies of the different players and therefore question them. The Ecole de Nantes by Lacaton & Vassal provides us with a more intriguing example. A client (the French ministry for culture that run the schools of architecture) chooses an architect (Lacaton & Vassal) who offers a project destined to enable its users (teachers and students) to inhabit it more intensely or rather differently. To do so, architects created, among many other architectural features, large spaces called “plateaux” which could be described as large slabs of concrete that stand between the actual program (classrooms, library, etc.) and the polycarbonate façades. These “plateaux” were destined from the beginning to host what could not happen in the defined areas of the program. Visiting the building today, five years after its opening, raises a few questions.  What could we learn from Nantes to make it the prototype of an ongoing suite of buildings and not an isolated burst of optimism?

Life is the show, architecture is its stage.
An architect’s fantasy.

 

Architects have for a long time understood their ability to forge systems that would influence the way life happened inside them. This consciousness for their power culminated with a hardcore modernism that proclaimed it could infant a new man.  The Dom-Ino system might be the paroxysmal and yet strangely the most minimalist example of such systems. By updating the idea of the primitive hut, it concentrated its means to provide a skeleton for life. The fascination it has inspired since, probably draws its intensity from the openness of interpretation it allows. Indeed, while the world discovered the conceptual danger of an almighty environment, architects also envisioned strategies to put their power to the service of a progressivist view. They believed in their ability to create genuinely new spatial systems as well as new emancipated ways of life. Fascination and trust in technology nourished a series of emblematic projects of which Cedric Price’s fun palace might be the most influential. Lacaton & Vassal have many times cited their admiration for its poetry and radicalness. Their project for Nantes, although often described as austere and low-tech, openly places itself in the footstep of this high-tech and joyful chef d’oeuvre. But where Price’s fantasy sadly stayed on paper, Lacaton & Vassal actually brought their machine to the real world, with all its complexity. When visiting the School today and discussing with its users, one can only witness the acuity of the initial ambition. Invention and appropriation appears to be everywhere: from the pink trailers that host a café to the badminton classes but also with the exhibitions, the concerts the final reviews, etc.

Students and professors have integrated this mute space in their everyday life and praise its many qualities : proportions, light, views. Nevertheless, the “plateaux” are now threatened to become a caricature of themselves. The school administration controls ever more closely what can and cannot happen in these structures, limiting its use to more classical appropriation scenarios.  Furthermore, the space is now being rented to host external events for clients in search of a creative “décor”.  This driftage reminds us the risk that many innovative social and spatial structures face once the image of their freedom becomes more important than their actual freedom.

Imagining the contemporary agora.
The strategies of LV to create «espaces capables».

 

The idea of public space as the centre of democracy is deeply rooted in our cultural history. So many projects try to refer to it, or invoke it that we have reached a point where it has become a completely washed out concept, rendered hollow by its ubiquity. An intense life has become mandatory for any projects. Perspectives of crowded piazzas with happy children are now everywhere, from malls to museums they only contribute to emphasising the loss of influence of architecture. Should great empty spaces be the only alternative? Should architects abandon their ideal to meaningful configurations of space? Lacaton & Vassal’s work is a powerful antidote to those who think that flexibility and intensity are only neoliberal values. Making Cedric’s price statement their own,  they reaffirm the idea that space can empower people rather than constrain them while providing new solutions regarding its implementation. Indeed the silent and powerful structure in Nantes drives its force not only from the high tech’s . Taking clues from architects who decided to counter the modernist dictate by reconnecting to permanent figures and reaffirming the inner logic of architecture, Lacaton & Vassal uses their controlled architectural vocabulary to produce spatial quality. This attitude is not meant to detach architecture from its political context but rather to allow life to happen on its own, as if architecture offered an antidote to its own power. It also ensures that all means focus on creating the best possible space. This approach has been recently described as a “style de l’absence” by Jacques Lucan in reference to Roland Barthes and the “degrée zero de l’écriture”. Indeed, Lacaton & Vassal’s work is sometimes presented as a non-architectural, or rather as an architecture that focuses mostly on peripheral strategies (cost, climate, etc.) and on a simple research for maximum space efficiency. Yet, when visiting their buildings, and particularly Nantes, one can only agree with critics who describe it as a powerful architecture in the complete understanding of the word. The school and particularly the plateaux offer strong statements regarding tectonics, space and materiality. In Nantes, L&V achieved an architecture that welcomes new uses but does not dictate them. This also implied that the potential for social inventions is left to the users. Spaces could have stayed empty and lifeless without interfering with the core functions of the school. This is a risk the architects are willing to take to leave things open. In Nantes, they gave (almost) no clue on to what should happen. No big signs to tell you how much fun you are supposed to have, no fancy furniture to position a resting area, no flashy colours to instigate a playful atmosphere. Those initiatives and choices were left to the users. This confidence in the community’s ability to invent is what sets apart those plateaux from a “googletopia”. But for reality to live up to the radical expectations of the project, users must be able to grasp opportunities and explore concrete ways to appropriate space.

Architectural Coevolution.
Inventing social frameworks to enable new spaces. And vice versa.

 

Coevolution refers to a concept of natural science first described by Charles Darwin that postulates that plants and insects have evolved in a continuous «va et vient». According to this theory, evolution from one of the entities oriented the other to develop structures (pistils, trunks, etc.) that worked in close relationship with the other. The idea that sustains this theory is that iterative adaptation is more efficient to reach a complex system of interaction than a siloed development. One could postulate that architecture and social structures are the same. Taking the examples of Swiss cooperatives like kraftwerk, one can see that the amazing typology architects developed were made possible because groups of inhabitants invented over time a framework to update what community life meant today. If architects had acted alone by inventing everything from the ground up, failure would have probably been right around the corner. Looking at the world and it’s current state, one can only hope that architects will continue to reflect upon the relationships between their creations and the life it welcomes. This evolution will be even more fruitful if concrete examples, good or bad, nourish their reflection. The intense life inside the Nantes School shows us that the desire for new ways of inhabiting our daily surroundings is still vivid and full of poetical and political potential. But it also shows us the perils that inevitably threaten those bubbles of liberty. For other contemporary fun palaces to see light, users should maintain a certain level of control over their destiny. To help them do so, architects must finely tune their building to provide opportunities and desire. A lesson from Nantes is that a strong yet open form is a first step in this direction.

Pre-Architect

There was a time when the urban planner or architect was a public figure. He or she would have been the expert mandarin of a technocratic society, the public intellectual, the celebrated artist, or the popular leader of a participatory movement. The erosion of these public positions has produced a slumbering malaise within the discipline. But more importantly, it points to a general incapacity to engage coherently in the public sphere, in the legitimation of public actions.1

Some months ago, on the occasion of a study trip to Berlin, I visited the BigYard, a recently built half-block residential complex in the historic neighborhood of Prenzlauer Berg, in Berlin. Our host was Sascha Zander, resident at the Bigyard and architect co-founder at Zanderroth Architekten, the office responsible for this co-housing project.

Zander and Roth initiated their practice by the end of the 1990’s decided to choose the projects they would like to build. Since then, they have developed an effective building model according to which they became able to generate their own architecture design commissions. While leveraging on the popular co-housing schemes of Baugruppen, the architects subtracted the developer from the building equation, not only to provide more affordable houses, but also to reclaim back the responsibility for defining the urban and social impacts of their projects within the city.2 Self-initiative took them to consider additional tasks concerning the classical practice of architecture, while starting to deal with the factors that precede it, i.e. that make architecture possible in the first place.3 Philipp Oswalt coined this modus operandi as ‘Pre-architecture’.

 

1. A tour around the BigYard

At Zelterstrasse, the sober playfulness of the 100m-length paneled façade distinguishes the new building from the surrounding five-story homogeneous blocks of Prenzlauer Berg centennial borough, in a sheer respectful manner. From the street, what intuitively looks to be an apartment building, with flats stacked on each other, reveals to be a row of four-story townhouses disguised by a unifying façade. This volume is only breached by a pedestrian covered passage, which provides access to the backyard. An oblong courtyard garden mediates between the longitudinal street volume with 23 townhouses, and a parallel one in the back with 22 housing units. Here, three-story penthouses, with direct access to the communal roof terrace, are stacked on top of three-story garden houses, a step away from the courtyard garden. In total, 135 people dwell in the BigYard, Four of the 45 units are shared, and intended to host guests.

On the way to visit the communal roof terrace, we are not allowed to cross the courtyard, as agreed between residents, given the early hour. In this regard, Sascha elaborates on the dörflichen character of the project and refers to the founding principle of providing an atmosphere similar to a village, where high density of occupation intersects with the desire for an individual house, under the condition of a permanently negotiated close proximity.

This project addresses the wishes of middle-class families earning average incomes – ‘separate dwellings, large garden, green roof, open outlook, front door onto the street, parking behind the house’ 4 –, which didn’t have the chance to gain access to the housing market and become homeowners within the inner city. According to the architect, the goal was to offer a lifestyle that combined the urban and suburban condition in a central location: ‘the project expands our ideas about contemporary urban housing. Housing is no longer confined to simply providing accommodation for people. It has more to do with the spatial organization of leisure time spent at home. Housing should contribute to recreation.’4

Sascha describes the building model process that allowed them to set up this residential complex from its first spark, tracing the most significant tasks carried out, as well as their phasing, for a period of four years, between 2006 and 2010. With approximately 9.000 m2 of total floor area, this project represents a total investment of 15 million euros.

According to the architect, it all started with the choice of the plot to intervene and the search for its owner, with whom they signed a one-year ‘option to buy’ contract, assuming themselves the initial risk. In order to gain time to develop the project, as well as to complete the organization of the Baugruppe, this figure fits well one of the main challenges of their model: the need for a long organizational lead-time. / With a clear concept in mind regarding the usages and their target audience, during the first months they developed the concept design and the submission project, in order to get official approval. Still without any client, architects took the economical risk. / Once the project was officially approved, architects launched an advertising campaign for selling the housing units at ‘SmartHoming’ website5, the ‘sister’ company of Zanderroth Architekten, which dedicates to marketing, project management and client care. A brochure with all the necessary information for purchasing an apartment – location, list of the different available flats’ typologies, floorplans, areas quantities, visualizations, prices – was made available to the public. The aim was to find clients – and future users – to participate in BigYard Baugruppe. / The Baugruppe grew gradually upon applications, under the legal framework of a civil law association. Members signed a partnership agreement – GbR (Gesellschaft bürgerlichen Rechts) – that outlined who was to obtain which apartment and which share of the total cost it represented. From this point, the clients’ collective shared all the financial risks, and the liability of each member was proportional to the respective share of ownership. Likewise, all the decisions represented a consensus between all the members of the group. / As soon as the required capital for construction was gathered from members’ funds, the Baugruppe acquired the plot and Zanderroth Architekten proceeded with the construction project.

From this moment onwards, the architects organized monthly group meetings with the members of the Baugruppe both to report about the progress of the project, and to collect participants’ points of view. One-to-one meetings between the architect and each one of the clients also took place during the final stage of the construction project, in order to fine-tune aspects related to the organization of domestic spaces and to define interior coatings, pavements and furniture materials in each apartment. / The construction would take approximately two years, evolving efficiently under architects’ control. By assuming construction management, architects managed to cut time and costs in the process. / Once built, keys were delivered to the house owners. The architects also became residents.

With the development and maturation of this Baugruppe building model, Zanderroth Architekten managed to develop and consistently implement multiple co-housing projects within Berlin’s inner districts for the last ten years.

 

1. Baugruppen and the Self-made City6

Zander and Roth started their practice by elaborating a catalogue of empty plots in Berlin, and found more than 1000. After selecting a few, they researched about their ownership and dedicated to persuade landowners with their ideas for these sites. This pro-active and entrepreneurial attitude earned them their first commission.

Indeed, Berlin is labeled a ‘Self-made city’. Self-initiated projects became a mainstream phenomenon within the last 15 years, providing paradigmatic cases of architecture and urban development, particularly concerning housing.

This singularity is rooted in Berlin’s squatter movements ‘tradition’, born in the 1980’s, when artists and activists broke in, took control and made livable vacant buildings in Kreuzberg neighborhood, after the cancellation of government’s ambitious plans for a new highway that would tear apart that neighborhood.  In 1987, IBA Altbau would tap into the do-it-yourself energy of the squatter movement by fixing these old buildings, then handing them over to their residents as rightful owners. After the fall of the Wall in 1989, social housing (government subsidized, rent-controlled, pre-fabricated concrete housing) made up most of the housing all over Berlin. In turn, the old center of East Berlin was a no-man’s land, with over 25.000 apartments unoccupied. A strong associative and self-made culture developed in the early 1990’s among people occupying these rundown buildings. Self-initiated projects in the form of clandestine bars, clubs, galleries, shops, cultural institutions, meeting and working places were countless. On the other hand, the focus of development in the city after political reunification in 1990 would turn East, and profit-oriented investments focusing the renovation of these buildings had a disruptive impact over these associations. Despite this, between 1984 and 2003, the governmental program Bauliche Selbsthilfe (in English, Self-Help Building) enabled over 300 squatted buildings and self-organized housing projects to be legalized through private self-initiative. Indeed, Berlin’s transformation years were the foundation for do-it-yourself project makers.

In 2002, German’s economic recession took the State to cut funding for housing programs and investors stop building housing. Berlin’s urban fabric was left with numerous empty building sites. These small ‘holes’ presented the very special potential of Berlin and were the catalysts for a new type of development in the inner city7.  

At this stage, affordable living spaces in the city became limited, and the economic pressure on residents and users had risen dramatically. Nevertheless, families wanted to stay in the city and people show interest in owning their apartment; both to ensure a stable cost of living and to dwell in more personalized living spaces. Basing upon this generalized desire, Zanderroth Architekten starts to develop architecture projects themselves, carrying out designs to fill the existing ‘holes’ in the urban fabric.

The formation of Baugruppen (in English, builders group, building collective, client collective) is the framework condition that enables them to substantiate these enterprises. These are the outcome of a specific legal and cultural context, and constitute a condition sine qua non for the necessary generation of usages, clients and funding, which enables the materialization of the architecture project.

Zanderroth initiate their first Baugruppe in 2005, forming a small group of clients with whom they propose to share the responsibility of design. While demonstrating alternative solutions, it is the possibility that architects deploy for people to take charge of determining their own living environment that reveals a valuable resource in urban development, created in the area of tension between freedom and need7.

 

III. Production of desire

The success of Zanderroth Architekten approach is related both with the affordability and the flexibility of their residential units. Middle-class people earning average incomes become able to become homeowners within the inner city. Besides, the opportunity to get individually tailored living space adds inestimable value to the investment of a lifetime.

After understanding that the developers earned a 20% average profit in each project – difference between production costs and sales price – Zander and Roth decided to determine their own framework. According to this building model, there would be no developer to assume the risk and make a profit thereby. Instead, the coordinated design and construction processes enabled them to finance additional spatial qualities through reducing production costs. Cost-effective projects are obtained as there are less people involved, and timesaving decisions are taken along a centralized and optimized construction process. When comparing to the prices provided by real-estate market, the final cost per square meter is far below the market average.

Furthermore, their cunning ploy is also founded on the discovery of less valuable plots, according to real-estate investors’ perspective. The conscious choice for a ‘difficult’ site is one of their trump cards: within a cheaper plot they manage to create assets that add value both to the site, to the new buildings, and ultimately to its surroundings. Architects consider themselves to be responsible, together with their clients, to do a meaningful design for the housing units and the building, but also for the urban space, emphasizing the importance of the interface between public and private.

Through an urban-oriented architectural design that goes beyond investor’s urgency to create built financial assets, Zanderroth put to practice the capability to transform a disadvantage into an advantage. Their first project for RUSC Baugruppe illustrates well this aspect.8 At the north-oriented corner site between Schönholzerstrasse and Ruppiner Strasse, the architects created a public square within private property, completely open to the neighborhood, and the Baugruppe assumed to take care of it for the next one hundred years.The constraint typical of a Berlin block corner, where light doesn’t reach adequately most of its compartments, was faced as an opportunity to enhance the urban character of this intervention, and deployed an ‘untypical’ solution. It resulted in the separation of the program in two buildings, with apartments facing three sides – towards the street, the new square and the backyard. Architects and clients’ collective took on responsibilities that reached beyond their own property and buildings, creating new possibilities in the neighborhood and encouraging interaction with the surrounding urban environment.

Another pillar of this building model is the ‘design deal’ arranged between the architects and their Baugruppen members. Architects state a priori that clients are to keep what would be the profit margin of the developer; in exchange, they demand total freedom for each project’s design, except for the domestic interior spaces, as mentioned before in the case of BigYard.

Concerning the design of the housing units, Zanderroth effort is put into optimizing spatial organization regarding maximum economy and flexibility of space, as well as into interpreting the spatial requirements of a specific target audience. In BigYard project for example, a project thought out to house young families with children and an average income, architects define the spacious kitchen as the living core of the house, with a 4.20 m height that allows it to have visual contact with two floors, and a balcony towards the backyard. On the other hand, housing units are generally provided with smaller areas than the ones delivered by real-estate market, simultaneously allowing for a certain number of adjustments regarding the compartmentalization of the unit – the number of bedrooms for example. Through the design of ‘untypical’ and, nevertheless, smart typologies, architects manage to produce densely occupied projects, thus generating more affordable housing units.

On an urban scale, projects carried out by Baugruppen are gradually growing in size due both to the recent scarcity of small infill plots and to the unification of different collectives with compatible wishes regarding the conceptualization of public space. The challenges featured by these new urban interventions bring an added complexity to Baugruppen processes. Nevertheless, these also reveal new potentials for architects to explore while shaping pieces of the city.9

A project of such scale exposes, first of all, the necessity for admitting other programmatic usages in the project, in order to offer adequate urban living conditions. Finding the mechanisms to integrate infrastructural facilities like supermarkets, schools or day care centers, is one of the challenges with which the architects are currently dealing with. According to the architects, the hypothesis is to call companies or institutions to become part of Baugruppen from the beginning, in order to enable for integrated solutions. This integration may admit, for example, cases of ‘cross-subsidizing’, according to which profit-oriented supermarket chains are brought on board only if contributing for lowering housing unit’s prices.4

Commenting on their recent project in Friedrichshain borough, within a plot with 8.000 m2, the architects identify also their aim to widen the socioeconomic range of people that can afford to join Baugruppen. Leveraging on a more substantial critical mass, they managed to offer a wider range of prices for the apartments by diversifying units’ sizes and relating these with its vertical position in the building – size plus height equals price. This redistribution strategy allowed them to offer penthouses with a price per square meter that is almost the double of the price they offer for other apartments within the same building project. On the other hand, they have also foreseen the option for merging and separating two adjacent apartments, arguing for the evolution of needs of the tenants over the course of their lives, and the possibility for enabling rentals. They conclude: ‘Nevertheless, it would be naïve to believe that, like some kind of Robin Hood for the housing market, we could ever compensate for the major political failures that exist in Berlin due to the complete lack of a socially sustainable housing policy.’4

1. The public role of the architect

While initiators of their own projects for co-housing buildings, Zanderroth Architekten assumes and conciliates multifarious pre-architectural tasks – land procurement, expertise in law, financial modeling, market analysis, marketing, Baugruppen mediation and client care – besides the architecture design proper of a ‘classical’ practice of architecture, as we know it from school. Nonetheless, and despite not revealing an unprecedented building model, both their discourse and designs seem to propose a ‘fresh approach’ within the architecture debate, arguing on the possibility for architects to play a public role.

In fact, there are multiple examples of architecture practices that integrate services and optimize building processes, in order to deliver cheaper turnkey projects. This is usually the case with market-oriented strategies, which have underlying profit margins, and where users are not part of the building ‘equation’.

On the other hand, housing cooperatives are also a pertinent figure for drawing a parallel with Baugruppen. Often created to provide affordable housing, their relevance is much related with the absence in the first place of the mentality of private property ownership, thus avoiding any motivation for real-estate speculation. According to Zander and Roth, reality shows nonetheless that a newly founded cooperative is not as financially powerful as a building group, as it must raise the entire budget for the building project from scratch.4 Moreover, the current European economical context is revealing to be arid ground, since States’ effort gradually abandoned these social mechanisms, instead facilitating the life of housing corporations and stimulating the real-estate market, thought as catalysts for ‘urgent’ economical growth.

On this purpose, it is worth to mention a particular case: the Fideicomiso, a legal framework that resurged in Argentina after national banking crisis in 2001, enabling local architects to initiate their own building models.10 According to this figure, architects and clients sign a kind of fiduciary contract based on trust that allows the architect to take on the risk of a development, using the residents collective assets to buy the land, fund the project and deliver the scheme. Like with Baugruppen, this scheme draws clients to participate along the design process and the final price of the apartments is thought to be 20-30 percent cheaper than on the open market. Yet, and despite having contributed during the last ten years to the revitalization and densification of low-valued neighborhoods across Buenos Aires, Fideicomiso projects have few arguments to produce any significant impact within a broader societal context, given their small scale.

In turn, Zanderroth Architekten building model reveals new faculties that instill added values to the design project. Catalyzing on the strength of Baugruppen – culturally assimilated and legally matured within Berlin’s context –, their practice distinguishes for channeling this ability to deal with the generation of usages, clients and funding, towards the production of a critical intervention in the city. In order to produce an effective impact by reaching beyond plot boundaries, this model either challenges or engages with the societal status quo, ultimately through design. That is what Pre-Architects do: they put forward a social agenda.

Regarding the ‘classical’ architectural practice, the Pre-Architect displays a reaction to the ‘self-amputation’ to which Postmodernism had condemned the professional field of architecture, since the 1960’s and 1970’s. Criticism of technocracy, rationalism, and utopianism led architecture back to its own discipline, this way screening out questions that were to go beyond it, allegedly undermining architecture. The increasing reduction of architectural discourse to questions of form blocked out the question of how architecture could be created in the first place. But the architectonic design can gain relevance only if it answers the question of how it can be created.

The proposal of this new professional figure is to go beyond the narrower field of architecture, i.e. the architect as the exclusive artistic genius serving a private client, and turn to pre-architectural themes, as an inclusive engaged architect that plays a public role. While leading to the re-politicization of the architectural debate – Who builds with which resources and to what end? 3 –, the advent of the Pre-Architect testifies to the democratization of architecture.

In this regard, and against the background of the persistent image of the master-architect, it might reveal pertinent to draw attention to the multifarious relations between the architect and the public on postwar context, as systematized by Avermaete.11 Either the syndicalist – who questioned the social status quo -, the populist – who challenged professional conventions -, the activist – who fought for spatial justice by transgressing the action boundaries of the profession -, or the facilitator – who engaged inhabitants to realize an ambitious project –, they all have intervened within society by dealing with pre-architectural tasks, this way contributing for empowering the people.

In fact, the political load of architecture manifests today once again, this time reacting to the backlash of neo-liberal times and its disruptive effect on the urban condition. Therefore, the Pre-Architect is, once again, called to develop the skills that allow him to engage coherently in the public sphere and in the legitimation of public actions. The Pre-Architect is a public figure.

Being a client in its broad sense “the inception”

Saenz de Oiza, a famous iconoclastic Spanish architect, whose work became prominent in the 1950s and 1960s, used to say that projects are as good as a client can be. Nowadays, when delivering architectural projects it is hard to define what a client is, and more importantly identifying it in complex project structures where a client can have multiple heads. Is the client the one who pays the fee? who will enjoy the project once accomplished? Whether a client has some commercial connotation or not, a client is the point of departure of a project, where all begins, the source of a need that looks forward to turning out into something that has not ever done before.

 

Its expectations in the construction industry

The uniqueness of the construction industry, as opposed to the manufacturing industry whose aim is to provide goods in a serial manner and with controlled risks, is rarely appreciated by clients who seek only for profit, and see architects as adding excessive costs and unnecessary to projects. Nevertheless there are some other clients who invest time in explaining its needs in order to be translated into a vision that facilitates the discussions that will derive into a rich dialog that all architects would look for when doing their work. Both types, despite not the only ones, are valid and legitimate options as long as the expectations are set from the very beginning.

 

Client types, complex structures

There is a range of client types which may be categorised by key characteristics. Some of the categories of client that are likely to be encountered in practice include: public bodies, including local authorities, who are experienced and have a large and wide portfolio; large commercial developers; and large and small companies who build to improve and extend their business and are thus owner occupiers. These different client types will have different needs that must be explored in order to build up a fruitful relationship from which the project can benefit. Although each client is different, very often clients are increasingly adopting a project culture in all aspects of their business, which added to the usual stakeholders surrounding a project, are resulting in high demands and constraints when appointing an architect. This is something that should not be necessarily badly received since working with limits is a challenge rather than a threat in a design process; however, these complex client structures most likely end up in a misalignment of the project goals and a lack of decision making.

During the project life, and within the spectrum mentioned above, clients are mostly linked to stakeholders. These stakeholders range from operators/end users who can actively participate expressing its needs for using the project, to Contractors: who could even become a client in design&build contracts, to Lenders & investors: who expects to obtain a return on the project investment and to Public bodies, whose interest is to bring somewhat value for the community/society. Additionally, it exists the role of client representative. As the name implies, a client representative represents the interests of a client, this set-up is frequently used by those clients who do not have the in-house knowledge to cope with the project, instead they prefer to delegate the management of the project to another professional entity. There are multiple combinations on which these different roles can be played so as to be a client or a stakeholder but irrespective of the term used in a specific project they all fall under the client’s umbrella.

An example would be a Hospital project. In a full public hospital (fig. 1), whose capital expenditure is funded by the public administration, the client is concentrated into one or perhaps 2 entities, whereas a public hospital developed in a PPP (Public Private Partnership) mode (fig. 2), an specific entity called SPV (Special Purpose Vehicle) acquires the financial, technical and operational risks of the Project, and the client embraces several parties.

 

How to maximise the architect relationship with a client, “bridging the gap”?

With this in mind, it is inevitable that architectural practices are continuously empathising with clients, as opposed to the times when Saenz de Oiza realised his work, and are consequently becoming machineries that react and respond to these needs. To do so, they have to be equipped with multidisciplinary teams with a great variety of skills and backgrounds not only to provide enough confident to clients but also to manage the expectations of both, client and architect, and understand scope in that sea of interests that can frequently be found in a project. In the end a successful project can be seen as that which better captures the needs of your client, which regrettably might not be remarkable architecture.

Enrique Peláez (born in Spain) is a Chartered Project Manager Surveyor member of the RICS (Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors). He studied Architecture at the University Camilo José Cela and also graduated as Technical Architect by the Polytechnic University of Madrid. He holds a Master in Project and Construction Management from the ETSAM (Madrid), and a MBA in Real Estate. In the present, Enrique works for Herzog & de Meuron in Basel as project manager and previously has worked as consultant for EC Harris working for clients in numerous international large scale projects.