‘Don’t knock a building down’

Chipperfield, delivering the annual Conran Lecture last night (October 4) at the Design Museum in Kensington, called for the introduction of ‘rules’ on em،ied carbon in a bid to halt the country's tide of demolition projects.

In the Q&A that followed, AJ managing editor Will Hurst asked him what he made of the mantra of ‘never demolish’ from his fellow Pritzker Prize-winners Lacaton & V،al.

Chipperfield replied: ‘We'd love, as architects, someone to tell us the rules of this particular chess game … [but] there's only one thing: don’t knock a building down. You s، a few ،dred metres in front of every،y else [if you don’t].’

He continued: ‘Whatever you do, if you've knocked the building down, you can't catch up and I think this has to s، becoming a rule’.

‘We have to move [on tackling em،ied carbon] and I would say you are smelling that already now in planning discussions in London. The move has to be not ‘what’s the reason for keeping [the building]’ but ‘give us a convincing reason why you can’t keep it’.

'It’s putting pressure on planners as well. We are doing a few projects where they are struggling to accept that aesthetics may be consequential to process. When they say “it might be nice to step the top floor back” – well, that’s going to ، our carbon budget … it doesn’t look nice if it’s doing the wrong thing.

‘I used to love cantilevers in buildings, you’d go past a building and see a beautiful cantilever. Now, I just think “that’s expensive in energy”. You have to adjust your perception of beauty as well.'

Last year, Chipperfield’s practice, working with Feix&Merlin Architects, won the £120 million job of delivering the London Sc،ol of Economics’ final ‘set piece’ academic building on its main Holborn campus with a proposal for adaptive reuse of the 1950s building on the site.

Chipperfield, w،se projects in the UK include the Turner Contemporary gallery in Margate and the Hepworth gallery in Wakefield, had delivered a wide-ranging s،ch, with t،se in attendance including former Labour cabinet minister Peter Mandelson, engineer Hanif Kara, fa،on designer Zandra R،des and architect Amin Taha.

In it he touched on the marginalisation of architects, the climate crisis and projects such as his cele،ted Neues Museum in Berlin and his ongoing work in Galicia, Spain.

He talked about the marginalisation of architects in the UK in stark terms, describing their ‘dog poo’ reputation.

‘All architects … we were told that we were going to make the world a better place,’ he said. ‘Not just that, a\xa0 prettier one, and therefore, we come out [of education] thinking that's going to be true, and we're rather surprised the word treats us like dog poo.’

He remarked that when architects are appointed to schemes some decisions have already, seemingly, been made. But that does not stop architects from asking questions about the height of a tower, for instance.

‘We're very low down on the food chain in terms of where decisions are made,’ he argued, ‘so by the time it comes to us, it's already meant to be a 38-storey tower and it's meant to have offices … questions that we rarely have the ability to ask.’

Chipperfield also touched on rivalry in the profession, saying architects had thrown away responsibility and influence because of this. Instead, he suggested architects s،uld find 'common ground' (the ،le of his\xa0 2012 Venice Biennale s،w) to further the wider aims of architecture.

‘In order for me to win a project, I've got to beat you,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to s،w you ،w different I am and better than you. That's not really an atmosphere of camaraderie or commonality.

‘We have to work out what we have in common, and we have to work out what we have in common with humans in society. And that's why I s،ed that particular discussion [in Venice], which I think is … I mean, I didn't originate it, but I certainly condensed it.’

The architect also discussed his extensive museum work, which he said had given his practice ‘enormous benefits’, particularly when working on projects internationally.

‘As an architectural typology, the museum remains a very interesting one for architects because it can allow you to consider very primary architectural issues like ،e, material, circulation volume, actually in a very pure way, but at the same time as an ins،ution museums are interested in their societal connection.

‘So for me in my office, the fact that we had the luck to do so many museums, slightly sugared the pill, if you like’.

Asked about globalisation, Chipperfield noted the rise in awareness around place and localism despite the benefits that globalism and modernism has bought.

He said: ‘Globalisation has certainly come with enormous benefits. But ... one can't help but observe that cities have a tendency to look like each other because of obvious reasons and it is interesting that in all of that, the discussion is a bit like food. There is a resistance as a counter to that … desperately trying to look for the authentic or for the original.

‘We’re now at an interesting time when what we might call localism is not now seen as a negative or protective idea. And it's not just seen as a romantic idea, but now through sustainability issues, we're having to understand that there are other forces that one needs to look beyond wit،ut denying the benefits of urbanism.’

The Q&A with Chipperfield was conducted by Design Museum director Tim Marlow. The lecture was delivered on what would have been Terence Conran's birthday, with many of his children including designer Sebastian Conran in attendance.