Restoring Reason, Beauty, and Trust in Architecture, Part 3: A Colloquium with Architectural Uprising

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Transcript

0:06

Okay, everybody. Welcome. Hello. We are about to begin. Thank you very much. welcome to tonight's event. My name is Richard Akamakis. I'm a faculty member here at the School of Architecture. it's been a very busy day, I know. and we have especially been looking forward to tonight's, event. this roundtable discussion. on the architectural uprising. I'd also like to say a word for, on behalf of our dean, Stephanos Poliziotis, who unfortunately, regrettably, is unable to attend because he is unwell. But he hopes to join remotely, perhaps once, once we connect by Zoom, he extends his own warm welcome to you all, and of course, to our colleagues, beyond the, the pond who will be, Zooming in. a footnote. If you are, if you wish to acquire AIA or continuing education credit, there is a, there are sign up sheets at the top, on the ground floor outside the theater, so just keep that in mind when you leave. I realize, Tonight is short and brief and we have many interesting speakers we want to engage in questions. This will be an opportunity for some very interesting, questions and answers. So I'm going to essentially pass the mic to my colleague, Lüssenstein, who will tell us more about tonight's event and participants. Okay. Yeah. Thank you, Richard. Thank you all for coming. Yeah. In particular, thanks for people up our way who close to midnight. So really, thanks for the idealism and their courage to attend. So we are very honored and excited to host this roundtable debate on architectural uprising, with such a distinguished group of panelists, which I will introduce very shortly later. This is probably a remarkable premiere. It's really, I think, the first time this movement gets an academic acknowledgement. Thank you very much. Not only in the United States, but I think also Europe, which has never passed the threshold of the academy, which looked down at it, and they always suspect that it's infiltrated with right wing extremists. So this is an increasing, so architectural uprising and rebellion, how it's called, very dramatic names, it's an increasing movement of resistance. And action against the amplification of the build environment. Our panelists will update and discuss in greater death is extraordinary phenomenon. He has a short introduction of our distinguished panel. Joel Gonzalo Batista. He's an architectural draftsman working in postal with Alexander Ga. ga. Alexander GA is one of the four firms in whole Portugal doing classical architecture. So we know how lucky we are here in United States and just seeing the career fair, all this amazing amount of wonderful professions who offer jobs that would do this kind of great work that's in play, that unique and privileged situation, which is not the case in most of European countries. Joao Gonzalez Bautista, he will moderate this debate. And then, we have Michael Diamonds from Sweden. Michael has set up a comprehensive list, geographic location, description of all new traditional architecture in Europe, I think, also everywhere. And a lot of other places too. In other places, wherever he can find them. there's a really good list. Documentation of all the traditional project, which is absolutely fantastic. He did it all by himself. He's working as a bank accountant or something. we have also Noé Morin and unfortunately, Noé Morin, so Nadia cannot attend for family reasons, Noé Morin and Nadia Everart has founded this remarkable association, which is called the Havre Ronde de l'Architecture. And you know what tableau, is a group of knights and they're fighting for a better world, a better built environment. They're offering summer schools, and they also now heading the Prix Philippe Rottier, which is something which is equal to the three house project in Europe. It's a little bit, it's only 40, 000, but it's very important that this year it's dedicated to vernacular architecture. Marjo Jutila, she's from Finland, she's an architect. Victoria Schutz Dobar, she's an architect, she's coming, she's based in London and she's a German French, she's a PhD candidate in what's called now the King's Foundation, that was formerly the Princess Foundation. She also is a collaborator of Mark Winston Jones, who is a famous classical architect in London. Ruben Hansen from the Netherlands, he's an urban sociologist, psychologist, as a trained urban planner. He runs a web and a channel. which is called Aesthetic City. I just should look at that because they're producing podcasts and they are doing very sophisticated work, popularizing and having also a growing impact on the traditional architectural movement. In Europe and elsewhere. Colin Mulhern and Ann Katharine Mulhern, Luxembourg. Colin and Ann Katharine work with, collaborate with Leon Trier, who is also from Luxembourg. And they also, representing a movement in Luxembourg. Luxembourg is a city. It's a place where everything we just snide, everything we just consider historicist gets demolished. So there's a rage for demolition and there's also a rage for creating very bad and ugly modern architecture. And there's a movement which is called Merville and Helen, but that means we want to keep what we have. So we're the same, the few things which are still left from the better, Period here is I hands the microphone over to Joe gon Baptista, who will, run this show and we will ask some questions. So you input is very welcome. And so just really let me, yeah. Help me to welcome Joel and the panelists in this wonderful event. Thank you. Thank you everyone for joining us here and online on the live stream. as Luciana said, I'm right now I'm working as a architectural draftsman at Alexandre Gamelas and Caterina Sanch and we're based in Portugal. but my major is in art history. and before I started doing what I do now, that happened by chance. I worked as a, during a whole year, in the last stained glass workshop in my country. and, it, that kind of unification of the arts is something very, that we were talking just now, very rare, and that we bring back, we should bring back, and that's one of the things. The Uprising, the Architectural Uprising focuses on too, but enough about me. I'm going to just give you a small introduction of what the Architectural Uprising is. Before I hand it over to our guest speakers for their respective presentations. so excuse me just a bit, I'm going to read off the text I wrote. The Architectural Uprising, also known as Architectural Rebellion. is a people's movement that protests against the continued uglification of our cities. The movement disagrees with the blatant disregard from developers, architects, and politicians for the built environment and advocates for beautiful, sustainable, and popular alternatives. the story goes back to 2014. It started as a Swedish, Facebook group. that community now has over 62, 000 members. And over the years, it has grown into various different national and countrywide chapters. for example, you have the whole of Scandinavia. you have other countries like Germany, Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Brazil, there's one in India, there's a U. S. western chapter, and there's also one in Portugal, which I started. I started The movement, which I stumbled upon after watching a video made by Ruben Hansen. He is here with us today in his channel, The Aesthetic City, and I'm guessing that a lot of other creators of their respective chapters was also due to that video. Um, so just before handing over the metaphorical microphone again, just a quick, thing about how does the Architectural Uprising work, spread and grow. it's a much more social media centered, movement. Apart from the Swedish, Denmark, and Finland groups, which they have existed for longer, so they have a more physical and political presence, too, as in media as well. But recently, the Amsterdam chapter also made a media appearance. the way we use social media, is by creating a forum, public space for discussion, sometimes with, controversial topics before and after pictures. war torn countries that suffered a lot of destruction during Second World War, use a lot of those before and after images of once where there were beautiful humane spaces that became complete car centric concrete jungles. although that's a phenomenon that's a lot of mostly associated with America that happens a lot in Europe as well. in my case in Portugal for fortunately we weren't struck by the devastation of a war when we were struck by the devastation of the ri Raza utopianism of modernism. So a lot of good things vanished and, now that our cities continue to grow. They're growing in, in the wrong direction, in an unsustainable direction. I think, we should pass the word to our speakers so they can introduce themselves. And then we follow along to the questions. My name is Mikael Diamant, and as mentioned, I'm the founder of these two social media advocacy groups, New Tradition Architecture and the Swedish Architecture Uprising. I founded these two groups around 10 years ago, and the reason that they are two is because they have a bit different approach. New Traditional Architecture is a project group that shows different projects from all around the world. And by showing these projects, one can discover what is happening in other countries, and we can also discuss the merits of the development, how traditional architecture is developing in different countries. The Uprising Movement, and specifically the Swedish Objective Uprising Movement, it's a local group, or a national group, with a focus on changing public discussion. What we allow ourselves to build and say about the built environment. So the first question that these two groups, try to address is how do you create public interest for our built environment? There is a big interest for our built environment and there have always been. But, for the last decades, the public has been conditioned that there is a rational reason for all the ugliness of the modern world. and by showing positive examples of how we can build, yes, we use, as mentioned, a lot of before and after. How you can create, positive, examples, what we can do with our hands today. we want to create a public demand. And that's where the magic happens, because when the public asks, for more traditional architecture, then suddenly there is opposition. But not from the public, but from the modernist establishment. So then people learn why we are not building beautiful today, and it's about ideology. The second question that these groups address is, how do you go beyond, it should be done? it's very easy to talk about, we should do this and do that. But to go further that, we do as mentioned before, we show already built examples. Because in that way you cut the Gordian knot, because the developers that built this, they didn't build this because of altruism. They built this new development to earn money. Also, about, the talk about craftsmen. Apparently there were craftsmen, because there is a lot of, fine craftsmanship in this building. And finally, one question that's often talked about, modern regulations. this new build that you see here, it fulfills all modern regulations. by doing, showing real build examples, you can surpass all this, discussions about that it's impossible. Because, if it was built, then it was possible to build this. Where are we now and where are we heading? there has been exceptional growth of the uprising movement and we exist now in more than 20 different countries. there are, affiliations now in Latin America and there are two smaller ones in North America and there is also one in Australia and one in New Zealand. Also there is one in India, Israel and Turkey are the latest ones. So more of the same. Because this is a very important mission to teach the public that all the modern, all the ugliness of the modern world has nothing to do with any rational reason other than modernist ideology. So by growing, we also get a lot more media interest. And we are interviewed more about, from Legdermedia. In this case, you can see we were interviewed by Bloomberg this autumn. Where we can, show what we are about. That we are just ordinary citizens that want a beautiful built environment. Or, more or less, we want to have a say about our built environment. Good evening, everyone. Thank you for this invitation. So my name is Noé Morin. I'm vice president of the association La Table Ronde de l'Architecture, which means the Round Table of Architecture, and which is also the Belgian chapter of the INBO network. So in a few words, I'd like to describe the nature of our work and the intellectual and practical trajectory of our association. The Roundtable of Architecture was founded in 2020 by Nadia Ebrard, who can't be there tonight, unfortunately, Architect by Training, and myself. And to put it simply, we founded the association because we were alarmed by the disastrous architecture and urban trends in the city of Brussels, where we both lived. From the 60s onwards, the city of Brussels embarked on a race towards architectural modernism. Public authorities wiped out entire areas of the capital to transform them into business districts or administrative areas to house the European institutions. And they actually continue to do So we founded the Roundtable of Architecture to give residents, alternatives. Our first activity was to produce counterprojects for all the major modernist projects in the city center. it gave residents the opportunity to express an opinion in terms of, architectures, architecture style, building typology. 8, density, mixed used, and so on. And the counter projects were voluntary and had to follow architectural criteria that the residents themselves had defined. So they were, an indisputable success, but, however, we soon realized that they were far from, from enough. For every victory, we had to face 10 defeats. Every time we succeeded in stopping or modifying a project, 10 others were born alongside. So that's why we came to the conclusion that, in order to change architecture, we had to go back to the source. And the source is, of course, architecture education. And, the university. In the vast majority of Belgian universities, the modernist dogma reigns supreme. Students receive only a very superficial knowledge of the history and forms of ancient architecture, which, they are taught as a catalogue of styles. They are taken from the architecture of the Egyptians to that of the Greeks, Etruscans, and Romans, as if they were a set of images with no social, political, religious, or symbolic roots. So it therefore seemed to us that the most useful contribution that we could make to the traditional architecture was to found a counter university. whose mission would be to familiarize young people with traditional forms of architecture, focusing on the historical conditions of their emergence, their practical usefulness, their feasibility given the modern means of production, and the symbolic content that they convey. So to give you a concrete example, we have set up a summer school in Bruges, Belgium. We are studying Gothic architecture because it's the dominant architecture form locally and, but we are not just interested in Flemish Gothic for its unquestionable beauty, but we are trying to understand how this architecture was developed, by whom, according to what geometric processes, using what materials, using what craft techniques, and for what social purpose. We try to put ourselves in the shoes of our ancestors, whose concerns when building were not so different from ours. How much does it cost? Is it solid? Will it last? And will it prove useful? And at the end of the day, traditional architecture is in fact the true functionalist architecture, because it is intelligent, solid, durable, useful, functional, profitable, and carries a symbolism that is known and recognized by all. On the other hand, modernist architecture is, in trying to go against the canons of traditional beauty, it actually falls into an exclusively aesthetic approach. And finally, on the next you'll see some images of the articles that we regularly publish, mostly in French, but also in English, on architecture, city planning, and crafts, which you can read on our website. This research and writing activity takes up a growing proportion of our time, And it is set to increase still further in the future. I think it's important to constantly question the assumptions on which our opinions are based to refine our arguments, to clarify our criticisms and to deepen our knowledge of history. Thank you for your attention. Thank you, Noi. Next we have Madju. Yes. Good evening, everybody. I just look at the watch and it's almost midnight in Finland where I'm based, so I'm happy to be joining this very esteemed panel. Meeting and I truly appreciate this opportunity for us to join forces with, Notre Dame University and the architectural uprising community, because I think that we definitely have aligned objectives. We have so much to, to win together. my background is, not in architecture, but in directing international networks, international strategic networks. But in 2015, right after Michael Diamant had founded the uprising group in Sweden, I came across his Marvelous work and was so impressed that, we decided that there needs to be a sibling group also in Finland. So that, that's what happened in, in 2015. And, I've enjoyed every day working for a better, more beautiful, built environment in Finland and also internationally. But starting with the architectural uprising, as an, as a Facebook group, it gave an opportunity to look into all the research, that has been done for quite a while on what kind of surroundings, what kind of, built environments, have an effect on us as human beings and what kind of environments, have positive effects and what kind of, environments have negative effects. And the, the evidence is so clear that there is no other way than move forward with the path that we're on. so I was also invited to be the, become the founder of IntBau activities in Finland in 2018. So for those of you who might not know, it's the international network for traditional building architecture and urbanism. So if you are not familiar with Intpau, please join because absolutely it's for you guys. on the path, there, became a chance to become an author. about a year ago, we published, with a couple of other Finnish, enthusiasts. research from different fields. We published this book. It's unfortunately only in Finnish, but it's, it translates as, towards a more beautiful city. And that's something that I've been, giving lectures now for the past year. And of course. all the surveys say that, the majority of people, irrespective of gender, age, education, political views, the majority of us all prefer the kind of architecture, the kind of built environment that is urbanized. Typical of our traditional architecture, traditional classical, urbanism. And this is just one example we have been doing in the, architectural uprising groups we have been doing in different countries. These, counter or alternative proposals, for ugly techsmanship and generations and so on. Ugly buildings or ugly renderings. And this is just one recent example from a quite big city in Finland called Tampere. As you can imagine, the picture or the rendering on the right is the one that was proposed by the, building company and it is being built right now. And the one on the left is the counter proposal of an architect member of the Architectural Uprising Group in Finland and the local newspaper made a poll, an opinion poll, among their readers. Asking which one would they prefer, and almost 100 percent of the readers of the local newspaper would prefer the other option, the one that was based on more classical, more traditional facade elements. So my question is, when the large majority is preferring something else than what's being built, We need to change this. On my path, I also realized that, the cities or municipalities have the monopoly for land use and planning. I became also active in the politics. And I'm currently, the elected, one of the elected members of, of the city council of my hometown called Carina in Finland, and also the chair of the Urban Development Committee. And, it is, it is quite, an easy task to discuss the better, built environments with politicians. Irrespective of their political views, because this is something, this is a theme that is common to all, common to everyone, irrespective of the political views. So these renderings are the plans that we now have in Kaarina. What kind of new, area we are planning. And you might see some references to, one of the famous Finnish, architects called Eliel Saarinen. So that's the path that we are trying to achieve here in Kaarina, at least. I truly hope. so anyone who's listening now, please connect, in LinkedIn or in any other, any other way. Hello, everyone. I'm very happy to be here as well. And thanks for the others already who did their presentations. Ah, there are my slides. So this is a little bit skipping ahead. So I'm going to just introduce myself. I'm, my name is Victoria Schuster Bahnd. I'm Working as an architect, in England, but also doing a PhD on the sublime and architecture. And, so I'm working for Port au Prince Architecture in London with Mike Wilson Jones, as Lucia mentioned, and the PhD is at the King's Foundation in London. And apart from that, I'm also working for the Traditional Architecture Group in London, which is the, British, chapter of INPA. So INPA was mentioned before as well. So we're all connected still in that we are not a part, a member of the uprising itself, but in a way I am because it's all a little bit the same thing, I suppose. yeah, so then this is about my PhD. This is taken from my PhD and it's a part of the project. So my PhD is about, as I said, about the sublime and classical architecture and I'm looking at the sublime in philosophy, so for those of you who don't know it very well, the concept is, it's not very nice, sublime in that sense, but in philosophy it was used as a, a concept or an idea for, to express something that is astonishing, a little bit breathtaking, awesome, and, but also intriguing, a little bit, maybe a little bit, terror, terrorizing in some respects, not always. And so there was lots of philosophy written about it. Some of the first started in antiquity and, that first author Longinus just talked about the sublime as something, featured in the, in, in the writings of Homer and, Ulysses. And so he, yeah, basically for him, it's not so much connected to fear, but more to big ideas and epic ideas and things like that. And then we move forward to other philosophers like Edmund Burke and those who, Edberg is most well known for the sublime as well to write about who wrote about this and in a, in con in the context with aesthetics. And, there he writes that it's most connected to power and terror. So this project here features maybe reflects, his idea of sublime the best. So this is a project that's all speculative and experimental, but it shows like a lightning str, lightning harvesting structure. meant to be in Paris, and it's all very polemic and over the top, but basically a project that would be so It's so threatening that would literally harvest lightning and then inside you would see it and it would power a big light that would get so hot that there would be steam rising up and I'll spare you the details but it's one of those projects and basically for every philosopher that I'm investigating, I'm, I'm doing one architectural proposal and ultimately I'll see you later. Those findings that, I collect during the PhD and during my travels as well, will be compiled in an architectural manual and that manual, the idea is that manual can be then shared amongst, architects of the movement and also other general classical architects and anyone who's interested in more beauty and sublime, derived ideas and philosophy and architecture. That's it for me, thank you for that. Thank you, Victoria. Next, we have Ruben Hansen. Let me unmute myself. Yeah, thank you so much. I'm Ruben, and, yeah, I founded The Aesthetic City. And I will give a little bit of an oversight of, first of all, what I'm doing, but also my current thoughts about where we are with the architectural uprising, how The Aesthetic City is, Kind of cooperating and also influencing and yeah, place within that, that kind of movement and also kind of a meta view about what is happening, in, in, on a larger scale of things. So a very short introduction, 32 years, yeah, studying, or actually 33 years, sorry, year passed by, studied urban planning at the University of Amsterdam and went to Delft for, urbanism. yeah, then through kind of an interesting way, I ended up starting The Aesthetic City, after, yeah, but yeah, not really liking what I learned at Delft University of Technology. but now really, Yeah, doing what I really like, and that's making these videos. The channel, some of you might know already, which has been growing really rapidly, with videos about, the last one is about Boundary, I believe. What I wanted to talk about is, that we are now in a period of time where there is a huge opportunity, and that is that, we have social media, we have internet, and for the first time in history, perhaps, we can, get around the gatekeeping, Institutions that were there before, just imagine, how do you reach 100, 000 people in the year 1970? You need to buy TV ads or newspaper ads or billboards. And now you can literally have viral posts on Instagram, like a reel or a video on YouTube and reach millions. So that's an incredible, opportunity, Yeah, of course it can be used for good and bad, but still. so yeah, and I feel that the status quo in architecture was defended simply by just sustaining practices like, on universities like sustaining the same curriculum, sustaining always the same, having always the same stories in architectural magazines. Yeah, and now in the year 2024, already much earlier, the gates are wide open for new information to reach a wide audience. and that is also, I think, the reason why the Architecture Uprising has done so well, because finally, all, yeah, our ideas have been able to find a new audience. With all this new information, we can open the eyes of so many people, to the rationality and really the quality of these ideas. and this leads to a lot of people having first time realizations, which are very strong. I was in the same boat I went through a process to realize, Hey, I'm not crazy, I'm not alone. Building beautifully is still possible and wished for, and, building ugly is actually a choice. And that's, and especially that last one, that building ugly is a choice, can really enrage a lot of people if they discover, hey, this is not, it's an option to build beautifully. And of course, people said, then you're just brainwashing. no, because I believe that, in an even playing field, and that is, yeah, that's what's happened now with internet. the playing field has been evened. the ideas with the most merit will win. Purely looking for a rational, Point of view. and looking at traditional architecture, most of these principles are based on sound logic. They're pro human, they're sustainable, they're pragmatic. People love them and we can prove that. yeah, they will win in the, in these race of, this race of ideas. And simply showing the facts is convincing. It's not brainwashing. I think it's brainwashing when it's, convincing people of things based on ideology and things that might not be true. I believe we have, there's an uneven battle in this social media landscape and it's in our favor because anyone who defends something that is not popular with a white public with 80 percent of the population based on ideology instead of on facts, this person or institute or whatever is not going to have a lot of support, simply said so, but still, we're not there yet, we have to burn off proof. We need to. Get people on board and show and prove that we can build more beautifully how we can do that. So yeah, and that's where I think also my platform comes in, comes in a bit. Because I see my role as, presenting these little known projects. for us, they might be known, but for other people they will definitely not be. like Somme, which is a nice little place with a very inspiring story which can really open people's eyes, but also thoughts and facts like myths about traditional architecture or certain materials or calling out fallacies. Yeah, an example is natural stone, where, which has a lot of misconceptions about this material. maybe we can, straighten these out, but there's countless of other ideas. Another one is that I can inspire action with this wide audience. for example, the uprising video was a strategically planned video to show people what was happening in Sweden and Norway, and to show, Hey, you can do this too, and it's what happened. So I think that's, that's a good use of such a wide audience. And then a second example is perhaps doing the same with art, with education. Going to, I'm planning on going to Notre Dame, coming May from May 2nd to till May 6th to, meet people at the faculty, perhaps interview students to show the world, hey guys, If you're a student, and you're frustrated and you're alone, please don't feel alone, because you are not alone, and you're also not crazy, and there are places where people are teaching this, and maybe your university could change too. and I think that will be a very powerful message, and a lot of students might, you yeah, might, might think, Hey, I can do something with that. So I think that's a very powerful thing, which I can do with this platform. What the general idea is that, my videos are yeah, Reasons or kind of arguments settled in a video. So every, if you have a dispute with someone and you have, someone says, but we can't build with brick. I don't know, brick or stone or this or that, or it's too expensive. Or it's not of our time. then there's a video on my channel, which you can just show where we just go in depth in this thing and it will be harder for them to keep it. Yeah. They'll have to move to goalposts again until there's no. goalpost moving to be done anymore. So that's the idea. so yeah, basically to support the grassroots movements like the architectural uprising, because everybody will have to go through these discussions at some point. And then it's good to have all the groundwork laid for you. Of course we need to double down on the humaneness of this whole undertaking because it's for everyone, it's bipartisan, I want white support because it's for everyone. It's, I want, yeah, people to thrive. And if that's not a good thing, then I don't know what is. of course, double down on good evidence, make sure everything is well reasoned and create evergreen content that can be kept reusing. And I hope with that someday, we might hit to, perhaps 1 million subscribers, that would be really awesome. So thank you. hope, this has been somewhat educational for you. Thank you so much, Ruben. next up we would have Colum and Anne Catherine, but I don't think they're here with us. so I think we can leave this beautiful image. up here before they, they switch up to our guest speakers, on Zoom. this next segment is a round table. So I guess we can each ask a question. Hello everyone. Firstly, I would like to thank the University of Notre Dame for inviting us to take part in this roundtable event. I think our contribution to this should be that of a traditional practitioner who has managed to build exclusively traditional and classical buildings for the last 35 years. It's always a pleasure to share the little knowledge and experience that I have with students and younger architects, in the hope that it might be of some use to them. I came to Luxembourg in 1984 after finishing my studies at Queen's University in Belfast, and then at the Thames Polytechnic in London. Although my real education only began when I started working for architects Herman and Valentini. in Luxembourg. After a couple of years then I started my own practice along with Lucien Steyl in 1989. Aunt Catherine here joined me in early 2019 after a period when she was forced to work in modernist offices and that after an equally torturous and modernist education at the University of Ulster in Belfast. We also had the immense privilege of working closely with Leon Kreer, me, for nearly 35 years on Kathleen. Since 2019, the finding of the architecture of uprising probably represents one of the most important events to have taken PLA place in the architectural scene since the CM Cruise. We're a handful of self interested individuals decided to impose architectural modernism on the citizens of the world. It's important because it has taken almost a century, and after a century, citizens have decided to stand up and show their disapproval for what has been imposed on them by an elitist profession that isn't concerned with citizens interests or needs. The architectural uprising is not only demanding that architects do better, but they're also showing what's possible. By publishing examples of good transformations and new build to show everyone that there is a real alternative to ugliness out there. A few years back, I read in an American study that only 4 percent of demolitions are due to structural problems. That means that 96 percent of demolition, demolitions, could have been restoration or transformation projects. The main reason for demolition today are. Firstly, if it's possible to build a larger volume on a site with an existing building on it, if the bottom line on an Excel spreadsheet shows any degree of profit, the existing building is condemned, regardless of its cultural or aesthetic value. And secondly, if the building has gone out of fashion or fallen into disrepair, the original choice of architectural style and of materials are therefore the problem. If the use of Portland cement and modernist architecture only became widespread in the 1930s, I think they are both responsible for the short lifespans of buildings since then. The present generations of architectural students know that they cannot have the luxury of demolishing and rebuilding every 20 or 30 years. As we have been doing for decades now, they must know that we must really start building for the future. And I don't mean building what architects today see as being the future they imagine. buildings that will be standing a hundred years from now. And that must mean learning the lessons from those buildings that have already lasted for many decades. And even for centuries. When a hundred or so years ago modernists decided to reject the past, they expunged all traditional architectural elements from their work, thinking that they were merely ornamentation. For some strange reason, the first thing they eliminated was the roof. But in their ignorance, they were sure that everything they would build with the new materials and machinery at their fingertips would be superior to anything that their predecessors had built in the past. In their arrogance, they didn't realize that much of what they were discarding were actually technological elements that were there to protect the building's envelopes. Classical and traditional architects are not merely beautiful architectural styles. If they're beautiful, it's because over the centuries, talented architects, sorry, talented artists and craftsmen improved them to make them beautiful. Traditional classical architecture are the expressions of technological solutions developed over centuries by our predecessors to provide shelter from local climates. using local materials. Craftsmen copied and improved on each other's work, establishing a lasting building tradition which provided every region in the world with its own local architectural heritage. If we know that we will have to build buildings that last for generations. You might think that there will be less work for architects in the future, but as the architectural uprising has shown in many of its posts, there are so much of our built environment that needs to be corrected, transformed into desirable buildings that will make beautiful settlements for everyone to live in. Also, the preservation and repair of our existing heritage requires full knowledge of traditional architectural styles and materials. It should be every architect's responsibility to learn his own local vernacular and the techniques and materials needed to build and repair. Over the last hundred years, so much of our heritage has been disfigured or demolished altogether. And believe me, the job of putting things right is a passionate one. Here are a few examples of buildings on which we have worked, just to show what can be done. The artist who bought this house from his aunt asked us to transform and extend it for his own use.. As it was not possible to add a volume in this UNESCO protected valley, we buried his new workshop in the upper garden and opened it Into the living level. The building had been destroyed during the 20th century by successive modifications. So all we could do was keep the four outer walls and start from scratch, using natural, local materials. Many restorations are carried out using the wrong materials, including modern details or modern elements which are added. And very often this can lead to the destruction of the building sometime later in the future. Lawyer who owned this house asked us to improve the exterior as he thought without being able to put his finger on it that something was not right. You can see the different degrees of improvements we suggested in the red on the drawing to the right. Left is the existing and the right, the, the, changes we proposed to make. he asked us to do all of, to do all of it. Now you have the existing. And what we did with it in the end. The existing wasn't bad, but he knew there was something that could be better. And we gave him different degrees of improvements. Firstly, just adding wooden strips in the windows, if you look at the windows. Thank you for your presentation, but we need to wrap it up to pass to Q& A. thank you very much for your attention. Thank you. So the first question where I left off is the popularity of the architectural uprising and its various chapters, as well as the increased interest in traditional and classical architecture. Although this has been taking place for a while, why do you think numerous academics and governing bodies continue to ignore this phenomenon? Whichever of you would like to start. it's simply they're ignoring it because they try to kill it by ignoring it. So they will ignore it until they cannot. They don't want to have this debate because if they have this debate, they will lose. So that's why you can only debate them if they are forced to the debate table. So that's why they are ignoring it. That's, why they continue to pretend, even here in Sweden where we have been very successful to pretend that it doesn't exist. Because if they acknowledge that it exists, they have to debate it, and they don't want to. I'd like to continue. This is a very important and interesting question. And also, I've come across many times in the discussions with architects. with modernist architects that, they don't want and they don't have this tradition of discussing their work or discussing architecture with laymen, with non architects. So it's like a profession with, with the best understanding of best architecture and that's the profession's own. It doesn't concern anyone else in the minds of the profession. So I think that's something that we have as Architectural Uprising, as a people's movement, as a grassroots, bottom up movement, we have tried and also to some extent already, been able to break this, this, how would I say, this kind of arrogance from the architectural profession. And I think this is going to a better direction now with the opening of the discussion that the built environments belongs to us all, not only to the profession. Yes, if you don't mind, just in terms of, how our message has been perceived, we've had quite good reception actually, in the, in, in the media and also in the political spheres, which, tend to, have a good interest for architecture and urban topics and are quite, willing to, to listen to, the traditional side. the main issue we've had is, it really comes from, the architecture institutions, namely the order of the architects and the university, with several attempts at, at new censorship, and with no possibility of discussing anything with them, and we've come to realize that actually the. The reason why the, university is, so reluctant to, to discuss those, issues and, and to open, its doors to, more traditional views. is that the modernist from, from today, they are very different actually from the fathers of the modern movement who were, highly competent beings, architects, able to do both. Traditional and modern architecture, whereas now you have architects and teachers mostly who, in most Belgian universities who actually, don't master the crafts, the rules, the job, and therefore they are, doing modernism, by default. By lack of being able to do anything else. So that's really, I think, the reason why this debate is so sensitive, now at, at university. thank you. If anyone else would like to add, I think the next question would be. So the question, so I'm asking, how is the picture up? oh, hello. Oh, sorry. Yeah. yeah, so I was, it's easier to get the consensus in opposition than in bringing counter project. I assume that's the type of all that doing a lot of counter project and they have been a lot of impact. But I know it is My question is, how is the consensus created? Because you can have a consensus in opposing, but do you get the same easy consensus when you come with a vision where they have so many different views and likes and dislikes? And how do we avoid the lower common belonging? How do we avoid that, the counter proposal of the petitioner who's not going to become a major, a geopolitical problem like this? I don't know if, before I guess Scott, the question, but, if they can hear me, if they can hear me, so I'll resume. let's just ask. was a couple of questions. generally, so how do we avoid a lower common denominator? So how do we demand more quality, but simultaneously reaching a consensus within a wider audience, architects, politicians, Yes, Mikael. Yeah, there is already a wide consensus what is beautiful. most people that hasn't gone to university has no problem telling what is beautiful and what is ugly. You have to study at university for four or five years and then you become a relativist and can't tell what is beautiful and what is ugly. So there is already a consensus, and every poll that has been made about it shows it, that there is a very broad consensus what we find beautiful and what we find ugly. It's not that complicated. just by showing simple examples. have for every competition that there is, show three, for every competition, have at least 50 percent traditional proposals and 50 percent modernist proposals, and let there be some kind of general, pollster, which, what do people prefer? What do people prefer? And then you'll see that there is always a very resounding majority that prefer the traditional example. I'd like to add to that, that, yeah, first of all, that's a really good point, which, which, which, Michael makes, but also as long as we start having, discussions about beauty again and take the whole concept of beauty, for example, and what is popular and what is loved by, yeah, what is popular by a wide part of the population. As soon as we start having those discussions, we are already there because now those discussions aren't even held, I feel. it's not happening in universities. Nobody's talking about beauty. Nobody dares to even touch the word, touch the concept. and I think that's, if we can accept that, then, we might not yet, agree on what is beautiful. And, but at least the discussion is there. And that's the most important thing. Yeah, I couldn't agree more with that. I think one of the biggest problem is, I also write about this in my PhD, is this subjectivity of beauty. So because everyone knows that the first beauty is in the eye of the beholder, therefore it seems almost like universities think it's subjective and therefore We will just not address it at all, so even if it was subjective, which is to debate as well, but even if it was subjective, to cut it out completely is It seems quite insane and the same applies to the sublime in a way that I make a point in my PhD in one of the chapters where I say, where I found out that it sounds, there was a big hype around beauty and the sublime, the same. Oh, they're along almost the same thing. They have two familiar concepts. So I'm just going to talk about beauty as if it was the sublime in this case. So around their enlightenment, it was a big buzzword and, and beauty and the sublime were constantly, in the. back then media. So a lot of people were talking about them philosophers, artists, and the like. and then there was a decline in that. and in the recent years, especially, nearly the last maybe 50, 100 years or so, no one talks about the sublime and Very few people talk about beauty. And, I think it's partly because, they both glided into this sort of, subjective, but also difficult to quantify, area. And because university, universal, studies at university are so much about things you can prove and things you can back up with facts and you can reference and so on. You always have to reference everything. And so it's very difficult to then. back it up scientifically. I think we're very obsessed with science and in things that are not Measured by mathematics or science or so, and we can start to now look at beauty again with neuro sense and things like that with science. But maybe that's not even necessary. But all I'm trying to say is I think because we can't quantify it in recent years, we just try to omit it altogether and act acted like it. It's not even there. and as Reuben says, as long as we talk about it, that's already a huge step in the right direction. I think next question. Richard, is here. Yeah, I'm happy to jump in. I actually, when I sat down with my, co panelists, we had a, an agreed set of questions, which I think you have answered this question with me. The degree to which, attempts, by political movements to hijack, the architectural uprising, have occurred. but perhaps we can get to that, but I wanted, since you're talking about beauty, I wanted to throw something out, you can take advantage of this, very interesting discussion. one of the things that's constantly said Those of us who believe in beauty and architecture by architects who are modernistically inclined, is that you must define beauty, you must define ugliness, and if you don't define it, as, as Victoria said, it's, it's subjective. We know that. It's elusive. so the question to all of you is whether you think there is a writing, whether there is, somewhere you can look to and point to the closest possible definition for architectural beauty. I'm going to simply say that, there's the fascinating discussion by Dimitri Porphyrios in his, in his book, Classical Architecture, where he talks about beauty as being, closely related to truth. What's true in something is what leads us to think of it as beautiful, right? And he points back to ancient texts, he says, a beautiful, the beautiful shield of Athena, right? I would make a terrible garbage, can't believe it. being the ugliest lid, but it's beautiful as a shield, that sort of thing. and what's true in architecture is the expression of tectonics. It's the expression of construction. And so we recognize a building as being beautiful because we recognize That it is being true to itself, it is being true to what it is meant to do. So I wanted to throw that out perhaps as another question, whether you think that's something that we could continue to, pursue, or something that you've given some thought to. I'm just going to add in because this is, that's a very interesting set of questions that would be a debate on its own. As we were running out of time, I would just ask for our guest speakers to do a quick fire on what you asked before we go to, so we still have time for the audience to do a small Q& A. Go right ahead Colin. you can quantify beauty and write books about it, but the appreciation of beauty is instant. It's in an instant when you look at something, it's either beautiful or it's not beautiful, whether it be a flower or a human being or a building. Of course, in order to produce beautiful buildings, you need to be able to quantify what it is that you've produced. Find beautiful about it, so that you can reproduce the, maybe the details, the proportions, the tectonics and that of it. But, the actual appreciation of beauty is instant. The problem with, when you're debating beauty is, anyone who is a great commander of language can convince people that something that isn't beautiful is beautiful. Beauty, beautiful is, is beautiful and, in architectural schools in any way, the school that I studied in, we spend most of our time trying to justify our projects, justify the things that we have done. So we're, the architects are well trained at being able to pass off the, the unacceptable as being acceptable. if I just, if I may add something to, to the discussion is, that we, as part of our teaching, at la we, we do not, I, I mean we are no authority to, to declare what is, beautiful to teach, what is beautiful to the students. And, I don't think it would be very convincing, on our part to, to proceed in that way. rather what we try to, teach them is that, traditional styles, mostly they were, actually not intended to be beautiful. They, Flemish Gothic architecture was not, mainly intended at being beautiful. it was, based on very practical considerations, such as what is, Local materials, what is abundant locally. how can I, implement it? How can I manage with the local bricks to, to do an arc? and, and it also, of course, pursued a symbolic, very deep symbolic value. The Gothic was born out of the will, to bring light into, into, churches because light was seen as a metaphor of God. And I don't think the way to proceed is The way to proceed, I think, with students is mostly to teach them how the ancients thought and they will make up their own mind and Pick up what's of interest to them, rather than just imposing on them, sorry for the cut, imposing an ideal of beauty, on them. Yes, and I'd like to add a few, thoughts as well to all this, formulated and very good ideas. I think that. Michael said that, for normal people, beauty is not a complicated subject. Beauty is in our every day, and it makes us happy. It's very much connected with the happiness in our hearts as human beings. And, I find it really, difficult sometimes to understand the theoretical Concepts of, and theoretical ponderings of what is beautiful and, and how to define it, because it's, it belongs to the human, human, life. it's essential to humans. It doesn't have to be very theoretical, although theoretical is sometimes interesting. But something that we consider beautiful, it brings happiness to us. And something that we consider ugly, creates negative emotions. So that's basically how to define it in plain terms. but also, in for many decades, it seems that, Beauty has not been an objective in architectural design. So I think that just to bring beauty back to the back to as one of the objectives of the architectural design would help a little bit. And also, this consideration that We should require from new, new proposals or architectural, competitions, we should require perhaps, renderings, both in, Modernistic languages, modernistic based traditional, modernistic based languages, and traditional architectural languages. Maybe that would make it an even competition, because currently when we see architectural competitions, you might have 400 proposals, but they all come from the modernistic language, so you don't actually have a choice then. Thank you. Can I just say something? I normally it should be the audience now, but I just wanted to say, I often like to ask people, do you need to define peace to understand what peace is? And do you need to define love to understand what love is? And these are like given things which everybody understands without any data, without any scientific research. And I beauty has, Which has been mentioned, beauty has been instrumentalized just to eliminate beauty. the theory of beauty has been really created to evacuate it out of the aesthetic debate. Yes, in a way, in a post industrial time, everything that can be serialized or accounted for doesn't exist. I think, if you can, another one minute, say what you were going to say. I think it was already covered by Lucien and also by Mario. I completely agree. it's, some things are so obvious and natural that why should there be any explanation for them? And that's also, that's a big problem in universities mostly. And that's also what I really am annoyed with and hope to address. With, yeah, with topics, videos, that sort of stuff. That's it. Thank you. so does anyone in the audience, we have one in through Zoom, so I think if anyone in the audience would like to, so we'll just do the one on Zoom. Yeah. The question is, especially politicians trying to get it again. so the question on Zoom, and I think you can see, is how is the Architectural Uprising dealing with certain groups, be it right leaning, left leaning, trying to hijack the movement for their benefit? Ruben, you can go ahead. Okay. I think, just one aspect for personally, I just think, for what I'm doing, for example, it's just focusing it on, goals that everybody should be able to agree with, for everybody to flourish, for everybody to be healthy, and leave happy lives. And in that really focus on language as well. yeah, I don't know. it's. It gets hard when you talk about traditional architecture because the word tradition is loaded in a way, but for me it's about the principles. underneath that tradition and not in the way that people see tradition like, oh, doing something in an age old way. No, just, looking at the principles that have worked, time tested principles. So really make sure the language is, that everybody can find themselves in the language. But for the other, yeah, for the other parts, of course, there's always the risk that people will. people can share my videos, for example, and say Hey, we support this and we are a right wing party. I can't really do anything about that, but yeah, it's a good question. I think if they want to do that, but if, as long as I, stay neutral myself and I try to, show and do show. I hope that this is for everyone and not just for some select group or anything. Then I think, that's the furthest I can go myself. I hope that kind of makes sense. as a moderator, I'm not sure I'm supposed to do this, but, I'm going to intervene on this question because, I, as I created the uprising in Portugal, and I managed it to, to this day, and, we already have 8, 000 members on the Facebook group and close to 1, 000 on the Instagram page. and we never had to deal with political, topics, although architecture is always political, especially as more public the building is, it always has that weight, but this was never an issue because we, in the architectural chapters, have always agreed to remain neutral about it. unless it's a highly detrimental thing to the general public. you can go ahead, Mikael. the important thing is to always stress that we are bipartisan and that we represent a building tradition, not individual styles. Individual styles can have political leanings, but not the tradition itself. So by always stressing bipartisanship, And you win. And this is, something that is always used in the debate. They always try to label these movements as far right. And I think it's not a coincidence that many in the leadership, of these uprising movements have immigrant background, because it's harder to label as far right than Nazi. In my case, I have to bring up my dead relatives all the time. On my mother's side, I'm Polish Jewish. yes. It's not that we are hijacked, we are labeled far right more than we are hijacked by the far right. And so we have to stress, we have to bring up, show that We are a political, we are for a building tradition, not for individual styles. We have one member in the audience. Thank you. Hello Richard. And I'm Barney from Los Angeles. I'm, I work in your Dean's office. First of all, wonderful discussion and nothing I can disagree with in general, but just a question from my education curiosity. As someone who was born in a much poorer part of the world, And since this discussion has touched upon the fact that this is not a provincial uprising, but a global concern, which I thought was very wonderful and good, I wonder if all of you could touch upon the issue of the relationship of beauty and circumstance, because not all societies are equal. are going through the same circumstances as which often leads to misconceptions and, wrong framing. For example, I'll give two examples very quickly. Tokyo is a city I know very well. Most people who go to Tokyo think it's horrendous because it doesn't, it completely lacks the clarity of urban form as a Beaux Arts city would have. But Tokyo has been built over and over again because it is destroyed again and again. Tokyo is a city built out of desperation. You go to the global south, there are crippling issues of urban poverty. So just to cite these as examples, I wonder if in this discussion you could touch upon how you see the process and the products of beauty in relation to critical circumstances. That would be a question for our guests, the speakers. Did you hear the question? Was it clear to you? Mikael, you can start and then we can move on to Ruben. Yeah, I understand the question, building beautiful and traditionally is the sustainable way, because what is happening now is that you build very unsustainable cities all over the developing world. It's also about, the view of modernity. In much of the Global South. They have been sold that vision that their traditional techniques are backwards and have building these glass towers is a sign of progress. So it's also about, selling the idea that your traditional techniques are worth something. The traditional buildings are worth something. They are solutions to your future problems. So it's also like an image problem. Many people, in the, in Global South, they don't want. their traditional buildings. They don't want traditional craftsmanship. They want plastic. They want glass and steel because it's a sign of progress. Much like we were in, in the Western world in the 1960s, when we rejected our traditions in favor of concrete towers, and viewed all these horrible suburbs, as some kind of, sign of progress. We realize now that this was a mistake, but in the Global South they are still in this stage where they are, trying to understand, what progress is and what it means. And they have been sold the lie that progress means rejecting your tradition and building glass towers. so it's very hard to sell to them, building traditional and building beautiful. Yeah, I'd like to add to that, also from a practical point of view, building traditionally, especially in places where, there is an ample, yeah, there's ample resources to build with local materials, but, those, Yeah, those construction, the construction methods of building traditionally have been supplanted by modern Western imported building practices with concrete frames and, yeah, reinforced concrete. maybe literally there is stone on the site, which can literally build a building with, I'm following someone on, on Twitter or X. I think he's from, from, not from Lebanon, from Jordan and he builds. locally with local stone, literally the stone that he finds on site. and then you have, of course, Hassan Fatih from Egypt, who did the same kind of thinking work. Like, how can we empower local, yeah, people to build with local materials. and to, yeah, with an architecture that goes along with that. That is actually at least the buildings that are more climate adapted, to, to their area. I think it goes perfectly hand in hand, even from a practical sense, but yeah, like Michael said, they have been sold the idea of what progress looks like. Yes, and I absolutely agree with previous speakers and I'd like to point out, for instance, within the IntBau, organization, IntBau is, is working in about 40 countries and one of them is, for instance, Bangladesh. And in Bangladesh, the leading figure in Intpaw Bangladesh is called Yasmin Lari and she is the first female architect in Bangladesh. She has background in fabulous modernistic architecture and she has found that is a dead end. There is no future in, continuing, to design these, elitistic, she calls it elitistic, modernist buildings in Bangladesh, and she's doing great job now with the local communities to, to, help them, Revive the traditional architectural, building practices and so on. So if you're not familiar with Intbau and let's say Jasmin Lari in Bangladesh, then you might want to look her up. Thank you. And if I may add on the previous question, if you, if you compare the reconstruction, the post war reconstruction, made in most Belgian cities and Northern French cities after the first world war, most reconstructions were at, at an identical state, reproducing exactly what was there before. Whereas, a few decades later after the second World War reconstructions were the occasion for modernist architects to, to play with new forms and, what we know. So in between, I think that a mindset had changed. the circumstances were closely related. Mo mostly the same, but the mind had changed. And, that's why I wouldn't draw a direct connection between the type of architecture and the social or economical circumstances. We've been, as, Nadia Ebra, the president of La Table Ronde is a Tunisian national. We've been to, Tunisia quite often meeting the local authorities there. And, and actually we've observed that, the fact that they have, less means, financial means, and, that the construction market is less standardized and integrated than in Europe, makes it easier for them to, to make traditional architecture at a cheaper price. since, a large part of the population is doing self development. How do you say, auto construction, self construction, they are, participating to the construction site. And they are therefore much more close to the result, the built result, which makes it actually easier to make traditional architecture. And even though circumstances there would seem less favorable. Yes, as I said earlier, the, the way. The widespread use of Portland cement and, the modern architecture go hand in hand. They both became widespread around the same time, towards the end of the 1930s. And, I think that they're both responsible for the fact that buildings don't last anymore. The traditional architecture is an expression of traditional methods. What has the response been like, within the academies, in your respective countries? Have you been able to connect with, current students? And, what's that been like as an expeRience? when you talk about academies, the, architectural education is still very much a question of modernism. It's, and any attempt by a student to propose some sort of traditional, traditional solution or to use a traditional local style of architecture is shunned and it's nipped in the bud. But, The people coming out of universities and architectural schools, then are exclusively modernist. And then because a lot of those, a lot of them end up in, working as civil servants who control All of the, control all of the building industry, should it be in the restoration, the here, the, city monument, the, historic building people that we have to get authorization. So always insist that we use modernism and that, it's shunned upon if we use any, any modern, any traditional detail at all, even if we're using the details that belong to the building itself. in Luxembourg and in Europe in general, UK, everywhere, there's a bit of progress in the UK, but generally, it's until the younger students come out with a different mindset, the, the civil service in each country will make sure that modern modernism is predominant. Yeah, I can add to that, because I'm based in the UK. as you were saying, there is some progress here and there's one course of which I know at the Kingston University where they have at least one student Studio, that teaches classical architecture and they come up with really remarkable designs all the time. And since I work for the traditional architecture group, I also know that they have, they have some prices that they also give you annually and it's often the people from Kingston who win it. So that's a good way of knowing these things. and apart from that, it's true that, it's not. It's still mostly modernist education, but I think everyone will agree here that one of the biggest things that, the biggest ways to teach classical architecture and traditional architecture now is through summer schools. And that's how I found my way to classical architecture. And I think, yeah, I think a lot of us are involved in summer schools And think that they're a really good thing.'cause that's just showing initiative or the students show initiative and going there and the teachers have much more freedom. They're not necessarily linked to a established institution and people just go there and volunteer to go there. And people have, so the students are so motivated and it's a really great way of teaching and spreading classical and traditional architecture. thank you. Thank you so much. I want to thank Notre Dame, for having us all here. I want to thank you, Richard. I want to thank you, Lucien, and the members of the faculty that made all this possible and our guest speakers as well for, making their, making themselves available and some at very late hours of the night. some places it's more than five hours of difference to us. And, again, thank you all.