German contribution to the 11th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia 2008.
The German pavilion at this year’s Architecture Biennale in Venice will focus on sustainability beyond green building. It will present concepts, ways of thinking and strategies that aim to change behaviour patterns and our ideas of life.
Introductory Statement by the General Commissioners
Consumption, participation, fun, solidarity, growth, modesty, engagement, balance, austerity, love, hope, cooperation… How do we want to live? Global injustice is increasing ever more visibly, and climate change and environmental destruction contribute their part. One can no longer feel comfortable with this even in the rich West. At the same time, the majority does not appear willing to do without the amenities of their bubble of affluence. How long can we continue to afford this indifference? Is it possible to dissolve the contradictions? Is there a future between consumption and cooperation, between growth and austerity, between fortification and freedom?
These are big questions. Architecture can and does contribute to answering them. Buildings are sealed, insulated and optimized. But that will not be enough. That’s why we are interested in concepts, ways of thinking and strategies that aim to change behaviour patterns and our ideas of life. As radical pragmatists, we thereby operate with updates. We are familiar with updates from the computer: the system is further developed in steps. Each version brings improvements and innovations, but sometimes also new mistakes. For the problems of our world we also need many small steps that can rapidly become larger. Updating Germany shows such small and large steps – ecologically and socially sustainable projects that are conceived, planned or built in Germany or by German architects, designers and engineers. Primarily these are research projects, design experiments and pilot projects – and not just in architecture and urban planning. Here the point is not right or wrong, nor completeness. The challenges are much too complex for that. Rather, the aim here is a joint search we must all carry out. The projects we present are merely suggestions and inspiration for this. One may laugh at some of the ideas some day, while in retrospect others will be recognized as pioneers of a new way of thinking, perhaps even of a new epoch.
One thing is clear: we must think and act in many directions at the same time. There will be detours and wrong turns. We will have to live with this multi-optionality. We see it as opportunity, perhaps our last opportunity. A new idea about life will emerge, a new culture.
An architecture that is more than building will be part of it. Friedrich von Borries, Matthias Böttger, May 2008
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