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The Week in Germany: Business, Technology and the Environment

October 26, 2007

"Sustainable Building Could be a New German Trademark"

The following interview with Peter Cachola Schmal, Director of the Frankfurt-based German Architecture Museum, is taken from the latest issue of Deutschland, available at Deutschland Online, with a special focus on architecture in Germany. Deutschland is the international magazine of the Federal Republic of Germany and is published by the Societäts-Verlag in Frankfurt am Main in cooperation with the Federal Foreign Office in Berlin.

Mr. Cachola Schmal, you are curator of the German contribution to the seventh Architecture Biennale in São Paulo, Brazil. Is there any such thing in these days of globalization as a specific “German” architecture?
There is indeed. It may not be the case that I can look at a building and say it is obviously in a typical German style, but the conditions under which architecture is created in Germany are different to those in other countries. For example, despite globalization and unified European standards, planning in Germany is still something special. What is more, we have the densest network of architecture, and German architects are generalists, involved in the building process from beginning to end. In most countries, the architect is only commissioned to draw up the plan, then a building company carries it out.

Is that also a reason why so many internationally famous architects like to build in Germany?
Certainly. Many of them like it for the simple reason that they have more influence on the result than they would otherwise. And in Germany the quality of all those partners involved in building is very good – so that the result corresponds quite precisely with what the architects imagined and not with what a building company puts up. Of course, the guaranteed fees also have something to do with it.

Berlin is a centre of contemporary architecture. Are exciting things happening in other German cities?
Hamburg is very a dynamic place, but many exciting buildings are also being built in the new federal states. Saxony and Thuringia are among the winners, in architectural terms.

Architectural ideas from Germany once had an international impact: for example, Bauhaus. Could the concept of sustainable building perhaps become a new trademark of German architecture?
That could indeed be our export hit and our trademark. Unfortunately, however, we are not the best at marketing the idea. Other countries are in the process of occupying that field, even though they have less to offer. For example, they are setting standards for sustainable building. We failed to be the first here – which is a great pity.

Peter Cachola Schmal, Director of the German Architecture Museum in Frankfurt am Main, and Anna Hesse put together the German contribution to the São Paulo Biennale.

Links:

Deutschland Online

In First Outing, German Team Wins Solar Decathlon (TWIG, Oct. 19, 2007)

German Museum Wins Top Architecture Prize (TWIG, Oct. 12, 2007)

From Bauhaus to Our House (TWIG, June 15, 2007)

Preserving a Pioneering Place of Design (TWIG, Dec. 8, 2006)

Architecture in Germany (Germany.info)

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