Never built

Architecture is intended to be built. A building comes to life when context, construction, spaces, materials and surfaces become physically tangible. However, architecture often remains just paper and models – and is consequently regarded as a “failure”. Nevertheless, in the visionary form of a mere project it can time and time again anchor itself in people’s minds, developing a life of its own and great influence, or can even spark off a heated debate, as shown by the famous example of Le Corbusier’s competition entry for the League of Nations Building in 1929. Every architect has a portfolio (differing in size) filled with unbuilt projects. In response to this situation in the current issue we trace the kind of architecture that, as a rule, never makes it into the pages of a magazine. Probably there are generally more reasons against than in favour of building: building costs can begin to explode, clients can change their mind, the economy can falter or a referendum can lead to a project being dropped. Sometimes it is simply just the place that seems to obstinately resist all attempts at planning. Dieter Schnell tells the story of the Klösterli area in Bern where the last buildings were erected in the 19th century and where since then generations of architects have unsuccessfully tried to crack this hard nut. We take an unfamiliar kind of look at the architecture competition as a “factory” for innumerable projects that never got built. A research team was allowed to follow the work of a number of juries at close hand and came to some remarkable conclusions: decision-making processes do not inevitably follow a straight line, quite the contrary in fact. The reconstructions and translations of buildings (sometimes made with detailed precision) that have been handed down to us in literature represent a special genre of paper architecture. Later readings of the description of the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem or the two villas of Pliny were often seen as a challenge to draw them: in such plans buildings develop that never existed in this form. The importance of unbuilt work is directly related to the mechanisms of publication. This fact was recognized by the Office for Metropolitan Architecture OMA, which allots over 180 pages in its own monograph “S,M,L,XL” to three projects: the Zeebrugge sea terminal, ZKM Karlsruhe and Très Grande Bibliothèque in Paris. Widespread publication helped the library in particular – although never built - to occupy a respected position in recent architectural history. And to conclude: Fritz Schumacher, director of urban planning in Basel, has been confronted here and there with unbuilt projects. In an interview he describes the precise political mechanisms of a direct democracy society and explains why certain projects met with no mercy at the ballot box.

The editors