A Postscript on Preservation and Transformation in urban planning and architecture In a recent essay on the redevelopment of central Pforzheim and the impending demolition of two buildings from the postwar period (cfr. Was bleibt von der Stadt des Wiederaufbaus? In: Pforzheimer Zeitung, 08-15-2026, p. 22), I wrote a sentence that was meant almost as …
O.M. Ungers – Architecture as an Idea
The Museum für Angewandte Kunst Köln (MAKK) is currently hosting the exhibition 'O.M. Ungers – Architektur als Idee' (22 May – 27 September 2026), marking the centenary of Oswald Mathias Ungers. Accompanying the exhibition is an insightful opening lecture by Martin Kieren, who presents Ungers not merely as one of Germany's most influential post-war architects, …
Complex Value and the Architecture of Integration
In discussions about architecture, individual qualities are often elevated to the status of ultimate criteria. One generation celebrates structural expression, another sustainability. Some architects prioritise flexibility, others beauty, economy, material honesty, social inclusion, or energy performance. Each of these concerns is legitimate. Yet architecture rarely succeeds because it excels in only one of them.Watching major …
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Beyond Form: What Total Football Reveals About Architecture
Football and architecture are rarely discussed together. Yet one of the most influential ideas in the history of football offers an unexpected lesson for architects. When Rinus Michels developed Total Football and Johan Cruyff transformed it into a broader philosophy, they were not merely rethinking tactics. They were rethinking space.At its core, Total Football is …
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Beyond Labor: AI, Public Infrastructure, and the Future of Social Cohesion
This essay argues that artificial intelligence represents a structural rupture rather than merely another technological revolution. Unlike previous waves of mechanization, AI increasingly threatens not only physical labor but also cognitive middle-class professions, thereby undermining the industrial assumption that work guarantees income, dignity, and social participation. The resulting crisis is interpreted less as a technological …
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Tectonics Against the Image: On Frampton, Brutalism, and the Drift of Contemporary Architecture
There is a line of thought—most clearly articulated by Kenneth Frampton—that should be stated as precisely as possible: construction is not merely the technical basis of architecture; it is its language. What architecture communicates emerges through how it is made—through material, joint, assembly, and the specific conditions of its time. This is the tectonic argument …
Complex Value: Why Architecture is more than a Service
In recent decades architecture has increasingly been described as a service. The language of the discipline has shifted accordingly: efficiency, performance indicators, delivery models, stakeholder management. Architects are often asked to demonstrate that their work behaves like other professional services—predictable, measurable, and optimized.This description is not entirely wrong. Architecture certainly contains service elements. Buildings must …
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Beauty After Suspicion. Architecture, Expertise, and the Public Gaze
In recent weeks, public debate once again circled around a familiar accusation: architecture has abandoned beauty. Contemporary award shortlists, suburban housing developments, and public buildings are cited as evidence that aesthetic judgment no longer plays a meaningful role in architectural culture.1 The tone is often indignant: how could the profession drift so far from what …
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The Architecture of Low Obligation: Minimalism in a Post-Welfare Society
Architecture, Ethics, and the Erosion of Collective Responsibility Within the framework of postwar social-contract architecture, contemporary minimalism appears not as a neutral stylistic preference but as a symptom of a broken ethical horizon. Its widespread appeal marks a decisive shift away from architecture’s former role as a material agent of collective obligation and toward a …
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The Cultural Functionality of Architecture
The cultural functionality of architecture should not be regarded as fundamental. Architecture is by far the most cumbersome and inert of all cultural expression techniques. Its production is bound to material, time, and social negotiation; it resists acceleration. Yet precisely this resistance has turned against it. In an age of ever-faster content consumption and the …
Luigi Monzo 