Baumeister 11/2024

BAU
121st year‘s issues
The Architecture Magazin
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11
CARUSO
ST JOHN

B11
Dear reader,
Editorial
anyone who knows BAUMEISTER is aware that this
year we have been dealing increasingly with the
topics of circularity and building in existing contexts.
After years of abundance and western resource
consumption, we in the western world are
now not only facing inflation and ever-widening
crises, but also a new architectural era.
To put it bluntly, we have to face the fact that we
are no longer allowed to construct new buildings.
We must focus on the existing building stock
and, above all, on repurposing existing buildings.
We are simply running out of resources.
In light of this, I am particularly pleased that we
were able to bring the inspiring team of the international
office Caruso St John on board for
this year’s guest-curated issue.
A magazine, and even more so a printed magazine,
should be for reading. However, in the wake
of modern magazine layouts and design concepts
that favour white space, there now tends
to be less and less text in printed media. BAU-
MEISTER has always prided itself on its innovative
designs and now, thanks in no small part to
Caruso St John, we finally have the opportunity
to print a magazine for reading again.
Dear architecture professionals, look forward
to numerous horizon-broadening texts, handpicked
by the team of Caruso St John and published
in this issue. Personally, I like the fact that
this is not a self-congratulatory issue by the
curating partners. I see this issue instead as an
impetus for discourse in a world in which we
should no longer build new things, but often continue
to do so anyway. We are taken on a journey
through time in architecture and delve into
some of the team’s very personal text recommendations.
I find this journey particularly exciting because
we can discover a different kind of beauty in new
potential if we really want to, and contribute to
this world with a heart open to new architectural
opportunities. Only in this way, and I am
convinced of this, can we think and implement
architecture in the future. Only when it is no longer
just about the tiresome buzzword sustainability,
but about the end of linear construction in
favour of new, circular approaches. With BAU-
MEISTER, we will continue to follow this path and
contribute to creating a positive version of our
future.
My special thanks go to the team of Caruso St John,
led by Adam Caruso with Simon Davison and Ben
Speltz. But of course, also to our own team and
above all to my colleague Sabine Schneider and
to Herburg Weiland, who have contributed greatly
to making this issue the impressive feat that
you, dear reader, see in front of you.
I sincerely hope you find this very special edition
inspiring and enjoyable to read. As always,
I welcome any comments or thoughts you may
have.
Kind regards,
Tobias Hager
t.hager@georg-media.de
@baumeister_architekturmagazin

Contents
Introduction:
A Baumeister
Reader
page 6
All Buildings
are Beautiful
Text: Adam Caruso
page 7
From Strasbourg
to Paris
Text: Sérgio Ferro
page 12
Alternating
currents:
technology as
cultural expression
Text: Helen Thomas
page 32
Manifesto!
Text: Mierle Laderman
Ukeles
page 60
Reuse!
Text: Barbara Buser
page 66
The Grand
Domestic Revolution
Text: Dolores Hayden
page 74

A Baumeister Reader by Caruso St John
Material Reform
Text: Material
Cultures
page 38
Healing The
Museum
Text: Grace Ndiritu
page 50
Engaging
Architecture
in Societal
Change
Text: Quatorze
page 54
+
Solutions:
Feature
page 112
Façades + Wall building materials
page 116
Portfolio:
Architects‘ Best Products
page 132
Imprint, Preview
page 138
Permaculture
Text: David
Holmgren
page 86
Women Writing
Architecture
page 98

A Baumeister Reader
The architectural project shifts every decade or so, the productive
turn of the 1950s gives way to the social in the 1960s
and 70s, and the formal in the 1980s and 90s. Each change is
a reaction to what came before it, and is a response to the
present. A few good ideas and buildings come out of each
epoch, and much emerges that is of less interest and quality.
The last thirty years have seen an unprecedented production
of building at a global scale, as architects have aligned
their practices ever closer to the economies of extraction.
I believe that the only response to this outpouring of resources,
at least in the west, is to stop new building.
The new turn will be one of circularity. This new paradigm has
enormous potential for architecture, but to engage with these
new possibilities we will have to develop new ways of seeing
the world and new capacities within our metier. In the early
1970s work of artists like Robert Smithson and Hilla and Bernd
Becher, a delicacy as well as a sense of the sublime is
revealed in the sites and processes of late western industry.
Contemporary architecture needs to develop comparable
sensitivities to the residue of late capitalism to find new kinds
of beauty so that we fall in love with what today we disparage;
new forms of knowledge that enable us to mobilise the
material that we presently discard. References to existing
architecture have to be expanded to include a much
wider sense of the social and the material, in existing situations.
We are being presented with an opportunity to engage
in a much wider and more substantial way with the world
around us.
The contents of this Baumeister Reader touch on different
aspects of the challenges that lie ahead for our discipline.
Some of the texts are explicitly about architecture while
others are more historical and talk around the subject.
Some are texts that I read many years ago and have long
been part of discussions in the office and my teaching, others
I only discovered recently. To be sure, this list is partial and
personal, but it is a starting point and hopefully will motivate
the reader to add new and different subjects and ideas to
their own, personal readers.
Adam Caruso|Caruso St John
6

“From Strasbourg to Paris”,
in “Architecture from Below: An Anthology”
by Sérgio Ferro, translated by Ellen Hayward,
edited by Silke Kapp and Mariana Moura (MACK, 2024).
Courtesy Sérgio Ferro/MACK, mackbooks.eu
It was a surprise to encounter such a substantial body of writing
about architecture and art by an author who I had never heard
of. This, the first of a three-volume collection, presents many of
Ferro’s texts in English for the first time. The question is why this
ambitious translation project has taken so long to appear? First
as a young student and activist practitioner within the São Paulo
school of Artigas and then as a long-standing professor at the
school of architecture in Grenoble, Ferro developed a critical
position that brings Karl Marx directly into the architect’s office
and onto the construction site. Within a discourse that he calls
Dessin/Chantier, Ferro traces how construction labour has been
consistently disempowered in the service and development of
capitalism over the last 500 years. While the design and the
construction of Gothic cathedrals emerged out of shared knowledge
and endeavour located on site and amongst the
building’s material, the 15th century saw power increasingly
concentrated in the architect, whose drawings and other instruments
of control came to embody more and more of the
project’s content. Ferro traces this unstoppable tendency across
a wide history that encompasses the sculpture and architecture
of Michelangelo and the weaponising of concrete in the 20th
century. His argument is not a Ruskinian plea for the return to
pre-industrial society, but rather a call to reform the methods
and objectives of the contemporary profession, which is very
relevant if architecture’s necessary transition from an extractive
to a circular practice is to be achieved.
12
PHOTOS P.53: MUSÉE DE L’ŒUVRE NOTRE-DAME, STRASBOURG, INV. NO.2; P.54: MARIANA MOURA. COURTESY MARIANA MOURA/MACK; P.60: PHOTOGRAPHER UNKNOWN; P.66: CENTRE DES MONUMENTS NATIONAUX. © PHILIPPE BERTH

FROM STRASBOURG TO PARIS
49
I should start off by saying that I will not be presenting a full overview
of the history of architecture, due to lack of time and capacity. I will
instead be flagging key moments I believe exemplify certain issues
underpinning the relationship between the design and the building
site. Were this a less abridged presentation of our research into the
history of architecture (from our Dessin /Chantier laboratory in Grenoble),
I would introduce our guiding theoretical bases. Academic
honesty demands it. However, I have obeyed this requirement so
many times that I believe I can today limit myself to the essentials. 1
Architecture forms part of a larger whole — that of the entire
scope of construction. In turn, construction forms part of an even
larger whole, which is that of political economy. We believe that it is
only by analysing construction within its broader context of political
economy, and subsequently analysing architecture as a part of
construction, that we can fully grasp the true nature of our profession:
designing, drafting.
Construction has an extremely important role to play within
political economy: by virtue of its volume (a sizeable component of
gdp) and its ‘backward’ technical constitution (manufacture rather
than industry), construction injects enormous quantities of surplusvalue
into the economy as a whole. Depending on the historical
context, this value can either contribute to the so-called primitive
accumulation of capital, or to resisting the tendential fall in the rate
of profit — capital’s nightmare. Thus, it is political economy, through
the specificity of construction, which ultimately determines what we
do: designing — the primary function of which is supporting the
exploitation of labour. Within the field of construction, architecture
has this very particular role. As in manufacture, labour is only formally
subsumed — the practical knowledge of construction effectively
1 What will be presented, I repeat,
only alludes to the outline of a historical
interpretation. It is an attempt
to summarise in very few words what
has occupied me over the past twenty
years of teaching. Disorganised as I
am, I have not written extensively on
the subject. A few isolated texts exist:
papers about design in the Renaissance,
about Michelangelo’s Porta
Pia, about Palladio and a book about
the Medici Chapel in Florence. The
participants of the Dessin /Chantier
laboratory have produced some important
work — of particular note are
Philibert de l’Orme, by Philippe Potié,
and the history of concrete by Cyrille
Simonnet that begins with a brilliant
analysis of the Panthéon in Paris, on
which I have based part of today’s
presentation.
[en] Cf. ferro, La fonction modélisante
du dessin à la Renaissance, 1987; Un
dessin pour la Porta Pia, 1983; Le
palimpseste du Palais Thiène, 1980;
Michel-Ange, architecte et sculpteur
de la chapelle Medicis, 1998. simonnet,
Le béton, histoire d’un matériau, 2005.
potié, Philibert de l’Orme: Figures de
la pensée constructive, 1996. Since
2010, when Ferro added this note for
the publication of the lectures delivered
in 2004, he actually did write
extensively on the subject in Construção
do desenho clássico (2021),
English translation forthcoming.
13

“Alternating currents:
technolgy as cultural expression”,
by Helen Thomas in domus No. 1050,
25 October 2020, page 12 – 15.
Courtesy Archivio Domus/
Editoriale Domus S.p.A.
This essay was commissioned by David Chipperfield during
his Covid-times editorship of Domus, for an issue where his
editorial asks ‘Will technology save us?’. The essay follows
one about Reyner Banham and High Tech, and Helen Thomas
describes an entirely different way of understanding
technology, one liberated from outdated western canons
of architecture and instead located within highly specific
historic and geographic situations. Starting with a question
of whatever happened to the second Venice Biennale of
Architecture (1982), the one about the Islamic world, which
followed on from the canon-boosting ‘Presence of the Past’
(1980), Thomas proceeds to unearth a rich set of networks
and ideas that emerged from the biennale, just not in the
view of the west. By the end of the essay, in the person and
practice of Yasmeen Lari, Chipperfield’s anxieties are
addressed, technologies, like everything else about architecture,
are culturally specific and while there exists no
silver bullet to get us out of our current mess, an engagement
with the full range of building practices that exist in
the world, and their sensitive deployment, could help to
ameliorate our situation.
32

Agenda
Correnti alternate: tecnologia come espressione culturale
Alternating currents: technology as cultural expression
Testo/Text Helen Thomas
Archivio Storico delle Arti Contemporanee – ASAC /Photo Andrea Avezzù
Sopra: l’installazione
di Marina Tabassum
Wisdom of the Land alla
Biennale Architettura
di Venezia del 2018.
Pagina 14: copertina del
catalogo della seconda
edizione della Biennale
di Venezia, curata da
Paolo Portoghesi, 1982
Above: Marina
Tabassum’s installation
Wisdom of the Land at
the Venice Architecture
Biennale in 2018.
Page 14: cover of the
catalogue for the
second edition of the
Biennale, curated by
Paolo Portoghesi, 1982
Per qualche ragione, la seconda Biennale Architettura di Venezia
(1982) si è misteriosamente sfilata dalla nostra coscienza storica.
Messa in ombra dalla celebre prima edizione, ha però un tema
che oggi assume una nuova importanza. Nella sua introduzione
al catalogo di quella Biennale, Paolo Portoghesi ricordava quali
fossero i regni che circondavano il Mediterraneo, centro di origine
della cultura europea dove Venezia è appesa come una perla
a una collana formata dalle magiche città portuali che sorgono
sulle sue rive. Bilanciata dalla sua controparte, Istanbul, la città ha
rappresentato per molto tempo la linea di confine tra est e ovest,
dove le certezze dell’uno si dissolvono nella saggezza dell’altro.
Nel 1982, Venezia era il luogo ideale per discutere il rapporto tra
l’Occidente con il suo passato ancora ben vivo e quelli che erano
chiamati i Paesi islamici, perché allora il fulcro del potere, sospinto
da un’invisibile corrente di denaro, si stava spostando verso est.
12
33

Engaging Architecture
in Societal Change
by Quatorze, 2024
In October 2023 I went on a trip to Paris with students, and
visited the rotting ruins of France’s Grand Institutions and their
more fleet-footed counterparts on the periphery of the city.
One of our last visits was with Quatorze, in a mid-century
warehouse near Gare Austerlitz that they shared with a few
refugee and training associations. Our group combined
seamlessly with Nancy, Romain, Rubén and their collaborators,
and we heard an informal, but also very precise,
presentation about what the group was doing. For me, it was
like an electric shock, to hear how this young group of architects
was so committed to doing architecture that was relevant
to what they saw around them, and to experience the
intelligence and energy that they brought to the impressively
wide scope of their practice. It gave me some hope for
our profession, and I have asked them to summarise how and
why they work, so that more people can think about what engaged
contemporary architecture could actually be.
54

Quatorze:
Engaging Architecture in Societal Change
Nancy Ottaviano
and
Romain Minod
Addressing real world issues
Quatorze is not an architecture office, but is instead a
collective 1 . We are citizens, architects, urban planners
and builders, and we are also social, political and financial
facilitators. We draw on the skills and tools of architecture
to support people in precarious situations. In a world
facing increasing inequalities, we propose to develop, with
an experimental spirit, situations that promote dignified
housing and living conditions for all populations in ways
that respect the planet. The challenge seems huge.
In 2007, while still at architecture school, we were a few
friends asking the same question: Why did our education
not connect with real world issues? In Paris we saw poverty
and people in need, and we observed many shades of
exclusion and discrimination. Why did the skills we were
being taught not address the reality that was visible all
around us? Some classes like humanities and social sciences
did raise questions and provided useful conceptual
tools, but these were almost entirely disconnected from
the discourse in our design studios. On the one hand we
were exposed to critical positions that were often harsh in
their view of architects and architecture, on the other
hand we were encouraged to dream about towers and
museums. Today, as a result of contemporary engineering
and construction technologies, humans can build nearly
anything. Yet, with so many excluded from this world of
money and consumption, it is difficult to understand
where architecture’s relevance lies. In architecture school
only a few of our design studios dealt with housing and
even fewer with affordable housing. There was no discussion
about homelessness or other critical living conditions.
We felt lucky to be studying but we all had to live on
tight budgets. In the context of increasing housing prices
in the open Paris market some of us lived in squats, which
gave us first-hand experience of what was then called
‘constructive occupation’. We became quite familiar with
‘le mal logement’ (bad housing) as the Fondation Abbé
Pierre describes it, a condition that is increasing in France
every year. 2 (1)
Aiming for modest, tangible and desirable steps
Quatorze works in France and across Europe developing
prototypes that draw upon both local and global ideas of
social justice. In a variety of ways we try to create places
where people can meet, live in dignity, feel welcome and
share. We are committed to environmental sobriety and
social sustainability.
Our first projects involved working in squats, slums, shantytowns
and other surprisingly inhabited places (2). From
the start we were eager to use our skills and our professional
knowledge to ameliorate these situations. We were
also modest enough to realise that we did not know a
great deal and that careful observation was necessary to
avoid acting recklessly. If the people we were working
with needed architectural answers, they also knew what
was best for them. Often our main task was to make
answers that were already present in the discussions more
tangible. After presenting ourselves and making our intentions
clear, at first we mostly listened, observed, and
tried to represent the given situation, checking if the pictures,
maps, layouts and drawings that we produced were
meaningful to the people we were working with. Our
clients may be someone living in a shack, a neighbourhood,
or groups of all kinds. According to more classical
architectural practice, these are the future users and not
the clients. So, who is our client? In most cases they are the
avatars of general interest: public authorities from city
councils to regions, states or the European Union; they can
also be private foundations dedicated to social action,
which can be expanded to include concerned individuals
who respond to our calls when we organise crowdfunding.
Considering projects both as a process and its result
Quatorze’s projects are intended to be understood both
as built artefacts and processes: They are based on codesign
and co-construction, they use a minimum of resources,
reusing material whenever possible. Our interest
is in making places that can strengthen collective ownership,
emancipation and equality.
Projects usually starts with the financing. Without a penny,
no one can even build a shack. Without a building permit,
you can only afford to dig a hole in the ground to use as a
toilet. There is no need for golden taps in these situations,
but to build with respect and provide basic amenities, money
remains the lifeblood of architectural decency. We
did a lot of volunteering to get Quatorze started, but we
are also trained professionals and have to make a living.
To assert our professionalism, we chose to become a nonprofit
organisation 3 . We have developed a financial model
that enables the projects to happen at the same time
as sustaining Quatorze as an ongoing and dynamic concern
(3). It is important that the value created through our
projects remains local and is separate from any distant
financialised economy. To make these projects, we gather
public and private grants, we make applications, we negotiate,
and we create models and tables. In our studio, a
drawing always comes with a cluster of excel tables showing
investment, operating costs, and evaluations of both
incoming and outgoing cash flows. Money is just another
tool and although finance is not the enemy, it is also not
where the real value lies.
Opening and spreading the design process
Quatorze seeks out reciprocal exchanges of knowledge
between people from different worlds. We want to democratise
access to architecture and ecological construction.
We want to promote resilience and inclusion within
55

Manifesto! Maintenance Art –
Proposal for an exhibition “CARE”
by Mierle Laderman Ukeles, 1969
Underemployed artist and full-time mother, in stark contrast
to her male artist contemporaries, Mierle Laderman
Ukeles feels split in two. Doing maintenance work to
make some money, Ukeles decides to combine this ‘invisible’
job with being an artist. Maintenance Art is the
result, a manifesto which is itself a complex work of art.
It challenges gender roles in the art world and questions
the promise that museums make of providing places of
emancipation when, in fact, they remain institutions that
perpetuate society’s established power structures. This
project has been very popular and influential at our
school, and like Grace Ndiritu’s project, suggests ways
that museums, as well as the practice of art and
architecture, could become more engaged with wider
and more everyday-experiences.
60

61

Introduction to “Permaculture:
Principles & Pathways Beyond Sustainability”
by David Holmgren,
Melliodora, 2017
How is it that my perspectives of architecture kept me
ignorant of David Holmgren and Permaculture for so long?
‘Permaculture One’ (written by Bill Mollison and Holmgren)
was published in 1978 but I only heard about Permaculture
when Sébastien Marot participated in a workshop with my
students in 2020. The theme was ‘What is Next’, and we were
discussing the future of architectural education (Amale
Andraos also participated). When asked what the most important
idea in architecture was today, without hesitation,
Sébastien mentioned Permaculture, and Holmgren, who he
had been following since the 1970s. I do not take Sébastien’s
opinions lightly, so I started to read about Permaculture that
day and have continued to learn about it and visit sites that
have been established according to its 12 principles.
Permaculture intertwines the social and material so that
education and social justice are discussed alongside goats
and edge planting as effective forms of fire control. The
scope and ambition of Permaculture are impressive and
could be considered as too utopian. But, as Holmgren
repeatedly emphasises, it is intended to be an ongoing
process, so that it is not all or nothing, but rather one thing
after another. It suggests a world where everyone can work
towards a more equitable and sustainable future.
86

20
Permaculture Design System Evolution
Figure 1 The Permaculture Flower
Land & Nature Stewardship
_ Bio-intensive gardening _ Forest gardening
_ Seed saving _ Organic agriculture
_ Biodynamics _ Natural farming
_ Keyline water harvesting
_ Wholistic rangeland management
_ Natural sequence farming _ Agroforestry
_ Nature-based forestry _ Integrated aquaculture
_ Wild harvesting & hunting _ Gleaning
Building
_ Passive solar design _ Biotechture
_ Natural construction materials
_ Water harvesting & Waste re-use
_ Earth sheltered construction
_ Natural disaster resistant construction
_ Owner building _ Pattern language
Land Tenure &
Community Governance
_ Cooperatives & body corporates
_ Cohousing & eco-villages
_ Native Title & traditional
use rights _ Open space technology
_ Consensus decision making
Finance & Economics
_ Local and regional currencies
_ Carpooling / Ride sharing / Car share
_ Ethical investment & Fair Trade
_ Farmers markets _ Community
supported agriculture (CSA) _ LETS _
WWOOFing & similar networks _ Tradable
energy quotas _ Life cycle analysis
_ eMergy accounting
Ethics
and Design
Principles
Tools & Technology
_ Reuse & creative recycling
Hand Tools _ Bicycles / electric bikes
_ Efficient, low pollution wood stoves
_ Fuels from organic wastes
_ Wood Gasification _ Bio-char from
forest wastes _ Co-generation
_ Micro-hydro & small scale wind
_ Grid-tied renewable power
generation _ Energy storage
_ Transition engineering
Culture & Education
_ Home schooling _ Waldorf education
_ Participatory arts & music
_ Social ecology _ Action research
_ Transition culture
Health & Spiritual Wellbeing
_ Home birth & breast feeding
_ Complementary & wholistic medicine
_ Yoga, Tai Chi & other body/mind/spirit
disciplines _ Spirit of place, indigenous
cultural revival _ Dying with dignity
87

112 Feature
Icons of design:
10 Brands Shaping the
Future of Architecture
and Interiors
In the world of architecture
and interior design, certain
brands are the very pillars
of innovation, craftsmanship,
and style. These
companies have not only
established themselves as
leaders in their respective
fields but have also
become the very
embodiment of the modern
architectural aesthetic.
Text: Tobias Hager

Solutions
113
From furniture to lighting and textiles, these brands
provide architects and designers with the tools
to create spaces that are as timeless as they are
functional, and visually striking. In this article,
we’re thrilled to explore ten of the most iconic
brands – Vitra, HAY, Thonet, USM, E15, Fritz Hansen,
FLOS, Louis Poulsen, Kvadrat, and Occhio –
and examine what makes them indispensable
for architects across the globe.
Vitra:
Vitra is the
perfect union
of form and
function
Vitra is a design powerhouse
that has long been at the forefront
of furniture design. The
company is known for its amazing
collaborations with some of
the most iconic designers in history,
including Charles and Ray
Eames, George Nelson, and
Jean Prouvé. The result is a portfolio
of furniture that perfectly
balances timeless elegance
with functional innovation.
Vitra’s real strength lies in its incredible
ability to bring together
modernist design principles
with cutting-edge technology.
It is a firm favourite with architects
for many reasons, not least
because its products enhance
the environments they inhabit.
The Eames Lounge Chair is an
absolute icon. It’s more than just
a chair; it’s a symbol of mid-century
modern design that has
graced homes and offices alike
for decades.
Vitra’s products are the perfect
blend of craftsmanship and
industrial production, making
them the ideal choice for a wide
range of architectural contexts.
From sleek office environments
to warm, inviting living spaces,
Vitra has you covered.
www.vitra.com
HAY:
Democratic
Design for
Modern Living
HAY is a relatively young Danish
brand that has already made a
significant impact on the architecture
and design world. HAY
was founded in 2002 with one
simple mission: to provide affordable,
high-quality design
that meets the needs of modern
life. Their products are known
for their sleek, minimalist lines,
vibrant colour schemes, and
impressive ability to blend
seamlessly into a wide range of
environments.
HAY’s design approach is rooted
in the Scandinavian tradition
of simplicity and functionality,
but they also infuse their products
with a contemporary
edge, making them stand out
from the crowd. This makes
them an absolute must for
architects looking to create
spaces that feel fresh, modern,
and accessible. HAY’s furniture
and accessories, such as the
amazing About A Chair series,
are so versatile and fit effortlessly
into residential, commercial,
or public spaces.
www.hay.dk
Thonet:
A Legacy
of Bentwood
Craftsmanship
Any conversation about iconic
furniture must mention Thonet.
This company revolutionised
furniture design with its pioneering
bentwood technique in the
19th century. The incredible
Thonet Chair No. 14, now known
as the Vienna Café Chair, is one
of the most successful industrial
products of all time. It‘s a favourite
in architectural projects
thanks to its lightness, durability
and timeless appeal. Thonet’s