Forum A+P 08

the people’s desire of the ever new and unseen:
Only the “dress”, the surface has to change. The
substance underneath has no need to change; it
does not even matter whether it is bad or boring
under the surface because it has nothing to do with
the external visual impact, with the dress, or with
the façade as the dress is called in architecture.
Of course, this way of seeing things can be
very tempting for architects, and specially for the
young ones who are fighting their way up. After
all, one has to earn a living, and who could resist
to a quick way into stardom, attention and quick
success? But do we really need in architecture, like
in pop music culture, ever changing “boy groups”
who make the audience scream for one season
and then shift into oblivion?
As it is, I see a lot of “architecture of the
fashion season”, of the fashionable dress-up, in
Tirana as well as in most places around the
world. A certain new apartment building in
Tirana, right next to the beginning of the dam that
holds the artificial lake, and the yet unfinished
tower not far from the old mosque, are good
examples for architecture with an “interesting”,
fancy dress but no innovation whatsoever under
this dress. But this is not the only problem: Unless
the fashion puppet that will wear a new dress
during the next season, these buildings will not
get a new façade when the fashion changes; and
it will change very quickly under the logic of “use
and dump”, of the constant psychological need
of change that commercial and consumerist
mechanisms command and try to train us to
have. How boring however to look at last season’s
fashion! How often can you laugh about the
same joke?
Wouldn’t it be better to take the longer and
harder way, trying to make something that is
unusual, innovative and at the same time lasting
in its qualities? What is beauty? Isn’t real beauty
something that can be enjoyed more than once,
something that does its effect over and over again?
Even the most block busting movies you will want
to watch only once because, after the first effect,
there is nothing left to discover in them, while you
will want to watch certain masterworks over and
over again, however old they are, because each
time you will discover something new in them.
The same happens in music, and certainly it does
in architecture. Isn’t the history of architecture
full of examples that are hundreds if not
thousands of years old but never stop to enchant?
They are buildings totally out of fashion, old and
crumbling, like the Pantheon in Rome, but they
will never cease to make you gaze and wonder.
How can these qualities be created? How
can beauty that lasts be produced? It is easy and
difficult at the same time: You have to use the
CV
Prof. Dr. Raimund Fein është pedagog i
Universitetit të Shkencave të Aplikuara, Cotbuss-
Gjermani dhe lektor i ftuar në Fakultetin e
Arkitekturës, pranë U_POLIS. Ai është arkitekt i
njohur në Gjermani dhe më gjërë. Fein ka studiuar
në Universitetin e Darmshtad-it Gjermani, ETH
Zyrih Zvicër, dhe në IUAV Venecia Itali. Ka punuar në
disa studio arkitekture dhe ka marrë çmime në
konkurse ndërkombëtare arkitekture. Prof. Fein
është lektor i ftuar në disa universitete, përfshi:
Sevilia Spanjë, Krakow Poloni, IUAV Venecia
Itali, Verxhinia e Los Angelos SHBA, Beirut Liban,
Granada dhe Las Palmas, etj.
CV
Prof.Dr. Raimund Fein, Lausitz University of
Applied Sciences,Cotbuss, Germany. Fein is a
wellknown architect in Germany and further
on. He has studied at Darmstatd University in
Germany, ETH Zyrich Switzerland and IUAV Venezia,
Italy. He has worked in several architecturestudios
and has received awards at international
competitions of architecture. Fein is guest
lecturer at several universities such as: Seville
Spain, Krakow Poland, IUAV Venezia Italy, Virginia
in Los Angeles USA, Beirut Liban, Granada and Las
Palmas, etc.
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