The doctoral thesis stems from questioning how architecture can actively establish itself in relation to contemporary society. In large part, this is determined by the globalised neoliberal capitalism, establishing itself predominantly through political, economic, environmental, humanitarian, healthcare, and other crises. We are interested in determining the role of our profession in the current environment so as to positively contribute to society, rendering it relevant.
With this dissertation, we demonstrate how contemporary architecture in the 21st century works autonomously, thereby actively and critically co-creating its societal context. Architecture functioning autonomously means working within society, but without subordinating itself to the established societal realities. We envision working within society as understanding the scope of the problem, and rearticulating it in an autonomous way, as only architecture can. We therefore state that architecture must enhance society by dealing with current societal issues. Architecture had previously functioned in the aforementioned way, i.e. during the eras of Enlightenment and Modernism. Such workings were interrupted by the flourishing neoliberal capitalism, which put a stop to architecture’s progressive standpoints and agendas. In this dissertation, we search for ways in which architecture, as it had done in the 20th century, could function progressively today. The tools with which contemporary architecture might achieve this are defined as expanded strategies of contemporary architecture.
We understand contemporaneity through various points of view that, in turn, define it. Within the dissertation, we discussed the political, economic and ecological points of view and encompassed them with three perspectives that function as junctures between architecture and society. The three points of view we’ll keep in focus are the political, economic-social, and ecological-technical points of view. So as to prove the practical implications of our thesis, we looked for creators of architecture that fit each of those points of view, and that address with their work in an especially productive way the issues highlighted by each of our perspectives. These are the architectural offices Nijric+, Lacaton & Vassal, and Ecosistema Urbano. Njiric+ works in a notably political way, Lacaton & Vassal’s approach is economic-social and Ecosistema Urbano apply an ecological technical point of view.
Njirić’s political activity lies in his subversion of speculative approaches to private and public clients that have established themselves in the absence of productive national and municipal politics. Lacaton & Vassal have replaced the standard austere model with an economic approach that takes a typological change and an alternative material articulation to create the architecture of plenty, enabling and encouraging entirely different models of use. Through integrating eco-friendly technology and nature itself, Ecosistema Urbano create projects that demonstrate a new possible vision of an ecologically integrated architecture. The offices address and deal with the described issues from various borderline positions. Njiric+ is active at a geopolitical borderline of Europe; while Lacaton & Vassal and Ecosistema Urbano are active at the edges of professional interest, as they otherwise come from architecturally well established environments.
The three selected offices work with the expanded strategies of the 21st century, and we have demonstrated their use with their architectural projects. They have established contemporary architecture by understanding our contemporary times and rearticulating political, socioeconomic and ecological-technical questions. By researching these strategies, implemented by selected offices, we demonstrated how architecture today can establish itself in a socially critical and productive way, co-creating the 21st century.
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