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Fassaden als Meinungsäußerung
Anmerkungen / Notes: 1 Friedrich Schiller, Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen, Ditzingen 2001 2 Paul Valéry, Eupalinos, Frankfurt 1991, S. 98f. 3 Egon Eiermann, Briefe des Architekten, München 1994, S. 24 4 Karl Gruber, die Gestalt der deutschen Stadt, München, 1976
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Is the facade of a building a view not only in the sense of a drawn elevation but also in the sense of an expression of personal conviction? In other words, does the face of a building also have a mental or intellectual content? Most writings that explore the subject of facades abound in descriptions of technical details and materials, with the aim of revealing a hitherto unsuspected appearance in a building and often seeking to increase its stature through a claim to innovation. In some cases, one can read of allegedly “intelligent” facades, by which is meant that they can generate energy or that they possess other striking technological features such as areas that open and close automatically in response to weather conditions. In fact, there are no such things as intelligent facades. If they did exist, one would be speaking of artificial intelligence, and they would stand at the lower end of the scale. A quality of this kind would, at best, be attributable to the engineers and architects who had developed such facades. In linking the notion of intelligence with the outer skin of a building, we automatically relate the technical form of construction to the function, which today is regarded primarily under the heading of “sustainability”. Even when considering the matter of environmental correctness, however, the issue is largely reduced to a question of energy consumption, and in most cases, the promised scope for savings is not backed up by verifiable facts. (One might be forgiven for recognizing certain parallels to the automobile industry in this.) In the realm of construction, an overall evaluation of sustainability is usually lacking – in terms of the grey energy contained in materials and their lifespan, for example. In evaluating the outer skins of buildings, it would seem that the energy factor has gained the upper hand. Questions concerning beauty are usually subordinate to this, and the whole concept is often paraphrased with words like “appropriateness” or “adequacy” – perhaps because for many people, the idea of beauty as an evaluative criterion is somewhat ambivalent. The recognition of beauty is a matter of education and taste, in other words, a question of discernment; and the idea of beauty it-
self is subject to change, of course. But that is no reason to renounce design goals. Having said that, however, one can have nothing against a sensible approach to energy considerations and their technical implementation. This aspect of facade design is, indeed, a prerequisite for the success of the building as a whole. But it is only one of several parameters. Strangely enough, no great value is attached to the endurance of the building skin. Evidently the rapid changes to which everything is subject nowadays command greater attention than things that possess constancy and validity over a longer period of time. This idea was conveyed by Paul Valéry in the early 1920s in an imaginary dialogue between Phaedrus and Socrates, in which the latter argues that only architecture creates things that endure and brings them to fruition. In contrast to Vitruvian theory, Valéry chooses for the word “firmitas” the meaning “endurance” or “permanence” – at least in Rilke’s translation. But this choice of words is interesting, because Valéry touches on the weakness of a concept often associated with modernism. In a letter written in 1951, Egon Eiermann asserted that contemporary buildings have not the least ambition to attain a great age. They are “worn out like a car”, and after not so many years, they simply disappear. Paul Valéry, on the other hand, sees a close relationship between beauty, utility and durability: only things that are beautiful and useful have permanence. Conversely, something that has no lasting quality lacks beauty and utility. The idea is interesting, since it has a lot to do with urban quality. Would a city consisting of buildings with a maximum lifespan of 50 years be beautiful? Could it reflect history? Could we rediscover ourselves and our memories in it – especially if we were to take Eiermann seriously in his comparison with the durability of a car dating from 1951? Would we have any wish to visit such a city as tourists or to make it our place of residence? Cities live from constant change, of course, but not from a rapid replacement of the buildings that go to make up its character. The secret of a “good” city, as Karl Gruber describes it, is that it is subject