View - excerpts from speech by Aga Khan, exhibition of Thomas Herzog's work, new architectural Web sites

Architectural Review, The, Jan, 2002 by Thomas Herzog

THE AGA KHAN'S COMMITMENT TO PLURALITY AND INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM IN ISLAMIC CULTURE AND ARCHITECTURE. THOMAS HERZOG, PIONEER OF GREEN ARCHITECTURE AND NEW TECHNOLOGY CELEBRATED IN FRANKFURT. GRAPHISOFT PRIZE 2001 RESULTS. TRADITIONAL TIBETAN BUILDINGS AND TOWNSCAPES STILL TERRIBLY THREATENED.

THE AGA'S TRAMPOLINE

Speaking in Syria, the Aga Khan called for new links between technology and Islam.

'Syria has demonstrated the power of Islam as a crucible for the spirit and the intellect, transcending boundaries of geography and culture. The Aga Khan celebrated a quarter century of his Awards for Architecture (AR November) at the Citadel in Aleppo late last year.

He was clear that 'his 'goal was to create an intellectual space' in which 'there will be no possibility of suffocation from the dying weeds of dogma, whether professional or ideological. Where the flowers of articulation and challenging ideas could grow without restraint. Where the new plants of creativity and risk-taking could blossom'.

The aim is to find how 'the profound humanistic tradition of Islam could inform the conception and construction of buildings and public spaces'.

'At its core', he said, is 'a message of opportunity, of potential, of hope.' He asked for greater understanding of the great plurality of the Muslim world, 'it is essential that we respect and value that plurality ... to build unity in diversity'. His Awards are intended to be 'an intellectual trampoline to generate ideas for building the future productively and constructively in terms that will be meaningful and beneficial to Muslims generally'.

Most of us were extremely puzzled when the first Aga Awards started to recognize humble works for poor people in the Third World and were given acclaim equal to buildings by world-renowned architects. In fact, the Awards' sensitive understanding of the relationships between people and their buildings, their public places and landscapes has greatly added to our understanding of what architecture is for.

The Awards undoubtedly give us another dimension of thought and criticism. The Aga argued that 'We need to achieve a better understanding of how dynamic cultures have and do lose their vitality, and to identify the potential new linkages between technical issues ... and the historical traditions of Islam'. The cultures of the West can learn. P. D.

ARCHITECT'S ARCHITECT

A major new exhibition at the DAM investigates the work of German architect and green pioneer Thomas Herzog.

For the first time since its foundation, 17 years ago, the Deutsches Architektur Museum has exhibited the work of a living architect. Thomas Herzog, 60 years old this year, is not a star architect but an architect's architect. In the 30 years since founding his Munich office he has been researcher, inventor, designer and constructor of systems and material combinations, in the service of elegant, sustainable and energy-saving architecture, and long before the label green was invented. With his partner, Hanns Jorg Schrade, and sculptor wife Verena Herzog-Loibl, he has done more than pay lip service to multi-disciplinary teamwork, collaborating with scientists, engineers, artists and his own students, Europe-wide.

Most well known is his work in Hanover for EXPO 2000 and subsequent trade fairs; Hall 26 (AR March 1997), Deutsche Messe AG administration tower (AR January 2001) and the Expodach itself (AR September 2000), a giant ribbed timber shell roof that epitomized EXPO's theme of 'Humankind -- Nature -- Technology'. Herzog has continually demonstrated that environmentally friendly architecture is not synonymous with kitschy handcrafts, and a life reduced to eating muesli in mud huts.

The Herzog retrospective starts with the Berlin 1996 manifesto European Charter for Solar Energy in Architecture and Urban Planning written in four languages over the entrance walls. Herzog was one of its chief instigators and the signatories included 29 influential European architects. Growing up in a family of medical doctors, and with a physicist father, Herzog was perhaps predestined to approach architecture from a scientist's point of view. He is on the board of EUROSOLAR, at the Fraunhofer Society for Applied Research, and his preoccupations encompass timber -- as a regenerative construction material, daylight -- as the most energy saving method of illumination, and passive insulation systems. With Vladimir Nikolic he developed a Petrocarbona External Wall System (1973), and with Helmut Muller the partners put into production a Fischer Unit Construction Facade System (1975). A Daylight Grid System, for diffusing natural light, was developed with Christian Bartenbach for the glazed barrel vault of Linz E xhibition Centre. Translucent Aerogel-Panels, of fluid wall insulation sandwiched between glass sheets, were used for a private house in 1994 (AR January 1995). Most recently, Herzog has developed an insulating hanging clay tile facade system, with Max Gerhaher.

The paradox, as Peter Buchanan points out in his essay 'Pioneering a New Paradigm' in the accompanying catalogue, is that progress in sustainable architectural forms owes more to architects who question accepted practices and reorientate their work using scientific knowledge, than to the fireworks of self-appointed avantgardists who disguise old technology in spectacular new clothes. The green agenda is essentially conservationist, but it needs the light hand of innovative artists and scientists to serve the non-exploitative European ideal of a new age. Werner Lang's interview with Herzog (also in the catalogue), reveals a fascinating picture of Herzog's student years in the '60s. Meetings with the young James Stirling, Oswald Mathias Ungers, the then unknown Frei Otto, and the influence of alternative political movements, among a section of post-war German students at this time, also encouraged enquiry and experimentation in architecture. Herzog's continuing work with the structural engineer Kurt Stepan star ted with their first project in the mid-'60s.