eco logical

“UNGERS was able to engage the berlin-based institut für bau-, umwelt-und solartechnik (institute for building, environmental and solar technology) for the energy concept of the building. UNGERS approached the assignment with a particular position. in his opinion, the energy efficiency of the design should not depend on construction and building technology, but should be understood as an architectural problem, an integral part of the design. with its geometric formal language, the design differed both from the typical eco-aesthetics of the time and from more technologically oriented design methods.”

First two weeks at the firm and it has been going slow. I find myself judging their designs so hard.. it is high performing and it looks it. Do all high-performing architectures have to have this aesthetic? What does it mean for the building to perform in an efficient way without relying on the technology? Is it about having more open spaces, less enclosed spaces?

I have been thinking of ubelele’s philosophy about beauty, about something being ugly at first but for the beauty to be revealed through experience over time. Does eco-architecture behave in this way? To be so functional as to be ugly, but the experience of which reveals something new. But this requires patience, which not everyone has the time for..

Recently I have been meeting people who are reflections of myself.. and I hate them. Literally the experience would be like, oh, I do this, and Oh, I hate it! It says more about me that it does about them, and I want to learn to love and see as opposed to hate and reject. How does this shift in attitude come about?

I felt a very small version of this earlier.. I was having a run on this wide path, and a group of people were walking towards me in a clump.. and the one on the edge of the clump closest to me seemed to make this motion like he was trying to block me, or get in my way somehow, and my first instinct was to resist the urge to move away and instead I angled my run trajectory to be somewhat towards him. He retracted the motion. To be curious without judgement, how does one achieve this?

I think it requires a certain degree of vulnerability that I am very uncomfortable with.. about being honest about what you don’t know, to seek with the intention of asking (rather than knowing)