Yesterday Patrik Schumacher, director of Zaha Hadid Architects, from its ivory tower launched a new tirade about what should be the moral of architects and how must be interpreted the work by his studio.

The comments made by Zaha Hadid, days ago, on the dead and workers who are intervening in their projects, have traveled the world, it seems that the reaction of everyone rejecting the words of Zaha Hadid, did not like Mr. Schumacher. Using Facebook, to launch an attack on political correctness in architecture, Schumacher accused the judges of the 2012 Venice Architecture Biennale of being motivated by a "misguided political correctness".

Schumacher he insists on the arguments of Zaha Hadid: "Architects are in charge of the form of the built environment, not its content," and "We need to grasp this and run with this despite all the (ultimately conservative) moralizing political correctness that is trying to paralyse us with bad conscience and arrest our explorations if we cannot instantly demonstrate a manifest tangible benefit for the poor - as if the delivery of social justice is the architect’s competency."

An installation documenting the Torre David vertical slum in Caracas won the Golden Lion award for the best project at the last biennale, which was curated by David Chipperfield. Best pavilion was awarded to the Toyo Ito-curated Japanese pavilion, which focused on alternative housing concepts for the homes that were destroyed by the earthquake and tsunami in 2011.

His post come a week after the new curator to Venice Biennale, Rem Koolhaas, revealed that his plans for this year would focus on presenting research and the history of architecture, rather than contemporary architecture projects.

 Facebook post by Patrik Schumacher.

"STOP political correctness in architecture. But also: STOP confusing architecture and art.

"Architects are in charge of the FORM of the built environment, not its content. We need to grasp this and run with this despite all the (ultimately conservative) moralizing political correctness that is trying to paralyse us with bad conscience and arrest our explorations if we cannot instantly demonstrate a manifest tangible benefit for the poor - as if the delivery of social justice is the architect’s competency.

"Unfortunately all the prizes given by the last architecture biennale where motivated by this misguided political correctness. STOP political correctness in architecture! And yet, architecture is not a l’art pour l’art discipline. Architecture is NOT ART although FORM is our specific contribution to the evolution of world society.

"We need to understand how new forms can make a difference for the progress of world civilisation. I believe today this implies the intensification of communicative interaction with a heightened sense of being connected within a complex, variegated spatial order where all spaces resonate and communicate with each other via associative logics."

 

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Patrik Schumacher, is partner at Zaha Hadid Architects and founding director at the AA Design Research Lab. He joined Zaha Hadid in 1988.

Patrik Schumacher studied philosophy and architecture in Bonn, London and Stuttgart, where he received his Diploma in architecture in 1990. In 1999 he completed his PHD at the Institute for Cultural Science, Klagenfurt University.  Patrik Schumacher has been teaching at various architectural schools in Britain, Continental Europe and the USA since 1992.  In 1996 he founded the "Design Research Laboratory" with Brett Steele, at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London, and continues to serve as one of its co-directors.

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Published on: March 19, 2014
Cite: "Patrik Schumacher from its ivory tower." METALOCUS. Accessed
<http://www.metalocus.es/en/news/patrik-schumacher-its-ivory-tower> ISSN 1139-6415
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