Architects should insist that the lifespan of materials should determine their choice. If you build a house, the construction of it accounts for 70% of the CO2. That’s why lifespan is important to architecture. We have to think in the long term. <a href="https://www.archdaily.com/tag/nature" target="_self">Nature</a> thinks in the long term.

When you are sitting in a room in an old house, there’s always a bay window. Or a corner is cut off for some reason. So the room isn’t straightforward at first glance. But when you enter a modern room, it is rectangular and very straightforward. And that means that the room doesn’t have an effect on you.

We wanted to be the ones who shaped the social structure. From the perspective that art wasn’t about making nice paintings for nice homes, it was to make room for as many people as possible to develop their creative abilities.

Talking to the Louisiana Channel, Danish sculptor, and artist Bjørn Nørgaard outlines his life approach to design and love for architecture and sculpture. 

history

History

creativity

Creativity

artsandculture

Society, Arts & Culture

"Houses Are the Most Prevalent Form of Monuments": In Conversation With Bjørn Nørgaard

‘Most people, in choosing a new home, look for comfort ... Nonsense. People, particularly old people, shouldn’t relax and sit back to help them decline’

Architecture isn't about comfort

The approach of Arakawa and Gin, like all subjects they pursued, might be best understood as a way to pose questions more than offering precise answers. As Duchamp put painting back ‘in the service of the mind’, Arakawa and Gins put architecture in the service of the mutable body.

Architecture in the service of the mutable body

Central to this ideology is the notion that architecture can aid in the structuring of the self. In what could be described as the artists’ architectural treatise, the human form is inseparable from site, as body, person and world are interlaced. Both Arakawa and Gins were independently inspired by American blind-deaf writer Helen Keller.

Architecture can aid in the structuring of the self

In 2010, artists-turned-architects Shūsaku Arakawa and Madeline Gins founded the Reversible Destiny Foundation at their loft and studio on Houston Street

Arakawa (1936-2010) and Gins (1941-2014) - Architectural Review

Since it opened in 1977, the Pompidou has cost more to maintain than build, and is about to be off limits to the public for another four years.

The hidden costs of Centre pompidou

Caring for buildings, the labour, cost and choices and strategising this involves is a lamentably under-discussed aspect of architecture.Over a lifetime, things change and stuff happens. And some varieties of architecture endure better than others.

Caring costs of buildings is overlooked in architecture

That Paris’s Pompidou Centre is to close for four years from 2023 for yet more maintenance comes as no surprise. Weeds have long sprouted from its

"Houses Are the Most Prevalent Form of Monuments": In Conversation With Bjørn Nørgaard

Arakawa (1936-2010) and Gins (1941-2014) - Architectural Review

Outrage: the cost of caring for the Pompidou - Architectural Review

Pregenun