Architecture of Compromise: Everyday Architecture for the Polycrisis

Dear Colleagues,

Everyday Architecture is strongly shaped by the underlying conditions of its context. Accordingly, vernacular architecture—as the archetype of today’s Everyday Architecture—is tailored to the respective climatic context, and follows circular principles. This suggests that contemporary Everyday Architecture could also have the potential to play a decisive role in addressing the multiple crises we are currently facing. However, given contemporary urban structures, techniques, and requirements, vernacular solutions cannot be directly adapted.

This Special Issue explores the questions connected to Everyday Architecture, its production, and current ecological and societal crises, in light of the necessary ecological urban redevelopment ahead. It asks how a modern vernacular architecture should be conceived in the 21st century.

We propose to characterize Everyday Architecture not primarily by a specific style or architectural expression, but rather by the mode of its production—that is, the architectural way of working that navigates within a narrowly defined framework of contextual conditions. It differs from “high architecture” in that these contextual conditions are the decisive determinants and necessitate a variety of what can be described as compromises.

There are countless historical examples of these architectures of compromise: Vernacular architecture is characterized by the availability of local materials and traditional craft techniques. The possibility of prefabrication and the urgent need for housing led to the creation of large housing estates in various regions. Wars or natural disasters have resulted in reconstruction architectures characterized by rapid production, pragmatic design decisions, and limited material availability. Back offices or logistics centers are architectural consequences of global markets and their spatial requirements for services and logistics.

Today, the transgression of planetary boundaries (climate change, biodiversity loss, land-use change, freshwater use, biogeochemical flows, novel entities) poses pressing conditions on multiple levels that could force new compromises.

This Special Issue searches for such architectures of compromise from which strategies for future ways of dealing with the polycrisis can be derived. It addresses questions of (local) energy supply, traffic connections, cooperation on a neighborhood scale, and our understanding of our role within the discipline as well as in research and teaching.

Prof. Dr. Benedikt Boucsein
Dr. Jan Engelke
Guest Editors

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