No to disposable architecture!

Since the 1990s, the architect and theorist Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani has been warning that construction has become a “scourge upon the earth”. In his essay 'Against Disposable Architecture', he not only substantiates this claim but also sets out a nuanced set of demands and measures. “Build more densely, more durably and less” – this call by Lampugnani also comments on the current debate on sustainable building. He calls for a radical shift away from the development of further building land and the unrestrained consumption of raw materials.

Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani (born 1951 in Rome) is an architect and one of the world’s leading urban scholars. He was director of the German Architecture Museum in Frankfurt and conceived numerous major exhibitions, including in Berlin, Milan and Venice. Lampugnani was editor of the journal *Domus* and held the Chair of the History of Urban Planning at ETH Zurich. He continues to practise as an architect through his own practice, whilst also teaching occasionally at Harvard and publishing regularly in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung. Among other works, his major three-volume history of urban planning was published by Wagenbach.

raumlaborberlin The Berlin collective consists of nine members who all share a background in architecture. As architects, artists, performers, inventors and curators, they have opened up diverse fields of activity. The group emerged in 1999 out of an interest in an expanded understanding of architecture, which has since become established as ‘urban practice’. raumlaborberlin’s working method is situational and action-oriented, with a key focus on the collective production of space as an open-ended process.

Hannes Stiefel, the architect (Stiefel & Company Architects), is a member of the Executive Board of the Institute for Art and Architecture (IKA) at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. At the IKA, he heads the Ecology, Sustainability and Cultural Heritage platform. Stiefel is a member of the City of Vienna’s Advisory Board for Urban Planning, Urban Design and World Heritage.