ERic Lapierre comes, red bandana, green bomber jacket, riding his motor scooter down the Boulevard Jourdan around six o’clock in the evening. Behind him you can see parts of the Cité Universitaire, most of which was built here in the south of Paris in the 14th arrondissement a good hundred years ago: there is the house of Southeast Asia built in the traditional colonial style and in front of it the modernist Collège Néerlandais, built in 1938 by the architect Willem Marinus Dudok, who even gave the Dutch students an indoor pool and no fewer than 33 roof terraces. Further east, Le Corbusier has built student houses in two countries, Switzerland and Brazil – the house that Lapierre is now building for 400 more students is surrounded by architectural-historical icons, so to speak, showing what the future of housing large crowds might look like.
More greenhouse gases than air travel
It is precisely this question that is giving architects the biggest headache at the moment. It would have to be built en masse to create living space, but at the same time, in view of the fact that almost forty percent of all climate-damaging gases are produced during the construction, demolition and operation of buildings, it would be best if hardly any new buildings were built. Concrete in particular has come under criticism, the production of cement alone causes between seven and nine percent of all greenhouse gases, depending on how you calculate it, in any case more than global air traffic. Many architects, including Arno Brandlhuber, who has become known in recent years for his spectacular concrete sculptures, emphasize that this type of building is a closed epoch. In future, priority will be given to what Brandlhuber was one of the first to prominently demonstrate, namely the intelligent conversion of existing buildings.
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