This contribution discusses seven of Colquhoun’s architectural projects, which he produced, successively, at the London County Council (LCC), at the practice of Lyons Israel Ellis, and at the firm he founded with John Miller: Colquhoun Miller & Partners. In the work, various formal and compositional architectural principles are tested within various idioms. The situating and grouping of buildings seem to incorporate a latent affinity with the romantic-classicist tradition, while the later work from the 1970s and 1980s attests to a gradual expansion of the formal references in favour of the picturesque, early-twentieth-century innovative architecture and, on occasion, Italian rationalism.

In this interview Colquhoun addresses the present-day (im-)possibility of a metaphysical framework for judging architecture, alluding to the theories of Niklas Luhmann and Jacques Derrida. Both philosophers reject metaphysics – in its place Luhmann posits the great story of science, while arguing that we find ourselves, by definition and irrevocably, in a metaphysical tradition that we simultaneously deconstruct. General theories must therefore be approached cautiously, and a judgement can be nothing more than conditional and relative, they argue. This does not mean they exclude an ethical judgement, in Colquhoun’s view. The idea of history and the concepts of the past play a crucial role in this. 

Hans Scharoun’s introduction to a popular work on European Baroque architecture is a unique document of a modern architect establishing a connection between his own design practice and a period of architectural history. In Scharoun’s world view the architecture of the Baroque was a period of transition, from the rational principles of Greek architecture to an expression of movement, which localized the Baroque in a historical period of absolute power and cultural fluidity. At the same time, the two-centred or multi-focal geometries (Scharoun speaks of ‘poles’) of the late Baroque in Germany reflected, in his view, a desire for unity, which resonated with his own preoccupations with intricate spatial configurations and the suppression of overriding symmetries by offering a multiplicity of these. In his short text the architect reveals the inspiration he found in the form world of the Baroque for his own projects, most notably the Berlin Philharmonie. ‘Baroque’, in this text, can be taken as an indication of an affinity and the recognition that the architect’s idea of a unified yet complex whole was indebted to the experience of spaces from a historically and culturally remote period.

Architecture is the product of a combination of parties, of a process in which architects respond to their clients. Yet despite the attention paid to a few famed clients, like Truus Schröder, architecture is often examined and explained on the basis of the considerations of the architect, embodied in the object, and the ideas developed within the design discipline. This issue of OASE looks at the influence of the client on the way buildings or urban ensembles take shape. This is a historiographic revision: clients often prove to have creative impulses of their own, and their social views have had an impact on the evolution of architectonic cultures. The issue also includes conversations with clients who explicitly view their work as a contribution to the culture of building and the sustainable development of urban societies. In an era in which both clients and architects are compelled to reflect on their role and responsibility, a re-reading of architecture history from the perspective of the commission is more than necessary.

Following a period as a developer of housing projects, Klaus Hübotter has made a name for himself since the 1980s as a developer who formulates and implements inventive concepts for re-use projects in Germany and Eastern Europe. Re-use emerges as a choice of principle for him, inspired by an explicitly expressed vision of social developments and post-war urban planning. Hübotter, who has formulated his vision of building and development in a series of books, has received an impressive array of awards and honours for his contribution to the culture of building and for his cultural activism, and in in this issue of OASE he emerges as a model of highly socially and culturally engaged patronage.

Local politicians have long played a pivotal role in the construction of urban building devoted to culture,  and they also figure prominently in the post-war reconstruction campaigns in cities across Western Europe and in the realization of public buildings that invariably appeared in the new or re-built town centres. As national governments created the legal and financial frameworks of the welfare system, city councils and their leaders took the responsibility for concrete arrangements and for building schools, hospitals or housing. This article retraces the history of the post-war reconstruction of Stockholm’s inner city and the building of a new cultural centre through a study of Hjalmar Mehr, the most powerful Stockholm politician of the period and, arguably, one of the most effective local politicians in post-war Europe. In his various roles of councillor for social, financial and estate development, Mehr pressured his fellow Social Democrats to support the party line of a radical modernization of the city centre. The main public building that resulted from Mehr’s initiative, the Kulturhus, is described as the testament of a politician whose longing for a modern metropolis and a modern society played a crucial role in the radical reshaping of the landscape of a European capital. The building is shown to epitomize the agenda of the welfare state, based on Enlightenment thinking, acquiring an emblematic status for the new welfare city and a better, more just society.

The editorial of this issue of OASE opens up a reflection on architecture criticism, following the critical encounters (seminars, debates, lectures, round table discussions), the journal organised to mark its 25th anniversary. The discussions held with a series of stakeholders: architects, writers, academe, publishers, graphic designers, students, etc. have filtered into this issue, which simultaneously evaluates and explores the current state of architecture criticism, ranging from academic reflections on criticism, via the personal views of critics on its current state, to tentative explorations.