New Forms Taschen 204

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Pages216/217 Aldo Rossi Hotel II Palazzo Fukuoka, iapan. 1988-89

The result of a fruitful collabora tion botween this Milanese architect and designer; such as the late Shiro Kuramata. the Palazzo Hotel is an island of calm and comparative luxury in the bustling, chaotic enyironment of the commcrcial center of Fukuoka. Its blank facade may have morę to do with Roman tombs than with Japanese temples. but curiously in an architectural enyironment whcre anything goes. this błock of marble and copper does not seem as incongruous as it might.

objectives. Our 'bottom linę' economies ensure that there is no incentive to invest in ecological technologies that only pay off in the long run.

After a century of refinement, the Steel or concrete building has never been so cheap to build, nor built so cheaply.

While buildings of all types are being packaged and standardized, architeas are being selected on the basis of lowest fees rather than the quality of their work. Designing greater flexibility into our modern buildings inevitably moves architec-ture away f rom f ixed and perfea forms. But when a society needs buildings that are capable of responding to changing requirements, I believe we must search for new forms that express the power of change.

Restoring old buildings to their supposed original condition is, I would argue, a spurious notion. Buildings have always been adapted, reshaped, redecorated, re-plumbed and relit. But this living process grinds to a halt in the face of over-zealous preservation. Today, we are letting our architectural heritage choke our futurę. Making museums of our cities ossifies society.

Rather than rely on high-energy consumption, architeas are now beginning to explore building forms and technologies that harness natural resources - land-scape, wind, sun, earth and water.

Computer technology is one of the breakthroughs in the design of low-energy buildings. Programs now available can generate models that predia air movement, light levels and heat gain while the buildings are still on the drawing board. This sig-nificantly increases our ability to refine each aspea of the design of a building, so as to maximize the use of its natural enyironment. And it is computers that are giving buildings increasingly sensitive elearonic nervous Systems, able to register interna! and external conditions and respond to individual needs. New materials

6 Outlook