Stefan Kurath
Baukultur mit Bestand
Gedanken über einen dringend notwendigen Paradigmawechsel im Denken, Planen und Miteinander des Weiterbauens
Book design: Wessinger und Peng, Stuttgart
Euro [D] 25.–, Euro [A] 25.70
Pre-order. Release date: October 2024
ISBN
978-3-03863-086-9
• A polemic. The connection between
planning, practical construction, and society is missing
• Includes practical examples – How did what is already there come about? What changes are needed to make an impact?
“There is obviously no lack of ideas and proposed solutions for how the built environment ought to be.
But they are without effect.
Hardly anyone ever asks why that is the case.”
“We urgently need to tackle two fundamental questions: Why is the planning not working as we hoped? And what do we need to do for the goals of sustainable development to start to have an impact on the built environment?”
Stefan Kurath takes a personal, precise, and clear approach to analyzing what is going wrong in construction. He observes that efforts to improve plan-ning and planning processes often focus on aspects that in truth we no longer need to optimize as they have already been optimized.
What we lack is the connection between planning and construction practice. He emphasizes the importance of continually reconnecting points of intersection – the translation of planning into built reality – in a novel way in terms of design.
“We urgently need to tackle two fundamental questions: Why is the planning not working as we hoped? And what do we need to do for the goals of sustainable development to start to have an impact on the built environment?”
Stefan Kurath takes a personal, precise, and clear approach to analyzing what is going wrong in construction. He observes that efforts to improve plan-ning and planning processes often focus on aspects that in truth we no longer need to optimize as they have already been optimized.
What we lack is the connection between planning and construction practice. He emphasizes the importance of continually reconnecting points of intersection – the translation of planning into built reality – in a novel way in terms of design.
According to Kurath, good planning can only have an impact if the connections between planning, construction, and society are permanently established. Taking key moments in realized building, townscape, neighborhood, and cultural landscape projects as an example, the author shows how we got to where we are and what is needed to ensure that planned content is actually put into practice.
Stefan Kurath is an architect and urbanist with many years of research and teaching experience at the ZHAW Institut Urban Landscape (IUL) in Winterthur. The insights he has gained in research, teaching, and professional practice form the basis of this very personal polemic that touches on a sore subject.
The book is intended to help us learn to reconnect the points of intersection between planning and execution in order to better shape construction and our environment. It is suitable for all professionals and non-professionals involved in planning.
Stefan Kurath is an architect and urbanist with many years of research and teaching experience at the ZHAW Institut Urban Landscape (IUL) in Winterthur. The insights he has gained in research, teaching, and professional practice form the basis of this very personal polemic that touches on a sore subject.
The book is intended to help us learn to reconnect the points of intersection between planning and execution in order to better shape construction and our environment. It is suitable for all professionals and non-professionals involved in planning.
About the author:
Prof. Dr. Stefan Kurath (born 1976) works as an architect and urbanist from his office in Zurich and Grisons and serves as Head of the Institut Urban Landscape at the School of Architecture, Design and Civil Engineering of Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW) together with Regula Iseli.
He thinks, writes, researches, and teaches on the subject of urban landscapes. His research includes questions on how a city is created and what role architects, landscape architects, planners, and spatial structures play in this context.
He thinks, writes, researches, and teaches on the subject of urban landscapes. His research includes questions on how a city is created and what role architects, landscape architects, planners, and spatial structures play in this context.
