Aterro do Flamengo,  Rio de Janeiro – Brazil.
Designed by Lota de Macedo Soares; Urban and architectural project: Affonso Reidy, Sergio Bernardes and Jorge Moreira; Landscape design: Roberto Burle Marx.

World Cup 2014

In 2007 when FIFA announced that the 2014 World Cup would be hosted in Brazil, it seems to be like a great opportunity for investments and improvements such as bigger airports, improvement on public transportation, and more secure and accessible stadiums. But things did not happened this way.

At first, any Brazilian was exited with the Word Cup, all we could hear on the streets was about the delay of the works (of those ones that they started), the expectation on violent protests and how the government could use the money in more important issues as health and education.

It is not fair say that Brazil failed, but we lost a great opportunity. If by one side, the 2013 protest put in question the urban problems, in other the frustration with the unfinished infrastructure works exposed problems that are directly related to our profession: the failure of the contracting model and the lack of project.

Analyzing the issue of contracting, is possible to notice that we have historically two hiring models in architecture: one absolutely subjective, sponsorship; and another absolutely objective, quantitative worksheet.

The first one has your roots in our tradition of Fine Arts. The king, the pope or the governor chooses his favorite architect and order him to work. The criterion of choice? The simple fact that this architect I the best known, everybody knows that. Our patron Oscar Niemeyer, used and abused this form of hiring throughout his career, it is quite impossible find a competition won by Niemeyer (the second place in the competition for the Brazilian Pavilion in New York, 1938, is what comes closest).

In the case of the World Cup, the “public knowledge” was used in almost in stages, with no even one competition. Half of the 8 billion spent in the 12 stadiums came from state government (direct investment), the other half of federal loans. In other words, each governor with pen and checkbook on hand, called his favorite architect.

The second contracting model has its origins on the polytechnic tradition. Since here the aesthetic is less important, the building is transformed into quantitative materials and services, and the winner is the one that present the lowest price to the worksheet. The process that should be absolutely objective and rational stumbles into the problem that a design is hardly the same as another design even though its quantitative are very similar. Is like buy a car: the choice at the lowest price that works well for new cars is a disaster for used cars. We hired million cubic meters of concrete and thousands of square meters of terrain, but the urban design remains weak and mediocre.

Unfortunately, there is nothing in the Brazilian current bidding model that guarantees the quality of the architecture. Even when mounted on technical and price equations, the technique comes as project execution certificates. If such projects are good or bad, does not matter to the law whether attended or not the program, and generated or not a better city.

The World Cup did not leave a big legacy to the cities, but at least served as a catalyst for a debate that Brazil need to have urgently. For example: what if instead of giving coefficient of utilization as incentive for hotels we did the same with social housing in city centers? How much would it cost and what would be the impact on both the quality of life of the centers abandoned during the night and in the reduction of dislocations? And if the BNDES (National development bank) rather than lend to lend administrators stadiums consortia, with the same subsidized interest rates and longer terms, to reform abandoned buildings in urban center? What if instead of  PAC-Cup (Growth Acceleration Program) had one PAC-Urban Waters for renaturation of streams and transforming their flooded margins linear parks?

The World Cup has attracted global attention to Brazil, emphasizing the domestic problems, and I hope that it also create an opportunity to rethink our priorities and rethink the institutions and processes necessary to achieve these priorities.

UIA 2020 Rio

Some good results for architecture and urban designers can be seen through the innumerous works that continue to happen in Brazil after the Word Cup, especially in cities that will receive another events such as Rio with the Olympic Games and now the 27^th World Congress of Architects (UIA) in 2020, where almost 15 hundred architects and urban planners will get together to discuss the about the future of the cities upon the theme “All the Worlds. Just One World. Architecture 21”.

This event show that Brazil started to think about the diversity of urban question. The 21 century World is an urban World, and the problems that Brazil have now reproduce in many other urbanized cities. With a period of six years to prepare for the event, the expectation of the IAB (Institute of Brazilian Architects) is to bring big names in architecture to discuss the problem of predatory expansion of cities. The Rio de Janeiro goes through a current moment of transformation that with the rescue of a rich historical past, projects a future development. Rio has unique features: it is a metropolis, framed by lush nature and a diverse architecture, has great social challenges.

Cities become metropolises very quickly and Rio exemplifies several mistakes and successes. This exchange of information with other countries is important to discuss ways to improve the lives of people in the city

Themes such as nature preservation and urban grow certainly will be discuss, cities become metropolises very quickly and Rio exemplifies several mistakes and successes. This exchange of information with other countries is important to discuss ways to improve the lives of people in the city. Also the favelas is an issue that matters a lot to the third world, reflect how humans are building your space, since it cannot be absorbed by market mechanisms.

Education cannot be left out, the formation of architects and professionals whose disciplines are articulated to architecture and urban planning, as geographers, sociologists, anthropologists, should be analyzed, after all, we and our partners are the most responsible in this fight for quality of life in cities for all.

MALE’ CITY | CONGESTION | WATER CRISIS ?

        Male’ City – The capital of Maldives          www.obofili.com

Male’ is the capital city of the Maldives, a nation made up of over a thousand islands and completely surrounded by water. The Maldives is most well known as a favorite destination for tourists around the globe for it’s natural beauty, clear seas, rich marine ecosystems and white sandy beaches. However, the capital city Male’ is far from being a natural beauty unlike rest of the country.

While the Maldives is made up of hundreds of islands, the capital city is the only island with ‘proper’ health, education and other necessities. This has caused the majority of the population of the country to move to Male’ and this has caused major congestion in the island over the years. Maldives cover an area of 90,000 square kilometers in the Indian Ocean, but this island nation is often considered one of the most dispersed countries in the world. The capital city covers an area of 5.798 square kilometers by land. The population of the country is just over three hundred thousand and almost fifty percent of the whole population live in Male’. The government has had no proper infrastructure in place for the growing population. The island’s natural water resources are almost completely unusable due to over consumption and the increased construction of buildings throughout the island. It has become impossible to collect rainwater at all in the capital city, due to air pollution and the air being contaminated with dust and cement. However, people have started using bottled drinking water completely. Over the years, with the fight for democracy, Malé has been the epicenter of political protests and milestone events, and this has also brought in many socioeconomic problems in to this very small-congested island.

The Maldivian government established the Maldives Water and Sewerage Company as a solution for this and to provide the public with desalinated water from seawater as the main supply. MWSC has seen slow growth similar to the rest of the government owned companies and is the only water supplier for the whole island. The main income source of the country tourism gets most of it’s income through Resort Hotels established in islands which are fully equipped with desalination plants and resources, which is proof that the country has businessmen or investors who are fully capable of establishing a private water company. Although the government’s policy for this is quite closed and prefers a state owned company.

However, the inhabited islands also face the same problem of water scarcity at some extent. A dozen islands had nearly run out of water completely. If it weren’t for the weekly cargo boat that brought in bottles of water in plastic, the stored water in some households wouldn’t last a week. “I am very upset with the government because we need water,” 42-year-old Jameela Aboobakuru from Gaafaru. “We ran out of water, so we borrowed water from our brother. When he ran out of water we started buying bottled water imported from Male’.” In some parts of the country where there is shortage of clean drinking water a family would spend 22 dollars a day to buy bottled water for drinking and cooking. Due to the dispersed geographical positioning of islands, it has always been a challenge for the authorities responsible to provide proper facilities and services to the public. Not only is the water scarcity, but also in the field of education and health, it has always been a challenge to provide proper and up to standard facilities in every island.  And this has been the main reason why the capital city Male’ have been able to offer better infrastructure compared to islands, and this brought in many residents from islands into the city.

After the Asian Tsunami, over 70 of the 200 inhabited islands had disruptions to their water supplies, either through destruction of rainwater tanks or salinization of groundwater. The immediate response of the authorities was to provide mobile desalination plants, which proved effective if not expensive until rainwater harvesting could be reestablished in the monsoon. This has also brought in new thought of changing from traditional household self-managed systems to community systems necessitating co-operative management, which requires levels of technical expertise and financial recovery.

       Male’ City – How congested we are…          www.obofili.com

The Island of Malé, the fifth most densely populated island in the world, without proper management has faced several problems in the last couple of years. The political unrest in the country itself brought in many new challenges and difficulties to the citizens, and also the struggle for power over political parties have diminished the standards of some basic public services like management of water, health services and also education standards. The Male’ city council at present governed by the opposition party members faces several difficulties when dealing with the government bodies, and this results in poor service for the citizens or delayed service. It is the question of interest that arises, the political interest or the general public interest that needs to be catered first. The decisions that we make for the gain of one single citizen would have several negative effects for the future.

Likewise, in the designing and construction industry designers do not further research into the possible challenges that might arise with poor designing of residential buildings in such a crowded and congested piece of land. If we do not make our designs sustainable enough now, then we do not have a chance even to exist on the land we care so much. Global warming and sea level rise has been one of the most concerning environment factors that the low laying islands have faced in the past several years. Due to its low height above sea level, seasonal rain floods the capital city with water and without proper drainage it becomes a complete chaos in the monsoon season. The poor waste management facilities in the capital add to this bringing in diseases during the rainy season. I believe this could be resolved with better and firm management and designing and proper waste management and recycling.

It is impossible to believe that a country surrounded by water does not actually have a proper water infrastructure. Designers when designing multi-storey residential buildings do not take into account consulting a professional electrician or plumber and even the authorities responsible for checking the building regulations do not take this as a strict measure. However, an office building or a resort island has proper regulations. But I believe that it is the residential buildings that need to be first properly managed in order to have other services running appropriately.Some of the policies of the government have caused increased prices for public services and slow growth in these areas, which could easily be resolved by privatising these companies.

One of the very recent issues the capital island of Male’ faced was the fire in the lone desalination plant (MWSC) on December 4^th 2014, which left the capitals 130,000 inhabitants without running water for days. Schools and government offices were closed and the complete city was under fear of not having clean water for days. The issue was solved due to foreign relations with the neighboring countries like India and Sri Lanka who began airlifting bottled water to the capital as taps ran dry while China and the United States also provided assistance.  India also provided ships with desalination capabilities to boost supplies. However it is sad to say even at times of such crisis political preferences play a huge role in the tiny island nation. The designing also made the situation worse by people living on upper floors not being able to get water for days. Street scuffles erupted at many places where authorities were distributing bottled water under a strict rationing system. Shops ran out of containers to collect water and people went on to collect empty bottles from the junk yards, and the situation was worsened when there was dispute over water being supplied to certain citizens and were limited to others. While water is a basic need that needs to be provided apart from the political preferences.

Shekhar Kapur, at the WaterWoMen conference in the Maldives: ‘Long before we run out of water, we’ll go to war over it.’ 

Many restaurants and shops were closed and some residents travelled to neighboring islands where there is water for drinking and washing. The crisis did not hit the atoll nation’s luxury tourist resorts located on other islands, which have their own power generation and desalination plants.

Maldives with the biggest challenge of global warming and sea level rise needs to rethink in terms of designing and planning for the future. We need to reconsider how we want to shape our future city, and not constructing just buildings, but buildings that are sustainable and efficient in terms of providing the best services and facilities. I also believe that the capital city of Maldives needs better urban spaces and public spaces for the betterment of the future generations. The congestion and such crisis needs to be resolved sooner if we want to make our cities a better place to live in. We also need to keep our political differences aside, which quite seem impossible in a country like Maldives which recently went through a police mutiny by bringing down a government which was elected by the people. But if we are to improve our living standards and improve public services we need to keep political preferences aside. We need to be sustainable and we need to be economical.

Collision Between Public And Private Sector Of The Built Environment Professionals

The Economics of Sustainability_ayaanbarodawala - click to view pdf

Of the many nations in the world only a small handful still consider themselves to be communist. China and Vietnam have markedly capitalist leanings, while the communist labels of Laos and North Korea are dubious, exhibiting many characteristics of military dictatorships. Only Cuba, the former Soviet ally and eternal pariah for the United States, still adheres to many of the tenets established by Marx and Engels in their investigation and pursuit of an enlightened utopian society. Since Fidel Castro and his fellow revolutionaries first raided the island in 1959, Cubans have seen their healthcare system become one of the finest in the world, yet still many subsist on food stamps to feed their families {1}. They have also seen their industrial composition morph from sugar export to beach tourism, and their environment has transitioned from pristine, to degraded, although now it is recovering. In fact Cuba is considered to be one of the only sustainable countries in the world {2}. In part, this is likely due to the United States embargo that affects almost every aspect of daily life in Cuba: the country has been unable to import pesticides or other agricultural products, so the majority of their farming is organic by necessity. In addition, the need to supplement their government food rations has driven Cubans to practice urban agriculture, thus reducing the average embedded carbon footprint of each meal. Perhaps the small scale of their island relative to such behemoth nations as China or Russia has altered the Cuban perspective. For example, by 1959 approximately 86% of the island had been deforested under the colonial powers and the dictator Fulgencio Bautista. Since then the national reforestation project has been repopulating trees. Every aspect of forestry became regulated with the passing of the National Forestry Act in 1998, and today 26.7% of the island is covered in forest, and increasing. The government currently employs over 40,000 people in forest-related work including park rangers, lumber industrialists, and university graduates {3}. Clearly a combination of economic and political factors have produced a uniquely Cuban sustainability paradigm.

Said that, it is important to understand that as a more civic city is our objective, we should increase the value of peoples decisions over their lives, and since with all the information that we already offered to people, some of them still believe that the private transportation is the best for them. In this scene, the use of the city streets become a representation of the city’s life, and it is its most public space.

Jane Jacobs wrote at “The Death and Life of Great American Cities” (1961) that streets “serve other purposes besides carryng wheeled traffic in their middles. Streets and their sidewalks, the main public places of a city, are its most vital organs.”

Understanding one important lesson of economy will be useful to understand why the majority of cities in the world will not be totally free of cars in the next years: If someone can choose between two things to consume, they will always consume what in their minds in good for them. So it is not difficult to understand that in some countries where the infrastructure of the city public transport system is bigger and well manteined (western europe countries and japan) people use less cars, and countries in which the private transport receives a big amount of invesments (North America) and countries which the public transport system poorly exist (South America and Eastern Europe), the private way of transport is the major used among the others.

Presenting what is happening in São Paulo (Brazil), this article pretends to show a way of a non planned union between the Private and Public Sector to increase the use of bicycles in this city without any form of pushing the users to do this by punisment and spending almost any public money, just urban planning.

At the beggining of December 2014, the Paris mayor announced plans to ban diesel cars from the French capital by 2020 as part of an anti-pollution drive. Anne Hidalgo also said parts of central Paris would severely curtail private car use by creating semi-pedestrianised zones, beginning with an experiment on weekends which could be “rapidly” extended to include weekdays. Vehicle use inside these zones would be limited to the cars of residents, and emergency and delivery vehicles.
Source: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/07/paris-mayor-hidalgo-plans-ban-diesel-cars-french-capital-2020

São Paulo is the major city in Brazil. In its metropolitan area lives more than 11 million people and the city has the largest economy by GDP in Latin America and Southern Hemisphere. But besides of its wealth, as other mega-cities in emergent economies, the city has a lot of unequal healthy and underdevellopped infrastructure, which causes a very difficult life for the poorest, since they do not have a easy access to public services, and forces the ones who have the economical power, to get those services by the private sector. This situation occurs in the public transportation also. In the last decades of Brazil, the private transportation have been understood as the mainly method of transportation, and also as a way of economical development by the growth of the car industries. Hopefully this idea has started to change since the end of the military dictatorship (primary a right wing government).

The “Elevado Costa e Silva”, built in the 70′s by the military dictatorship, crossing a central residential area in downtown was at the beggining received as a wealth signal and later became a reason for degradation of the area. Their demolishment started to be seriously discussed by the city major at 2006, and again by the current mayor, both from different political parties.
Source: http://wikimapia.org/12916395/pt/Elevado-Presidente-Costa-e-Silva-Minhoc%C3%A3o

During the last three decades, NGO’s started to appear in São Paulo trying to aware the popullation for issues like preservation of the enviroment, public participation on politics of cities, use of bicycles, among others. Those NGO’s ttogetherer with the spread of information from the press about those issues made some segments of the society (usually higher-medium segments) tried to respond in a positive away about those questions. Those people started to consume more ecological and social responsable products. Sooner, companies started to capitalize and became, at least apparentaly, more ecological and social responsable. One of those segments were the banks, who saw an opportunity to gather a more positive and up-to date image among young and rich consumers. Those banks made a system of renting bicycles for a couple of minutes for free, and charge for a little value if the user rides more hours, but you could only use this service if you are a client of those banks. At begining those stations for renting bicycles were instaled in a very few areas and only in rich neighborhods of the city to atract those young rich consummers. Those stations started to function as a unique way of advertisement of the banks, since public advertisement are extremely controlled in São Paulo. Sooner they realized that those stations could function not only as a way of self promotion, but also as a little source of income and due to the good reception, those banks installed those stations in different parts of the city. The idea of a bicycle as a way of transportation achieved a status of ‘possibility’ in the minds of the rich popullation, who were using them during the weekends.

Images of the two stations of the different banks. The first one is from Itaú in, the program started at 2012 and is called Bike Sampa (http://www.bikesampa.com.br/app/), and the other was Bradesco, who started the Ciclo Sampa in 2013 (http://www.ciclosampa.com.br/), both of them with the suport of the cityhall, but made and controlled by the banks.

In 2013 the current mayor of São Paulo started a big program that would deliver 400km of bicycle lanes to the city (http://www.cetsp.com.br/consultas/bicicleta/400km.aspx), which already have built 78km at September 2014. At the beggining the population was extremely against this program, but later gained more than 80% of aproval (http://g1.globo.com/sao-paulo/noticia/2014/09/datafolha-80-aprovam-ciclovias-em-sp-aumenta-popularidade-de-haddad.html). Those lanes were installed and planed by the public sector, and different from the private, started on the downtown area and spread fast to reach more distant regions, mainly by poorer people. Today those lanes are not only used by poor people, but by everyone. The government is still installing the lanes which are used as a way of transportation and as a hobby during the weekend. Also, developed a small station similar to the ones of the banks, but continue working together with the banks to install the first ones.

Map of the current bicycles lanes of the city: 1- in all over the city, 2- in downtown and at 3- a maily rich area.
Source: http://vadebike.org/2014/07/mapa-ciclovias-sao-paulo-ciclofaixas-ciclorrotas/

In conclusion, it is clear that the car is still the major way of transportation among the rich people, since the most rich neighborhoods are the ones with the fewest amount of lanes in the city, and the ones in which the program is the most unpopular. But also, it was because of those rich regions that those banks installed those stations. Both of them functioned in a coexistence way. Both of them could exist without each other, but they become more effective together. The stations were the initial step on this coexistence, their job was to gather public awareness to the transport issue and were done by the private sector and are the most efective way of charging. The lanes in other hand, is an infrastructure in the city, it is very cheap to be installed, but could only be installed by the public agent and since there are no eficiant way of charging people for using it, it is perfect to achieve the poor regions. They represent a balanced existence between two sectors, none of them took the right of the car to share the city, and shows a economic sustainability change in the city, made without a center agent, but with all agents working together: Society, Public Sector and Private Sector.

Derinkuyu underground city in the Derinkuyu district in Nevşehir Province, Turkey

“If you would see how interwoven it is in the warp and woof of civilization… go at night-fall to the top of one of the down-town steel giants and you may see how in the image of material man, at once his glory and his menace, is the thing we call a city. There beneath you is the monster, stretching acre upon acre into the far distance. High over head hangs the stagnant pall of its fetid breath, reddened with light from myriad eyes endlessly, everywhere blinking. Thousands of acres of cellular tissue, the city’s flesh outspreads layer upon layer, enmeshed by an intricate network of veins and arteries radiating into the gloom, and in them, with muffled, persistent roar, circulating as the blood circulates in your veins, is the almost ceaseless beat of the activity to whose necessities it all conforms. The poisonous waste is drawn from the system of this gigantic creature by infinitely ramifying, thread-like ducts, gathering at their sensitive terminals matter destructive of its life, hurrying it to millions of small intestines to be collected in turn by larger, flowing to the great sewers, on to the drainage canal, and finally to the ocean.”

Frank Lloyd Wright, “The Art and Craft of the Machine” in On Architecture: Selected Writings (1894-1940)

We live in urban nets whose central points represent the cities as density attractors. The development of this grid has been evolving since its first appearance following the concentration, conceived to envelop almost all human activities in opened systems that allow people to exchange matter and energy within and between them. Just after the second world war, nets begin to grow in complexity and functionality according to new technologies and cultural visions, and regained his central position in contemporary debates, exactly as the industrial revolution had made in the previous century.

We live in a spatially limited system (Earth) and our population is rocketing. Our main energy resources are scars or economically not desirable because of the actual market. We are used to say we live in a urbanized world only because half of our population lives in cities, that easily disappear near the nature extension. In addition, circulation and transportation facilities, with housing technical equipments, have been overloading cities and people since the first Ford T. From there, we were really near to the real and mature industrialism.

Within the world actual economic and cultural system, money market and labour market assume the main role in leading people interests and desires. As Adam Smith remind us,

 “Labour was the first price, the original purchase-money that was paid for all things. It was not by gold or by silver, but by labour, that all the wealth was originally purchased;  and its value, to those who possess it, and who want to exchange it for some new productions, is precisely equal to the quantity of labour which it can enable them to purchase or command (The Wealth of nations, 1776).

Robert Minor, The Daily Worker (22nd December, 1924)

With the adoption of the money the labour itself became alienating and, instead of applying your own skills to gain goods and services with values (first of all of survival), you work to obtain something without immediate values with which you are able to get what you need. From a conceptual point of view, what seems to be inappropriate is to insert in this process a third and overcomplicating element. We needed to set a objective rule or method to exchange but this new market has been responsible to transform the way we conceive life and cities. As natural consequence, almost every existing product has a price that rarely corresponds to its real value, the maximum amount of money a specific actor is willing and able to pay.

Christoph Gielen, Nevada aerial

Even if, as L. Mumford said,

 “The city is a fact in nature, like a cave, a run of mackerel or an ant-heap. But is also a conscious work of art, and it holds within its communal framework many simpler and more personal forms art. Mind takes form in the city; and in turn, urban forms condition mind” (The Culture of Cities, 1938),

we know that, at this point, cities shouldn’t be considered like the only source of knowledge and experience. In reverse, cities are becoming a place in which is almost impossible to pander to solitude and calm. For this reason, many people have been moving toward the outer areas, hoping to find better and healthier conditions. But at the level with which this phenomenon appeared, it is clear that this is not going to reveal itself as the right solution, especially thinking that suburbs are the most problematic areas within the cities.

Although we should consider time as a valuable conceptual created by our minds, it is a useful parameter to measure duration. Time, as goods, is scars and everyone has to manage with it, gathering from it all needed activities. This leads us to think about how time is conceived in the city. Without mentioning any examples given that every urban agglomerate has its own rhythms, it is clear that time has become a luxury good according to a always faster and more dynamic world (job, transports, individual growth).

World urban density

After centuries of architectural research and thousands of failed attempts, the human beings recognized that their development, as they conceive it now, it is not the most reliable and fluid growth modality. Seen from outside, our nets are liable to collapse. Looking at the world urban density map it is easy to detect that our spatial occupation is not balanced and widespread all over the planet, according to different parameters like natural conditions and resources, history, cultural development. The most of the population is condensed in Europe, North America, South Asia and beside coasts. The main empty spaces: the inner part of South America (Amazon forest), North Africa (Sahara desert), Australia and central Asia. Human beings always tried to settle in the natural habitats that allowed him to provide materials and energy, accomplishing a constant and continuous concentration mainly towards temperate and flat lands.

Speaking about occupation there are different and contrasting opinions, some of them toward the idea of a dense and compact urbanized habitat and some other toward toward an enlargement of our presence in the natural environment. The first one is about decreasing footprint, reducing pathways and resources use, still maintaining a high rate of consumption. The second one is about occupying the space we have at our disposal dismantling the city and scattering it all over the nature. This concept has strong and little appreciated roots in Frank Lloyd Wright research in relation with north american planning approach. There, urbanization reached its maximum peak despite the huge amount of flat and empty terrain and the critic against urbanization is heart-felt.

What we are speaking about is an intense change both in architectural development and in urban life concept. After having fought with the nature for a long time, now we can occupy all the available space, even in that extreme sites that we are not used to consider. Every occupation act would be different from one to another, since every building would be conceived starting from the natural properties and features of the site. Spontaneous diversity is able to construct a more flexible and reliable world, since there are not any central poles able to fall apart. In a continuous natural inhabited space people would be able to have their own space and to contribute to evolve it, in a more conscious way. Every different location would have its own resources and could exchange them with neighbours. This asset would permit to add cultural multiplicity and more interesting activities in a smaller spatial range, saving time and money from the transportation system. With more space we would have more time since every activities would be present in each cell of this human pattern. Thousands of different dwellings that adapt themselves to the natural elements contributing to create a personal private space for everyone. No more archetype or models. No more passive approach. So that this could be realized the main goal is to change and improve our economical system.

Capitalist production has become our first activity but, as J. M. Keynes said, Capitalism is “the astonishing belief that the nastiest motives of the nastiest men somehow or other work for the best results in the best of all possible worlds”. What mainly appears unusual is that, instead of beginning a consequence of demand, production always control the market. Goods are produced and then sold to people, without counting how many unities the market is asking for. This behavior generates a general misunderstanding about what people really need.

photo credits: http://www.logitravel.co.uk/hotels/rome-11613374.html

Lately there has been a major transformation. Until a few decades, historical heritage (monuments) were the basis of cultural and architectural tourism, today excellent Modern architecture has the same power of attraction, what makes cities great increase in the number of tourists and turning cities into a new tourist attraction. The example that best describes this is Dubai, known worldwide as a Middle Eastern capital of extravagance. If we look at photos from 20 years ago, and 10 years in advance can be clearly seen how the city for only 10 years, thanks to oil money, became a popular and the last few years one of the major tourist destinations in the world. However, it is well known that today oil plays a very small role in the overall revenues of the state, while tourism and trade play a most important role. This is an example of modern branding of the city by the imposing architecture.

Modern architecture is a commercial, whether it be on the premises or on the context in which it is created. The building itself is an attraction, a great advertising that its form points to the leisure facilities, but when placed in the context of the city, the region and the environment in which it is located (location, climate, relief,  cityscape) then becomes a symbol of not only the author’s work but rather the symbol of the city, region, country, society.

An ideal example is Sydney Opera House( by architect Jon Utzon) is a true example of the impact that architecture can have, not only the location at which it is generated, but also to the global culture. Location of the property affects the inspiration for the shape of the object, which visually should be a sail on the high seas. The image that was created by unique performance of shell of the object became a global landmark in Sydney, but also symbol across Australia. Surely, such a facility would be a spectacle at any location in the technological sense, but its siting in the coastal city has a specific meaning and thus the dependence of the location comes into play. Such objects of course should contribute to a better positioning of the city in the network / system of European and world cities, which has the effect of economic advancement.

photo credits: http://www.prideviewproperties.co.uk/listing/dubai-marina/

 However, is this modern architecture economicaly and functionally viable?

As for the commercial component architecture and tourism, art and expressive architecture is certainly a luxury where economically successful enterprise functionality of the building deemed sufficient. For the purpose of explanation must be noted that in this case we’re talking about architectural design that is reduced to the minimum requirements set by one such a functional building. Tourist property mostly have value if they are  profitable, no get no value. Architecture costs and naturally multiplies the investment compared to the facility that is reduced to pure functionality. Already at the stage of business planning topics architecture is the first critical point and requires a professional economical budget and highly professional estimation of the location and design of products. In contrast, good or unusual architecture increases the interest of the market and, depending on the product evaluation, can give a new location, attractive appearance. This again increases demand and real price, which in turn makes for a larger commercial success than it would perhaps be achieved by conventional functional construction.

Architecture creates also new functionality, or causes by using this new functionality that all inherited and old different experiences, thus offering the possibility of tourism development of new products. From the perspective of visitors still here must not remain non-mentioned discussion ‘form follows function’ or ‘function follows form’ that just in tourism real estate and products can lead to oscillation in the evaluation of both positive and negative. Tourism and architecture never before were so closely together on the development of products such as is the case today. This again closes the circle of mutual success. Therefore, unsuccessful projects are “monsters”, built as a demonstration of a specific conceptual directions in architecture, which are successful in their intent to share certain thoughts and way of looking at architecture and urban space and there are only a sculptural, while their function transforms.

There we come to the point of sustainability, which is not just a technical problem. In order to achive success, a sustainable project must be socially sustainable as well as economically. Such a project should comunicate with its society, should attract and be inspiring, and over all mast make economic sense. Architecture in terms of tourism  is now an integral element of the planning of the city, whether it is of cultural heritage or contemporary architecture. When it comes to heritage, it is the architecture resulting in a particular context that is completely defined and therefore it is a testimony about history. In this sense, the architecture can become a brand that describes the identity of certain social or cultural groups, and linked to the cultural and educational tourism.  Although today in most cases this architecture is unfunctional and hard switching to modern forms of construction works and the city life, it must be preserved and used in the planning of sustainable development of the city just as part of the tourism industry.

Modern architecture, unlike the architecture of cultural heritage, is viewed from the aspect of entertainment and spectacle, even if we talk about function of the structure, location or shape. Unusual and controversial form that uses all the benefits of modern technology certainly attracts the attention of visitors, but this is not always enough. Location which provides the context and function that brings the economic viability and the possibility of continued use of space is also one of the important factors for the transfer of a work of architecture in the branded product. Modern cities  nowadays pay  a great attention to precisely such projects, as drivers of further development and city expansion, as well as the region, in some cases and countries. Great architecture, not only that it promotes economic and social development, but it becomes a product that markets itself as a symbol that exceeds target group and everyone’s must-see tourist destination.