Architecture Against Architecture

Architecture, as we know it, may be coming to an end, and architects only have themselves to blame. The profession is out of touch, refusing to acknowledge the changes in the conditions that they work, or to reflect on how they go about doing their job. In Architecture Against Architecture, Reinier de Graaf sets out a 14-point manifesto of what needs to be done to revolutionise architecture for the 21st century.

With wit and insight, De Graaf anatomises the future of the profession and calls for the end the era of the Staritect. How architects should unionise. Why there should be a mandatory retirement age of 67. That building should not be copyrighted. How to use AI in practise. At the same time, he looks at the economics and politics of design. He offers strategies of why we should stop building. That architects should design to adapt to climate change rather than to mitigate it. To reuse rather than demolish. And the vital question of whether an architect can refuse a project on moral grounds.

This book will provoke and challenge readers. De Graaf wants to rebuild architecture from the ground up and make it relevant again.

Author Biography

Reinier de Graaf (1964, Schiedam) is a Dutch architect and writer. He is a partner in the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), where he leads projects in Europe, Russia and the Middle East. Reinier is the co-founder of OMA’s think-tank AMO and Sir Arthur Marshall Visiting Professor of Urban Design at the University of Cambridge. He is the author of Four Walls and a Roof: The Complex Nature of a Simple Profession, Architect, verb.: The New Language of Building and the novel The Masterplan. He lives in Amsterdam.