Rien ne va Plus. Architecture in Times of Crisis

On November 16 2010 PAVILION UNICREDIT reopened after the summer break with Rien ne va Plus, an exhibition produced by Powerhouse Company, a dutch architecture office.

The impact of the financial crash on architecture was unforeseen and unprecedented. The question, “what’s wrong with our financial system?”, could be followed by the question, “what’s wrong with our architecture?”
This last boom was caused by the financial structures of real estate loans and speculation. Architecture became a means of wealth rather than well-being, a speculation feeder and a marketeer. From the socially committed origins of modernism, to postmodernism, to fashion and icon architecture – what is left of the moral authority that the Modern Movement had given to architecture? And if architecture is no longer socially committed, how can it provide for much-needed sustainable solutions? How can we create architecture that is based on long-term qualities rather than on short-term profits?

Rien ne va Plus started as a research project based on the assumption that we are today witnessing three crises. First, an economic crisis caused by excessive speculation on housing, secondly, an environmental crisis giving rise to unprecedented climate changes and thirdly, a generational crisis caused by the retirement of the biggest generation ever.

The exhibition is not a conclusion on how to make a better practice, neither does it offer immediate solutions; it aims to open a conversation, firstly, about the necessary shift in our overall mindset and then about possible answers to these crises.

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