Converging on neutrality

“Today, sustainability is on everyone’s minds, including architects’,” says Jacques Lucan, Professor of Architectural History at EN AC and author of a treatise on the history of theories of architectural design over the past two centuries. “Just like everyone else, we are caught up in the social movement that is calling for sustainable development. For us, the challenge has become: how can we, as architects, incorporate the transformations that are taking place in society into our projects in a positive way, without simply bowing to them?”

“Take solar panels as an example,” he continues. They come from the realm of engineering. Until recently, they’ve been added to buildings after their completion, without being included in the architectural design process. But today, solar panels are starting to be seamlessly integrated into architectural building blocks such as facade elements. As they evolve from mere technological add-ons to actual building components, Lucan predicts that they will begin to drift into the architectural design process.

The evolution of architecture doesn’t always proceed along such a linear path. As Lucan puts it, “Architecture is more like a turbulent stream, with new ideas continuously being generated and put into practice, and this confrontation of ideas constantly leads to new visions.” With each project, news ideas are tested. In a Darwinian sense, some successful ideas are retained and many less successful ones are rejected. “Over time,” says Lucan, “the various visions diverge and an entire geography of architecture is drawn, only to converge again around a few fundamental ideas. These are the basis of what we call the history of architecture.”

So-called “functional neutrality” has become one of the more recent points of convergence in contemporary architecture. It made its first appearances in the second half of the twentieth century, in opposition to the then dominant vision of functionalism. Functionalism, with its “form follows function” mantra, postulates that a building be designed with a particular function in mind. But buildings often outlived their function. Some avant-garde architects rocked the boat: Why not design buildings that could evolve with societal demands? This, in a nutshell, is “functional neutrality.” And now, decades later, this sustainable vision of adaptive, functionally neutral buildings is still gaining momentum. The Rolex Learning Center, built on the EPFL campus, is a good case in point. Picture it empty and try to imagine ways in which it could be put to use. There’s nothing in the building’s design to indicate that its use should be a library, a bookshop and a restaurant. It is neutral by design; its users are given the task of defining its function.

A number of societal changes are underway that today’s and tomorrow’s architects will need to address. How will we live in our houses and apartments in the future? Work habits are changing as more and more people work from home. And traditional family structures are giving way to increasing numbers of patchwork families. Will our homes be designed to be more functionally neutral, giving us extra leeway in deciding how to best take advantage of the rooms? Will they provide spaces that can be tailored to satisfy a range of needs of work at home parents, by transforming them into offices, meeting rooms, workshops or depots? Or will other avenues be pursued, leading to yet unexplored, alternative solutions? “These are just some of the important questions that a faculty like ours has to address,” says Lucan.