Dieter Hoffmann-Axthelm on the obsession with preservation

The renowned city planner Dieter Hoffmann-Axthelm reflects on why the "throw-away" society has developed such an obsession with keeping and preserving things: "Modern society wanted to get rid of all the sacred, the grand and all collective emotional ties. But right from the beginning it was disappointed by its increasing inability to create its own new monuments... While from a technical point of view anything is possible and a single generation is capable of constructing buildings that would have taken centuries in the past, the belief in the relation between function and building is disappearing in the heads of those responsible for creating architecture. You can build a royal palace in two years, but it will never be more than a hotel or a bank. A self-confident society may not want to admit that the time could come when it is no longer capable of producing new monuments, but in view of the dwindling ability to create real monuments, buildings have inevitably become nothing more than pure architecture."

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