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The Future of the European City

Eastern European metropolises are proud of their high-rise buildings designed by star architects, while in London, skyscrapers are increasingly becoming part of the cityscape. Yet many European cities are more sceptical when it comes to contemporary architecture, particularly when it changes their historical appearance.

Whether in Warsaw or Zurich, Prague or London – wherever new, aesthetic, or unusual buildings emerge in Europe – they give rise to controversy. Indeed, contemporary architecture has a polarising effect, for what one person may see as a symbol of a forward-looking society, for another equals a loss of identity and irreparable damage to ensembles of buildings that have grown up naturally in the course of a city's history.

London's skyline
Photo: AP

Social and economic change will determine the future of Europe's cities, and the role of architecture in this is an implicit part of the discussion. But the focus is usually on specific construction projects; rarely is there a debate about the overall appearance of a city. As journalist and historian Henning Hoff declared in a contribution for Zeit online, it seems "as if even metropolises that are remarkably uninteresting in themselves are stumbling into the future, a future which they will only begin to discuss when it is too late."

The Model European City

Cities like Vilnius and Dublin, Helsinki and Rome differ from one another by virtue of regional architectonic peculiarities and their own unique problems. What they have in common is that their character is determined by the model of the European city. They have public squares and historic city centres in which private housing, commercial buildings and imposing public buildings stand side by side. Planning and building regulations determine the city's appearance.

Is this model being challenged by contemporary architecture? Do cities need buildings that depart from the familiar cityscape to prevent city centres becoming museums? Are high-rise buildings still appropriate for our time, or do they destroy historical cityscapes?

Preservation of a City's Heritage or a Loss of Identity

In his article in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, published on 9 August 2006, architecture critic Gerhard Matzig pleaded for an appreciation of high-rise buildings instead of rejecting this model for the European city: "If Europe wants to avoid becoming the old-city museum-island of the Asian world, and at the same time to preserve in a lively manner its uncommonly rich urban cultural heritage, it must address the benefits of building upwards; while perhaps leaving aside ecologically and economically absurd super-skyscrapers, nevertheless with a sense for the vertical form as living space."

Writing in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung on 30 January 2007, Jürgen Tietz agreed that a structure's height was not in itself a problem. Instead, he pointed a finger at the global stars of the architectural scene, whom he claimed had caused European cities to lose their identity, their urban distinctiveness: "Was this building in Hamburg, Tokyo or Paris? Was that museum in Bern, Manchester or Seoul? Was the architect Eisenman, Koolhaas or Piano? Who built what, when and where? The structures are already jumbled together. In the age of the Global Village, architectural images crowd into one another like the paintings in a museum. Just as if one could rearrange them every few years."

Renaissance of the High-Rise

Receptiveness to new architecture or even to high-rise buildings varies from one European city to another. In London, for example, areas on the edges of the inner city, like Canary Wharf in the Docklands, the location of London's tallest buildings to date, were released for high-rise construction in the 1980s. In the meantime, however, skyscrapers have been built in the city centre as well. The most prominent example is also an illustration of the iconic architecture that Jürgen Tietz criticised: Norman Foster's tower for Swiss Re, nicknamed "The Gherkin” by Londoners. Also planned is a cluster of high-rise buildings, including the London Bridge Tower by Renzo Piano, which at 306 metres could be by far the highest building in Europe. "With the Manhattan-wannabee skyline of Canary Wharf, which illuminates the river below, one can easily imagine how the shock of another phallic skyscraper, to be completed near St. Paul's church in 2010, will turn out. Some Londoners will find the view uplifting, while others will hate what the buildings represent: towering profits," wrote the British Guardian's architecture critic Jonathan Glancey on 12 June 2006.

In Spain, where numerous new structures by renowned architects have risen in Madrid, Barcelona and Bilbao in recent years, the planned construction of a 178-metre-high skyscraper by Argentinean architect César Pelli in Seville has been criticised by the press because it will surpass the height of the Giralda Cathedral tower by 97 metres. The newspaper Diario de Sevilla wondered whether skyscrapers were still appropriate, given climate change and the "yearning for a lasting architecture of a more humane scale."

Even in Switzerland, which traditionally sees itself as an agricultural country, there is a "renaissance of high-rise buildings," writes Hubertus Adam. But – with the exception of the Schatzalp Tower in Davos – they are always urban office buildings and have nothing to do with living. Adam explains: "In an age where all you hear about is branding, identity and marketing, high-rise buildings make for an unforgettable address." Yet he points out "that the local authorities have barely recognised the potential (and risks) of high-rise buildings, limping behind the greedy investors."

Eastern European Face-lifting

Eastern European cities have opened themselves to investment, allowing entirely new city quarters to rise. Bratislava, for example, is on the verge of "a complete facelift,” Eastern Europe correspondent Ulrich Schmid wrote in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung on 2 March 2007.

Hungarian journalist András Deli visited Bucharest, where a new quarter - the "Esplanada City Centre" – is planned, with its "modern skyscrapers supposedly compensating for the awful view of the Palace of the People, built during the days of the dictator Ceausescu," he wrote in the Hungarian Népszabadság on 11 December 2006.

Even Warsaw's skyline has gone through major changes since the fall of communism – here, numerous high-rise buildings have gone up. Moreover, Poles are proud of having an "icon" of international architecture: Norman Foster's Metropolitan building located on the edge of the old city, which was destroyed in the war and rebuilt in the 1950s. New buildings are viewed as a symbol of progress. Anna Cymer wrote in Gazeta Wyborzca on 20 December 2006 on the occasion of the presentation of designs for a 22-storey block of flats by Polish-born American architect Daniel Libeskind: "Even on the Vistula they have realised that a European city can't get away without buildings with modern, often daring forms."

The City Centre as a Museum Island

In Prague, on the other hand, it is a project of a different kind that is causing consternation. It is not a high-rise, but it is extremely extravagant. Architect Jan Kaplicky, Czech-born chief of the London firm Future Systems, is to build a new national library that will sit like an octopus on a plateau overlooking the city, with a light-yellow shell and violet bull's eyes. Lenka Zlamalova praised the project in the Czech newspaper Hospodarske Noviny on 5 March 2007 as a step in the right direction to stop Prague becoming a museum: "Prague has long needed such a structure. Any city with a splendid architectonic history is in danger of clinging too closely to the past... Architecture should not only express the 'genius loci' but also the 'signs of the times'."

Revolution of the Solitaire

By concentrating on single prestigious projects, European cities are losing the "magic and timelessness of defined urban spaces," Axel Schultes, the architect of the Federal Chancellery in Berlin, complained in a January 2007 interview with the magazine Cicero. Schultes thinks one feature of European cities will be to abandon the planning of "harmonious ensembles." He describes this as an "overall incapacity to see the primacy of urban space and implement it, the inability not just to pay lip service to it, only then to pursue an even worse revolution of the solitaire."

But cities without cohesion are not a city planning problem; they are much more a reflection of social and economic conditions, Schultes' colleague Jacques Herzog believes. Together with Pierre de Meuron, Herzog is planning the Schatzalp Tower as well as Basle's tallest building. In an interview in Die Zeit of 13 May 2004, Herzog explained why European cities symbolise European society: "The lack of cohesion does not come first and foremost from buildings, but from people. It is still always people who build cities according to their abilities. So cities are a kind of petrified psychological landscape."

Nina Diezemann

Nina Diezemann was an editor of euro|topics. She studied German philology and history, graduated from the Deutsche Journalistenschule in Munich, and then worked as a ...
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