Baukultur: The Term Everyone Should Know
Connecting the past with the future, the Reichstag in Berlin. Photographer: Matthew Trigg
Since there have been cities there have been efforts to improve their quality whilst retaining what makes them unique to a particular place, culture or nation.
From Vitruvius to Alain de Botton, there have been so many texts written on how we should approach our built environments that to just read them all would take more than a single lifetime.
Each approaches the topic from a slightly different angle. Each takes a slightly different approach. Each arrives at slightly different answers. Written in any number of different languages, each uses a wide variety of terms to frame and then communicate any given idea.
Each text has influenced the global urban journey to some extent. From fundamental texts that define a profession such as Vitruvius’ De Architectura, written for Caesar Augustus around 15BC, to those read by a young man growing up in Switzerland who would later adopt the name Le Corbusier and change the world.
Vitrovius' influence has been extensive (Vitruvian Man, Leonardo da Vinci circa 1487)
Imagine if there was a term that captured the study of the actual or desired identity of our built environments? An overarching concept within which we could place all those disparate and overlapping discussions on architecture, urban design, policy and community engagement just to name a few?
The English-language discussions around our built environments that have persisted for our entire urban history have yet to produce such a concept. ‘Architecture’ once filled much of the space, when it combined a much wider range of activities and ideas than it does today. Unfortunately, the term has today been boxed in by the need for particular professionals to distinguish and protect themselves and their work. The average person has been largely excluded from the Vitruvian idea of architecture.
But there is an answer in the German concept of Baukultur (pronounced baw-cool-tor).
Baukultur has developed as a concept over the last decade, with its usefulness derived from the fact it does not directly translate to English.
The German language is famous for its compound words. Baukultur is no different; its combines the verb to build or construct (Bau-) and the noun for culture or civilisation (Kultur), giving it a simultaneous meaning of a society’s particular ‘culture of building’ (how they go about creating their built environments) and the ‘building of this culture’ (how the quality of what they do and what they produce can be raised).
The culture of building has been explored as a specific concept in English, most notably by Howard Davis in his extensive book by the same name where he describes building culture as:
the coordinated system of knowledge, rules, and procedures that is shared by people who participate in the building activity and determines the form buildings and cities take.
But this is only part of the journey. The concept of Baukultur allows concepts such as those expressed by Davis to be taken beyond their immediate context and removed from the sole purview of built environment professionals.
Last year I had the pleasure of meeting with the Bundesstiftung Baukultur (Federal Foundation for Building Culture) on a warm and stormy summer evening in Potsdam. This is an inspiring institution, both for its work in developing the culture of building in Germany, but also for its ability to be created and sustained with broad support across party lines (unlike the former Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment in the United Kingdom which was disbanded by the Coalition government).
Bundesstiftung Baukultur, Potsdam. Photographer: Matthew Trigg
The aim of the Bundesstiftung Baukultur is to enhance the quality of life for the people, support businesses involved and help to grow demand for high-quality planning, design and building in and from Germany. Similar organisations to the Bundesstiftung Baukultur and former CABE exists at the regional level within Germany and within many other European countries. Few exist to any real scale in English-speaking countries.
The German contribution to the 9th São Paulo International Architecture Biennial at the end of last year by the German Federal Chamber of Architects (BAK – Bundesarchitektenkammer) followed this trend with the motto Baukultur made in Germany. Presented in English, this is well worth a look.
For those concerned with the quality and sustainability of our urban environments, Baukultur is a positive-sum game. Its use simultaneously allows us to understand how we create our buildings and cities whilst increasing demand for high-quality outcomes.
Baukultur is shorthand for the preservation and development of quality, sustainable and culturally relevant buildings and cities. If you take one thing from this article, consider Baukultur and where it can be used to more accurately describe what we all already talk about.
I will leave the final word to more learned minds from the Bundesstiftung Baukultur:
Baukultur represents the sensibility and responsibility for building an environment we want to live in.
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