Creative Maintenance

Friedrich Hundertwasser, Residential building of the
City of Vienna 1983-5 (Photo: Schwingenschlögl)
http://www.hundertwasser.com/arch/view-44

 A building usually looks its best on opening day, or perhaps a few weeks later when the final punch list is complete.  Then the photographers are called in, the people are cleared out, and images created for publication.  That’s the best and freshest, and most stylish the building will ever be.   All that’s left after that is maintenance.  

The life of a building, however, takes some time to emerge, years even for people to adjust their habits and discover new patterns and relationships.  Some say it takes twenty years or so for a neighborhood to mature until it has older families and young people and a broadly-recognized identity in the larger community – not just as ‘that new development.’   When the life of the place comes into focus as the goal of design, then maintenance takes on an entirely different meaning.

If the life of a building were considered primary, then maintenance would require looking after the health and well-being of the occupants, community and ecosystem.  To that end the physical object would not only only accept modification but welcome it.  Maintenance would be a continuing process of adjustments to respond to changing conditions of the city, and inhabitation by creative people who build their lives there. 

The best example I can summon is artist Friedrich Hundertwasser’s apartment buildings in Vienna.  He wrote in 1983, “Only a building which grows organically after the occupants have moved in and steadily changes through the constant alterations of the occupants is the alternative to the concentration camps in which we live…”   He went on, “Everyone must have the right to lean out of the window and redo the third skin, the outer wall, as far as his arm reaches, so that people on the street can see from far away, “There lives a human being”.

Was Hundertwasser’s artistic vision diminished by inviting residents to modify the building?  Hardly.  His design strategy is strong enough to welcome change and become richer for it.

Notes:

Jacques Derrida considered the issue of maintaining the ‘maintenant’ or the ‘now’ in an essay on Bernard Tschumi’s design for Park de la Villette.

Friedrich Hundertwasser, “Concrete Utopias for the Green City” delivered at the International Gardening Association symposium in Munich July 27, 1983 http://www.hundertwasser.com/text/1.3.2.5/hl/69.