No, but it would make the renovation and transformation of existing buildings economically viable so people would say “I’ll just do this.” There are three main incentives: The first is tax reductions on renovation and transformation work and re-used materials so that this work is just cheaper. The second is to change the way we look at existing buildings so that we no longer only see all the risks, but also the potentials. And then the third one is giving the CO2 in the building a value. When you demolish, you would pay for throwing away the embodied CO2.

There’s also another financial incentive: subsidies. Right now, you have a lot of subsidized loans for new construction, for instance to build your single-family house. It was hilarious when the Conservative Party said, “We will give a €30,000 property tax break to every family with two children who wants to build a single-family house.” They thought that’s an incentive to get to two children, because we’re an aging society. So it would solve problem number one, and then it boosts the building industry, which is super important. But it has consequences, because you also have to build streets, schools, a kindergarten — and that leads to suburban sprawl.

It was at the point when we realized that the way we had practised until then no longer functioned. It’s the moment when the pressure on the land, on the building stock and on the market gets so high that people think it makes automatic economic sense to demolish and build new. And this is a learning for any context, and it can happen anywhere, not only in cities. When we travelled to South Tyrol, which seems a rather rural area, and spoke to people there, they would say, “We cannot afford housing anymore. Our buildings are demolished, rebuilt for hotels or second homes.” So this mechanism of value creation is something that happens everywhere.

In essence, we were working on a project, and our usual method did not function any longer because the value of the land was so high that investors said, “No matter what you do, we’re going to demolish and build new.” In that moment, we realized that we could no longer look for loopholes — we could no longer see existing laws as a design tool, but actually had to design the law as a tool.

Yes, this gigantic brutalist concrete building with blue tubes. It was an unused build- ing and we made an offer to take it over and re-use it. We made a proposal, and in the moment when the proposal was actually being checked — is it viable? Can it function? — our banker said, “We cannot finance this project because there are so many risks, but there are no risks in new construction.” And we said, “But that’s not true.” You don’t know which risks are in the existing building, but you also don’t know which risks are in the new project — especially at the time, shortly after the pandemic, when all the supply chains collapsed. And then the war in Ukraine started, and energy prices rocketed. So all of a sudden, you were in a situation where new construction is full of risks.

And then, from the perspective of Station.plus, there’s how that practice evolves in the sense of storytelling. It’s not only designing the law, but also designing the advent of an idea into culture. And in that sense, Mäusebunker is an interesting example, where the narrative becomes very clear that the demolition is as outdated as animal test- ing — and food waste and single-use plastics, all things that are relatable for people. So it’s the designing of the law, and then the understanding of, like, is there a way that we can make this more accessible through storytelling? And what would that be?

In the case of the European Citizens’ Initiative, yes, but there are other ways, too. We spoke to media agencies in order to understand, how do you do a campaign? And do we really want to do this? Or do we just want to lobby? In our understanding of direct democracy, we think it’s a good idea to bring a collaborative level and more people into this conversation and to expand this understanding of the built environment.

We consulted with a very big media agency because we wanted to have someone who approached the mainstream from a sales perspective and knew how to reach many people. And we had a lot of conversations. They were giving us three ways for how we could approach the campaign with specific slogans like “The Fundaments of Forever,” which also came with an aesthetic and a vibe. We were like, “This is grammatically wrong.” They were thinking “the fundamental” like “foundations,” but they came up with these slightly wrong English phrases. With the visuals, it seemed very conservative and not open for change.

We had made this comparison — that demolition is as outdated as food waste — but the agency felt we should say demolition is as outdated as fossil fuel–based cars and blah blah blah. And we said, “We get what you mean, but the terms you use did not create consensus for us, while food waste, animal testing, and single-use plastics are things that speak to people.” So there were a lot of conversations around it, and at a certain point I said, “I have to stop this now.” But I’m happy we had them, because they made us come up with our own proposals, which then feels natural.

The agency’s idea was to leave them out: Go for the lowest threshold to reach people if we are only talking about one million signatures, right? But then I can make the point that this disregards architecture students — who are definitely still interested in the topic. But they were not represented in the 1,000 people polled.

There was also this conversation where they suggested that we only generate leads. They wanted us to find a mil- lion euros — one euro per signature — to just generate the leads online. It’s an algorithmic way of reaching people several times, but we would have no idea who’s voting. I guess you can do that, but if you think about direct democracy, and if you want to talk to people and extend the entire understanding of how the built environment actually relates to your life, it’s not really the way to go.

Also, it does something else: It forces you to create taglines and slogans that are so generic and open, like “Change now.” And even “Fix it,” one of our slogans, is already very close to being very generic. But you can always sense how you have to address different people with different arguments. There are those who are open to the social argument — that in saving the buildings, you save the neighbourhood, the community, the fabric of the city. You sense that they are also clearly on the ecological path, because in every second sentence, they speak about CO2 emissions. With conservatives, you speak about heritage.

There are these four layers — social, ecological, economic and cultural. You just order them differently depending on who you are speaking to. It’s not that we don’t tell everyone everything, but in the European context, you would start with the social democratic one, followed by the economic one, followed by the ecological and then the cultural. You can create orders of arguments.

Every million dollars invested in renovation creates an average 12 to 18 jobs, and you are able to create industry that is less dependent on global material chains. So you shift the money you invest from material to maker, and that also leads to a growth in your economy. It’s supporting your national industry in the moment where people are like, “Oh my God, can we no longer rely on global dependencies?” This economic argument also takes away the anxiety that what we suggest is killing industry or jobs. It’s not true.

You feel like you have two realities. You can take the towers as an example, but you could also take a lot of other modernist buildings as cases — and then also, in an Eastern European context, a lot of prefabricated, socialist state–built housing, where the buildings are tied to a political system. There are people who say, “It’s ugly, but I don’t care.” But then there are others who say, “I really have a problem with it; I want it to go.” But they don’t fully understand that the new build will be — has to be — more expensive. What usually happens in Europe when a building is demolished and then rebuilt is that there are fewer people [but they are] in bigger and more expensive apartments. So the culture argument is the most difficult one, because it’s almost like trauma therapy. It’s a bit weird because you have to accept that this trauma is not connected to a building, and then you have to find some healing in it.

It also gives you back your agency; there is this power in these buildings, right? And if you think that you can actually do something with it, that you just don’t have to get rid of it, then you can also change that power you have to do something — also because renovation is easier, smaller and step-by-step, whereas the construction of new and big buildings takes it away from you completely. There’s a relation to direct democracy there as well.

This is the taste question. And thank you — I would agree! I think that what we can do, amongst students and professionals, is to make this way of practising a viable alternative, one where students say, “Oh, that’s interesting: I can imagine having a practice that only does renovation, transformation and re-use — and make it look sexy.” On the other hand, my brother, who has now renovated our family house, would say, “I don’t work hard to have something that looks like it’s not done,” you know? So he wants it to be finished. This whole adaptive re-use world looks so much like a DIY aesthetic — which is totally valid but it excludes a lot of people who just want something to be finished. I think that the question is, how many other aesthetics do we need to find that follow the similar logic and offer everyone something? Because it needs to become a lifestyle. People need to say, “I want this.

Yes, in fact, we did this project in Minneapolis, this con- version of a parking garage, and we were there for the facade mock-up. So we visited different companies, and one of them said, “Well, we can do this aluminum facade.” And they put a sheet in front of me, and I looked at it in section: super-thin aluminum, plastic core and super-thin aluminum. I said, “Do you have this in solid aluminum?” And he said, “Yes, of course.” And he brings the other sample. This for sure is more expensive, the pure aluminum one? And he said no. But why wouldn’t I then take the pure aluminum one? And he said that because the plastic core one is x per cent lighter, the panel can be x per cent bigger, and one worker can install more facade more quickly, because they don’t get tired. And I was sitting there, and I thought, that’s super difficult, because now labour is the argument that, in that sense, makes the material that destroys the planet more viable. It’s only a tiny margin — but then, of course, you build a skyscraper and this tiny margin becomes, all of a sudden, real money, and you see this potential to save thousands of dollars. So they say “Let’s go for the plastic one” because the consequences of the plastic one have no price.

It’s movable — and this is at the core of what we’re doing. This is a systemic change for cultures — it doesn’t need to be like any of that.

Sometimes you ask yourself, what is really better? Then, as an architect, you should also suggest the operating model of the building, and discuss with the developer how they ensure that, afterwards, it is not an empty tower that just functions as an asset.

I was in New York recently, and my friends were telling me what has been demolished for these buildings to be built, for instance along the High Line. They put a map of Manhattan on the table, where the different parts have the flags of the countries where the money comes from. Because you can just trace it back, that all of these buildings have been built from three funds from one country, just as an investment. And then you ask, “But what is the use, and who is in there?” No one. Okay, you still have people who want to live in the city, so politics has to create the framework and the conditions to ensure that whatever is demolished to be rebuilt is serving someone something. Because this is crazy.