Laura Linsi writes about the architect and educator behind ‘A Moratorium on New Construction’—the initiative that argues in favour of reviewing what in space production is desirable and what has ceased to be so.
‘To build is to destroy’, starts the introduction to A Moratorium on New Construction, Charlotte Malterre-Barthes’ forthcoming book with Sternberg Press.1 If every single component of the built environment is the product of extractive processes, and if spatial production is most of all driven by the greedy economies of finance, real estate, and the corporate construction industry, then how are we to build without doing harm? Moreover, how are we as architects to practice towards adding value, towards finding meaningful agency? How to overcome hopelessness (without falling for apathy) and how to be re-enchanted?
Charlotte Malterre-Barthes is an architect, urban designer, and Assistant Professor of Architectural and Urban Design at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL), where she leads the laboratory RIOT. She launched the initiative ‘A Global Moratorium on New Construction’ in 2021 whilst an Assistant Professor of Urban Design at Harvard Graduate School of Design. Malterre-Barthes research is centred around untangling the political economy of space production.2 She makes explicit the intertwinement of environmental degradation with social injustice, points out that the construction industry plays a role in that entangled relationship (without claiming its sole responsibility), and that anyone participating in the construction industry has a role to play, and thus an agency that to the very least can be reflected if not acted on.
Malterre-Barthes’ book will follow the design studios, roundtables, articles, Instagram posts and talks tutored, organised and written by her on the topic of a construction moratorium—a concept that has sparked the imagination of architects and educators internationally since it gained ground in 2021. She argues, a drastic change to construction protocols is necessary and in order to figure out new protocols, a suspension of all new building activity must be enforced. Malterre-Barthes claims the idea of a moratorium on new construction sits somewhere between a call for action and a thought experiment. The aim of it—to envision a less extractive future, made mostly of what we already have. But the call is not merely to stop or to pause new construction, to stop doing anything at all. It is a call to actively engage with ways of constructing a better world by not demolishing, not building new, building less, building with what is already there, and very importantly, inhabiting our buildings differently, and caring for them.3 Despite the explicitly and even theatrically morbid sound of the word, a moratorium is ultimately just a breather, a pause to reconsider and re-orientate.
Back in 2020, everything seemed to have stopped. The French philosopher Bruno Latour published his essay/questionnaire ‘What protective measures can you think of so we don’t go back to the pre-crisis production model?’ on March 29th, 2020 in the French journal AOC. He wrote: ‘The first lesson the coronavirus has taught us is also the most astounding: we have actually proven that it is possible, in a few weeks, to put an economic system on hold everywhere in the world and at the same time, a system that we were told it was impossible to slow down or redirect.’ Perhaps the claim came too early or perhaps Latour’s ‘globalisers’ were quicker to act than he was hoping for, but three years later we see little witness of a shift in societal, economic, cultural values. However, the precedent of the possibility for a halt should not be forgotten. Envisaging the potent moment a halt can create, Latour continued, ‘If everything has stopped, and all cards can be put on the table, they can be turned, selected, triaged, rejected for ever, or indeed, accelerated forwards. Now is the time for the annual stock-take. When common sense asks us to ‘start production up again as quickly as possible’, we have to shout back, ‘Absolutely not!’ The last thing to do is repeat the exact same thing we were doing before.’4
What does it mean for designers to stop building? How to navigate the need for housing versus the destructive practice of construction? How to take stock of what we already have? How to implement anti-vacancy policies and ownership reforms? In the course brief of her 2022 Harvard GSD studio, Malterre-Barthes cites Dr. Menna Agha, another architect and researcher, ‘We have to stop construction, in order to start building.’5
HEADER: portrait photo by Caroline Palla
PUBLISHED: Maja 112 (spring 2023), with main topic Moratoorium
1 Citation from the website introducing Charlotte Malterre-Barthes’ forthcoming book A Moratorium on New Construction (Sternberg Press, in the series ‘Critical Spatial Practice’, ed. Nikolaus Hirsch and Markus Miessen).
2 ‘Statement’, Charlotte Malterre-Barthes website, www.charlottemalterrebarthes.com
3 ’A Global Moratorium on New Construction’, Research Practice, Charlotte Malterre-Barthes website, www.charlottemalterrebarthes.com.
4 Bruno Latour, ‘What protective measures can you think of so we don’t go back to the pre-crisis production model?’, Analyse Opinion Critique (March 29th, 2020). Translated from French by Stephen Muecke.
5 ‘A Moratorium on New Construction’, Courses, Harvard Graduate School of Design website.
