An Essential Portfolio

The challenges we face today include war, disruptions to democracy, pandemic, and climate change. These directly impact the built environment. When contemplating building a better, more equitable, more beautiful and more diverse world, Léon Krier’s call to a moral and ecological task of reconstruction is crucial, fundamental, and essential. As a teacher and practitioner, Lucien Steil considers the whole body of his work as ‘didactic’. It combines to define best practice as a whole in terms of the architect’s particular commitment to the ideals of ‘Good Life’ as guiding principles of an ethical, creative and fertile ‘Vita Activa’. He identifies in his talk the balance between the practical and artistic, the intellectual and poetic, the theoretical and pedagogical, insisting that both design and construction have to be equally informed and enhanced with such algorithmic ideals. This session discusses the challenges, the scenarios, and the toolkits for enduring fabric.