Architecture has a disadvantage when it comes to reaching people: It doesn't make a difference. But people want something to move them. That's why they love football and pop music.

When our buildings were still originally "beautiful", the battle for people's attention was much quieter: there was no television, no colour photography, no sound recordings. So some of today's "players" were not yet on the market. Today, architecture has the position it shares with the paper newspaper, the novel, the bespoke suit and the fountain pen: Its value is appreciated, but after looking at the smartphone eighty times, the daily newspaper still remains unread on the kitchen table. We no longer find the time for it.

My dear grandmother grew up on a resettler farm in Bavarian Swabia in the 1930s. The newspapers were deserts of text, there were no magazines, no television and no records. If there were records, there were only three. There was propaganda on the radio and the nearest village was an hour's walk away: there was no cinema and no train station. There were no cars yet and if there were, the roads weren't tarmac. It is unimaginable to people of my generation, who ask what the Wi-Fi key is two minutes after arriving, what level of boredom people had to cope with back then. Actually, there was only work and boredom. Because what did people do on Sundays? You went to church. Then you visited uncles and aunts. There they looked at photo albums with tiny black and white pictures and drank thin grain coffee.

The twentieth century has brought boredom to an end. It has fared much like the smallpox virus. As long as we have mobile data, we can constantly read the news, listen to music, watch cat videos or chat with friends. My grandma couldn't do any of that. So when she came to her hometown of Munich, the "Stachus" or "Alter Peter" must have made a big impression on her. She once took me there as a boy. Full of devotion and curiosity, we went to see the carillon at the New Town Hall. Another time I went to the Oktoberfest with her and my grandad. Then she took me to the Bavaria and it was unbelievable to me as a boy that you could enter this statue, climb up to the top and look down through a peephole.

Many architects have recognised the signs of the times and have focused their designs squarely on attracting attention. They are not really beautiful, but they look so good that the observer has simply never seen anything like them before and starts to stare. We have spectacular large forms but no more details. I can't remember seeing a design the other day that featured a tower clock that chimes every hour and figures of musicians striking the bell and turning in circles. That only appeals to people who grew up without a cinema. Because people want something to move.

Overall, we architects cultivate a stony field. Although Western man spends at least sixteen hours a day indoors, architecture achieves the public interest of board games or maths lectures.

The media landscape only reflects the attention of its target groups. Architecture quickly falls by the wayside:
The radio does not show pictures and original sound recordings cannot be made of buildings. This rules it out as a medium. Television also only offers architecture a tiny niche, as individual buildings cannot be turned into a mass product like nutrition guides or Ed Sheeran records that everyone can and should buy in the shops. As a result, the airtime in the cultural programmes is also meagre. As a result, as an architect you can't even get a ticket to a late-night show with a Pritzker Prize, where actors, journalists, DJs, photographers, authors and directors are all in attendance. The only way for an architect to get on such a show is to write a book about back exercises at work and hope that your publisher books a seat for you.

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First published on Facebook on 18 January 2021