張利/ZHANG Li

作者單位：清華大學建筑學院/《世界建筑》

2018年春天，德國著名期刊《建筑世界》主編鮑里斯·沙德-賓索夫造訪北京，帶來了一個引人注意的消息：在歐洲乃至世界上有廣泛影響力的慕尼黑國際博覽集團希望能夠與中國合作，創(chuàng)立一個不同以往的建筑獎項；這個獎項將不再僅僅表彰建筑作品的形態(tài)或建筑師個人的創(chuàng)造性，而是希望表彰建筑為其所在的城市所做出的切實貢獻。同時，沙德-賓索夫也講到，有望邀請到前普利茲克獎的評委克里斯汀·菲萊斯出任這一設想中獎項的第一任評委會主席。這個“設想中的獎項”便是后來的世界未來城市計劃（簡稱IUPA）。2019年和2020年，IUPA已經(jīng)連續(xù)舉辦了兩屆。

設立新的建筑獎項并不新奇，但是頗具挑戰(zhàn)。其中最明顯的挑戰(zhàn)有兩個：一是當今建筑獎項過剩的現(xiàn)狀；二是傳統(tǒng)建筑獎項評價體系對當今城市生活新變化的不適應。

應對第一個挑戰(zhàn)的策略是相對簡單的：新獎項成立的前提是定義新的問題。眾所周知，鑒于公共建筑在當今生活中所獲得的曝光頻度，以建筑獎項來觸發(fā)公眾熱議是媒體吸引關注的有效路徑。我們甚至看到，在當今的世界，建筑獎項的增加速度已經(jīng)在某種程度上超過了值得稱道的建筑作品的出現(xiàn)速度。一些平庸的建筑獎項因人云亦云而被迅速忘卻，另一些則因為另辟蹊徑的問題定義而得以留存在續(xù)寫的建筑故事里，比如聚焦于建筑師的處女作，比如聚焦于建筑生態(tài)的負影響端——丑陋建筑，等等。IUPA試圖聚焦于建筑對其緊鄰的城市環(huán)境和城市生活的可辨別的激發(fā)作用，既不妄想具備阿卡汗獎般的宏偉的社會運動議程，也不像V·R·格林城市設計獎關注中介尺度及以上的城市設計干預。從2019年到2020年的評審過程中，我們看到的IUPA自身定位也在不斷地得到清晰化。

應對第二個挑戰(zhàn)要困難得多。建筑獎項的評委會通常由策展人、評論人和建筑師組成，專業(yè)素養(yǎng)使他們并不以數(shù)字和量度，而以觀點和爭論評價建筑的品質(zhì)。在過去把建筑完全作為藝術來評價時，這毫無問題，但是在21世紀的第二個十年，在全球的技術、環(huán)境、社會生活已然發(fā)生巨大變化的背景下，很少再有人會不假思索地認定建筑還是一門完全自主的獨立藝術。建筑是人類進行地表改造活動最主要的見證，也是城市生活最主要的塑造者，必須放在當今人類應對共同危機的范疇內(nèi)接受檢驗。那么問題來了：當評價的焦點關注從建筑師的個人創(chuàng)造轉(zhuǎn)向城市人民的群體生活時，傳統(tǒng)的建筑批評仍然成立嗎？如果說傳統(tǒng)的建筑獎項主要通過美學標準來進行評判，那么突出社會和城市問題的新建筑獎項——如IUPA——該以何標準進行評判？在這些標準中，有多少是倫理，有多少是美學？抑或，還有多少是科學？

作為連續(xù)參加了兩屆IUPA評審的人，我想說，這仍然是一個有待思考的問題。我猜其他幾位評審專家也會有同樣的感覺。不過，盡管我們不能量化地定義究竟有多少倫理、美學或科學是IUPA的評價標準，但是我們可以肯定地告訴公眾，IUPA的標準不是什么。

它不是純粹的倫理。IUPA不認為倫理故事的戲劇化會自然地帶來優(yōu)秀的建筑。當下，我們會時常看到來自偏遠地區(qū)的建筑作品，講述建筑和建筑師以英雄孤膽拯救世界的故事。每當此時我們就會在頭腦中觸發(fā)一則警示：無論這種建筑的出發(fā)點是多么善良，他們?nèi)匀挥锌赡苁。驗檎鎸嵉纳罟适驴赡芘c建筑師看到的和講述的截然不同，因為建筑師有可能脫離他或她所服務的群眾。或許我們可以遠到1940年代的埃及去觀察這類建筑的起源，我們也可能近至當代中國的鄉(xiāng)村，去觀察不時出現(xiàn)的類似情況。對我們的城市與鄉(xiāng)村而言，僅僅有正確的道義與情懷是不夠的，深入生活的實效才是硬道理。

它也不是純粹的科學。顯然，IUPA還沒有焦慮到這樣一種程度，以至于去追逐建筑獎項的一種新潮——要求候選項目提交精確的能源和碳排放統(tǒng)計數(shù)字。在20世紀之初，我們曾目睹對數(shù)字的膜拜，以及它對建筑人文精神的破壞。然而一個世紀后，隨著新興技術和新數(shù)據(jù)采集方式的出現(xiàn)，這一膜拜似乎大有卷土重來之勢。本屆IUPA中一些候選項目竭盡所能，以近乎炫耀的方式展示無所不用其極的環(huán)境科技；但遺憾的是，它們對發(fā)生于其中的人的活動無動于衷，甚至在建筑的機體中將人的生活邊緣化，這是它們最終被評委們拒絕的原因。

當然，它也不是純粹的美學，不再像曾經(jīng)的那樣。毫無疑問，我們正在目睹一個沉迷于自我指涉的建筑時代的終結(jié)——至少是這個終結(jié)的開始。我們很興奮地看到一種全新的建筑愉悅——一種建立在人類最基本的共理怡情，即喜于看到他人享受生活之愜意，并樂于在同一公共場所中與他人分享彼此的愜意之上的共享空間體驗——正在出現(xiàn)。在圣保羅，城市高空中義無反顧的游泳池，以及在垂直體量中頻繁介入的水平開放樓層，展示一個特別的社區(qū)的韌性與樂觀精神。在紐約，一個小型圖書館的變體中庭，最大限度地建立了人們的視覺聯(lián)系，充分利用了日新月異的技術與不斷變化的圖書館行為模式，把現(xiàn)代圖書館中閱讀功能的淡化詮釋成為一種公共美德。在上海，以樸素、柔軟的人工地形所連接的油罐再利用空間，讓每周數(shù)百個家庭的笑容出現(xiàn)在這里，對工業(yè)遺產(chǎn)的人性化再造提供了響亮的例證。毋庸置疑，這些美好的項目是通過、并且只有通過睿智的巧妙設計才得以出現(xiàn)。它們似乎在向IUPA的評委們預示某種新的建筑核心價值的出現(xiàn)，也在預示圍繞著這一新的建筑核心價值可以構建出的無限美好。也許，這種新的核心價值是人類的同理心？或者，更為樸素的，是對人類常理的深思熟慮的回歸？

感謝鮑里斯·沙德-賓索夫先生，是他的遠見與嚴謹使得IUPA與本期《世界建筑》成為可能。

In Spring 2018, when visiting Beijing, the Editor ofBauweltBoris Schade-Bünsow, brought with him an important message. Messe Müchen, a major player in world exhibition industry, was seeking some collaboration in China to establish a new architecture award. Unsurprisingly, they would like this award to be somthing different, something that would put urban quality above building forms. Schade-Bünsow also mentioned that people were hopeful to invite Kristin Feireiss, the highly revered German curator and a former Pritzker juror, to chair the first jury. The award in question then is International Urban Project Award (IUPA) today. In 2019 and 2020, two editions have been held.

Setting up a new award is not over-ambitious in itself. But there are caveats. Challenges need to be addressed if a new award is to stay relevant in the long term. Two challenges stand out as the most obvious: (1) there is a de facto over supply of architecture awards around the world now; (2)traditional criteria by which we evaluate architecture works are getting more and more clumsy in adapting to the rapid changes in 21st century urban life.

The first challenge is relatively the easy one:it is indeed necessary for any new award to define some new problem, and vice versa. Everyone knows how contentious a subject architecture is today in daily public life. All media, professional or nonprofessional, has the potential of harvesting growth in audience through some architecture awards. It might be fair to say that in today's world, there are possibly more architecture awards than worthy projects. While mediocre awards fade soon, good awards do stay. Recently there are some new awards that have defined some genuinely new problems and are bound to remain: such as the one in China focusing on the deficient end of the architecture scene, the ugliest buildings award. Being optimistic rather than cynical, IUPA defines its focus as the demonstrable, positive impact of a building to its immediate urban context and urban life. There is a deliberate absence of wholesale social agendas, those pursued by some big architecture awards. There is also a deliberate fusion between architecture and urban design at the smaller scale, to differentiate IUPA from more established urban design awards such as the Veronica Rudge Green Prize. Based on what we have seen in the past two editions, IUPA is graduately and steadily depicting its persona with more and more details.

The second challenge however, is much more difficult. Architecture juries are usually comprise of curators, critics and architects. People that have been trained to assess the quality of works not by numbers and measurements but by opinions and debates. At a time when architecture was evaluated primarily as art, this worked well. But given the drastic global changes in technological,environmental and social life in the second decade of the 21st century, very few would be so foolhardy as to maintain that architecture is still an autonomous discipline of art. Architecture, the prime form of modi fication men bring to the surface of the planet,and the prime shaper of urban life, needs to be tested in the scope of crises human civilisation is facing today. So the question has become, can traditional architecture criticism prevail when the focus has shifted from architect the individual to the urban dwellers the mass? If traditional architecture award was judged by aesthetics, on what would new architecture awards taking social and urban issues as primary concerns, such as IUPA, be judged?How much by ethics? How much by aesthetics? Or probably even, how much by science?

As a juror served in both IUPA juries, I would say this question is still a haunting one. I guess that many fellow jurors would feel the same. While it is impossible to say how much ethics, aesthetics,or science make their way into IUPA criteria, it is possible to say what IUPA criteria is not.

It is not pure ethics. IUPA does not think that a dramatised ethical story guarantees good architecture. From time to time, we see architectural projects in remote places, telling a story of how architecture saves that part of the world. But there is a danger though that these architecture works,with all the good intentions, can still fail because the real life story can be bitterly different from the one the architect sees. We may go as far back as Egypt in the 1940s to witness the origin of such architecture.We may reach as close as contemporary rural China to find similar ones. What is right is not enough.Our cities need what works.

It is not pure science. IUPA is not in a hurry to join a new trend in architecture awards asking for spread sheets showing the carbon numbers of the candidate projects. We saw the cult in numbers at the turn of the 20th century and how disruptive it was in architecture. Yet it comes back a century later along with emerging technologies and new ways of measuring our world. There have been a few candidate projects in this edition of IUPA that advertise great numbers in energy saving and emission reduction. But they showed disinterest in human activities, even marginalising them, and were rejected in the jury.

And of course it is no longer pure aesthetics,not in the way it was. We are at least seeing the beginning of the end of self-referential architecture.We are excited to see that a new kind of architectural delight, built upon the very basic human pleasure of seeing other people enjoying themselves, and sharing this mutual enjoyment in the same place, emerging.The swimming pool high above the city and the intervening horizontal open public floors in the S?o Paulo mixed complex demonstrates the resilience and optimism of that particular community. The anamorphic atrium of the small library in New York maximises peoples' visual connection, making full use of the evolving technologies and the changing behaviour pattern inside a modern library where reading is no longer the sole purpose. The simple,tender artificial terrain connecting the reoccupied tanks in Shanghai gives sound interpretations of industrial reclamation, with hundreds of smiling family gatherings every weekend as the proof. These wonderful projects are unmistakably achieved through, and only through ingenious design.They signal to IUPA jurors some kind of new core of architecture, around which good stuff can be conceived and made. Is it human empathy? Or,simply a thoughtful return to common-sense?

Our thanks to Mr. Boris Shade-Bünsow, whose vision and rigour has made both the IUPA and this special number ofWApossible.