The Intersections of Jurisprudence and Urban Planning: A discussion with Prof. Panu Minkkinen
Transcription from the Architectural Democracy's podcast interview with Panu Minkkinen, (Episode #1: Panu Mikkinen), Nov 23rd, 2022.
Panu Minkkinen is a Professor of Jurisprudence at the University of Helsinki, Finland. Former Professor of Legal Theory at the University of Leicester, UK. Currently involved in the editorial work of two international journals: Law and Critique (published by Springer), and Law, Culture and the Humanities (published by Sage).
[Aibéo]
Welcome to the Architectural Democracy's discussions here at Helsinki Open Waves in Caisa, Helsinki. This is the 23rd of November 2022. This is our first session of an attempt to discuss the relationships between architecture and democracy. A series of discussions of one hour, with invited guests where we freely discuss on what does it mean this connection between the construction industry and politics, more specifically democracy. But not only, we will be also talking about different kinds of government.
Today about the Intersections of Jurisprudence and Urban Planning.
My name is Pedro Aibeo. I'm a Portuguese architect living in Finland, designing buildings a bit all over the world, and now researching about this specific topic. On this journey, I've been crossing paths with a lot of very interesting people, and among these people is my guest today, Panu Minkinen. Hello, Panu.
[Panu]
Hi, Pedro. Thank you very much for having me.
[Aibéo]
As I said, you look great. Very fresh, and I can see the motivation on the air to talk about some hopefully exciting topics.
[Panu]
This is a first for me, the podcast. I've never been on a podcast before.
[Aibéo]
You seem very relaxed about it.
Panu, you are professor of jurisprudence, jurisprudentia, the philosophy of law. I came across your work through your essay on Brasília, constituent power, architecture, urban planning. But then I discovered that you've been publishing a great deal of essays around urban planning and law. Has this been recent, or has it been something that you've been working through your life or through your academic research?
(more papers from Panu here)
[Panu]
I've had an interest throughout my life, but let's put it this way, within my area of expertise, my discipline, it's become legitimate to study these things only during the last maybe 15 to 20 years or so. Even though a lot of us, me included, have had, shall we say, a dilettante interest in institutional architecture, in specific buildings, the fact of bringing that interest into publications is much more recent.
Why the interest? Well, I think sort of one of the reasons for me specifically is because my discipline is in law, and normally law studies just sort of abstract things like norms, so basically language. And it's only recently that one has come to realize that law is also sort of represented by a material aspect.
It includes a materiality within itself, of which a sort of really concrete and easy example, actually, is architecture, urban planning. So you think about courthouses, the way in which courthouses are built, all buildings that represent public power, one way or the other, they're all sort of part of this materiality that has now become, shall we say, legitimate to research and to publish about.
[Aibéo]
It gives a sense of reality to something abstract that is the law or the words.
[Panu]
Correct, yes, but also it's sort of developed even further than that. So it's not a mere metaphor anymore. It's not like that. It is actually sort of recognized. The materiality itself is recognized as a sort of constituent part of the whole. So it's further than just metaphorical. It's much more developed than that, and hence things that have aided this development are, of course, the emphases that we now have on interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary collaborations. So you'll have people working in urban planning, working with legal theorists, political theorists, etc., spatial dimensions, and so forth. So this type of collaboration has made it much easier even to bring those or make them legitimate, if I can put it in that way.
[Aibéo]
So what was your main argument on this Brasília paper?
[Panu]
The focus was on capital cities as I call them seats of power because that's the name of the project. So several different sort of case studies of capital cities. And Brasilia is somehow an iconic example of a power center or a government center, which was built out of nowhere, into nowhere, and built in such a spectacular way. In the shape of an eagle.
But then as you come down to further details, you can look that there's this particular interest to me. There's this place called the Plaza of the Three Powers, the three powers referring here to what we call the separation of powers, where you have the legislature, the executive, meaning the president's palace, and then the Supreme Court. It is basically the tail end of the bird or airplane.
So it's a complete Vitruvian triangle. It's trying to somehow symbolize the fact that all these three elements of public power are equal, that they all sort of oversee each other. The idea that for example, the Supreme Court oversees the constitutionality of legislation from the parliament building and the way in which the president functions.
So this was the idea in the sense of how urban planning functions. As the sort of that particular part of the project, as it went along, of course, one thing that you soon realize is that that's not the way in which power works. Power is much more slippery than that. You can make these idealized representations of power, but it doesn't work in that way.
[Aibéo]
When you say representations of power, you mean it also physically in the buildings?
[Panu]
In the buildings as well. In Brasilia's case, the size of the buildings, the legislature being by far the biggest one, giving it prominence and importance. Whereas the two other buildings, although they are similar in their design, are considerably smaller.
[Aibéo]
This is one obvious scenario when we talk about architecture and democracy or construction and politics. It's this language of the buildings. How they speak to us.
What do they represent to the people? We have also the case in the USA with all the official governmental buildings which are neoclassicist, with Greek architectural elements. And this gives us two messages, a clear identity, which can be useful, but at the same time, a message of intangibility. You cannot really access this place by your own. You cannot just walk in. It's not a normal place. There's this dichotomy. How do you feel about that? Is that on purpose or is this something that you think it's been just human nature?
[Panu]
Let's put it this way. I don't think that there's someone who deliberately plans these things in such a way, but we do see political struggles over these issues. If we stick to the example of the United States, you might remember that towards the end of his presidency, Trump issued an executive order that stated that all public building in the United States must henceforth be based on the same neoclassical tradition as the old buildings in Washington, D.C.. I think the report or the name of the executive order that he gave was called Make America Beautiful Again. And it was basically written by a lobbyist group. And their argument was that this is what the founding fathers would have wanted for the United States.
And the interesting detail is that ever since the Kennedy regime, the United States has had a specific architectural doctrine that states that all public buildings built with public money must be commissioned to contemporary American architects who represent the best quality of American architecture. They may be also regional in the sense that if it's within a state, an individual state, etc. But nevertheless, this doctrine or this basically this guideline has been in force in the United States ever since the Kennedy regime.
And then Biden, among his first acts, was to revoke this executive order that Trump gave. So basically, we're now back to the to the good days, if I can put it in that way.
[Aibéo]
But it's a very protectionist measure, the internal consumption, which can be disastrous.
[Panu]
If you look at the debate over that particular issue in the United States, if you analyze the different words that are used in that debate, you get the sense that the main reason for sticking with that neoclassical imagery is that it somehow hints towards democracy, it hints towards the Greek city state, right to the temple architecture, also to Rome, Roman law.
So it has these hints. And this is why we associate it with quotation marks democratic value. But the documents that you get from that, they actually sort of emphasize the fact of its ability to inspire awe in citizens and other people who are there. Awe, not in the sense of, oh my goodness, this is beautiful, but awe in the sense that it makes them submit to the power without having to force them.
[Aibéo]
This brings us to scale. In architecture, scale is fundamental. We used to have the cathedrals as symbols of power, also institutions of knowledge, a monopoly of almost everything, centers, also of the cities. The guidance of the city. Where is the center of a city? You look up and you see the cathedral, there it is, that is narrative of urban planning of cities in Europe.
Nowadays, you have the new cathedrals, which is those kind new buildings from starchitects, museums, the new Louvre in Abu Dhabi, or now, for example, the new stadiums in Qatar. Are we perpetuating the same stories?
[Panu]
I don't think it's the same story, but it might have some sort of similarities to it, etc. But because we're in the transitional period. We're only getting most of these neoclassical buildings, if we're talking about the United States, even if we're talking about our own Senate Square (Helsinki), it was built in the 19th century, so they're fairly new, they're not that old. I mean, Portugal, yes, Spain, maybe, etc. they're older, they're about 100 years older than all of those. But these things, because they take time, the change, the shifts, they take time. I think we're in a transitional phase at the moment, and whatever is left of the old tradition, I think we can only see that in maybe 50 years time or so.
[Aibéo]
That's interesting. But one of the things that I am certain about is that this new sort of change involves a certain commodification of the space, of the architecture, etc. And however that translates into democratic values is, I think, one sort of the interesting aspect here.
[Panu]
Absolutely. I think we haven't done enough work on looking into how people, to whom the democracy supposedly belongs to, how they use these spaces, how they use the architecture, etc. Even in Brasilia, there's a lot of, or there was, a lot of discussion about graffiti, about whether it should be regarded simply as stains on a patrimony or whether it should be regarded as means of expression. Means of democratic self-expression, that should be cherished. And protected even, probably. And I think here if you find a number of interesting examples where you find a little bit of middle ground, where this type of democratic use of public spaces becomes important.
One of my favorite places in terms of this type of architecture is in Palermo, in Sicily.
So there's an old courthouse there, which is in a rationalistic style, the fascist style that was prominent in Italy during that period, which is ugly, terrible, ugly. You couldn't even call it neoclassical, it's really ugly, the building. And then following the murders of the prosecutors, I don't know if you know the story, but there were a number of prosecutors, if I remember, seven of them, who went and prosecuted the Mafia at one point or another. And the Mafia assassinated all of them.
[Aibéo]
I was there in 1995
[Panu]
So they built now a new courthouse there, behind the old courthouse, which is very discrete, a small one-story box. You can't really say anything about it. But in between the two, there's a square. There's a square with very sort of modest tributes to the individual prosecutors who were killed. And instead of protecting such a square like a shrine, like a temple, what the local authorities have done is they've opened it up to skateboarders. They've opened it up to basically public use and that way. And if something, breaks because of this use, they fix it. So it's a conscious decision that this square is honoring these democratic figures, if you will, in such a way that it should be given to the actual people that they were meant to protect.
[Aibéo]
That's a beautiful example. Very worth sharing.
But when you think about this, the potential for bringing strong messages through architecture in democracies is rare. Once in a while you have some public buildings, such as a public library or some stadium or a philharmonie or other big projects that one can go wild about. But every architect, or every investor or real estater knows that the wet dream for such symbols are the autocracies. Chinese, Saudi Arabian style. For example, we've talked recently about Neom, the line, a wild project that everyone thinks is just nonsense. But at the same time, it gives an open card for experimentation for engineers, mostly, and of course, architects. How do you see all of this development? Do you think we should be more critical or do you think there should be a balance? Is it stoppable even?
[Panu]
I don't know whether it's balanceable. I truly don't know.
But maybe to me, it's like the football championships in Qatar, it was inevitable that it would go to a place that is not ideal, if I can put it in that way. They basically thought that these types of projects might, sort of spark some positive development in the places in which they are situated. It remains to be seen whether that's truly the case.
I think one of the things that touches upon this and which was, I think, a very successful initiative was the European City of Culture project. Because the idea was that the revenue that the cities collected would be then used to develop those cities in democratic ways.
So that they would be more, shall we say, user friendly for citizens and for inhabitants and for anybody, visitors as well. Now, it might be that the end results are a bit less visible in sort of well-do countries like Finland. But I remember I was, at the time, I spent quite a lot of time in Glasgow, when they were European City of Culture, and Glasgow was one of the places where you had the worst slums of Western Europe.
[Aibéo]
Our sound technician is from the neighborhood!
[Sound Technician]
My grandparents!
[Panu]
Are they from the Gorbals?
[Sound Technician]
Glasgow, inner city.
[Aibéo]
I've been there many times. At the Edinburgh Museum, the National Museum, they have writings about how Glasgow is a terrifying place that should be destroyed, texts from the 17th century.
[Panu]
Oh, these texts are from Edinburgh.
The first time I was in Glasgow, which was in the 1970s, was when the Gorbals, the slums, were at their worst. I had on, a green and white striped Marimekko t-shirt without realizing what it meant in the local culture. But anyway, they used the money, Glasgow, they used the money for truly renovating the city. It became a totally different city after the European City of Culture project.
So that initiative in general was great. I'm sure they had similar sort of like effects elsewhere too. But of course, these are all relative.
If you support a city that's poor to begin with, or that's not wealthy to begin with, the effects will be more visible than they would be in maybe a place where that is already wealthy. The problem with Qatar and the football analogy here is that I'm not sure whether the local government there has the willingness to develop the country into that sort of the way.
[Aibéo]
I've been to Qatar many times and I've seen many, too many good things there. But in a recent talk with John Keane, the political scientist, we discussed the relationship between democracy and public transportations, which is as interesting topic. He said it used to be a correlation. Good public transportation meant good democracies. But nowadays you see places like in Tashkent or Uzbekistan where the new dictators that disguise themselves as Democrats make a flashy public transportation for the public, even in North Korea. But that doesn't mean no longer it's a democracy. It seems they've learned to fake it.
And in Qatar, this fantastic new metro that they build up from scratch, which is an unbelievable investment. I've seen it. It's a very flashy metro. It's quite big in one go. It is a public service. But it's an autocracy there. Will that translate into a more public participatory citizenship? Or will it just, again, perpetuate this trend, which is the autocrats have learned how to masquerade their government into so-called fake democracies through services, through infrastructure, that show some kind of a welfare life of the city. You go there and it's amazing. You feel life is good. It's just, how do you say, like a modern city on steroids. Everything is just luxury, it works and it is fantastic.
How would a normal citizen read in between those lines of a fantastic infrastructure of a city into the political governance? How can a normal citizen interpret what's behind all of that? How can we read the cities in a way that we understand where, for example, the money comes from? What's the purpose? What is the purpose of the skyscrapers in Helsinki? Is it just the commodization of the real estate? Is it more behind it? How can we read cities like you were reading Brasilia?
[Panu]
Yes. There's a lot of urban sociology that touches upon these issues. There's a German sociologist called Martina Löw, who basically talks about the internal logic of cities. Each city has its own intern logic that the inhabitants and basically the people who spend a lot of time there know. But it's not only the physical environment. It's not only the public transportation, the skyscrapers, etc. It's also the feel of the city. It's also the ways in which you spend your leisure time there, etc. It all becomes a whole.
And so you can even find two cities that may look similar, but the locals will know that it's different. Especially the UK, you have a lot of people who will say that, Manchester and Liverpool are very much alike. And at the end of the day, they're not at all, for the locals.
The Liverpoolians would never say that they're Mancunian. But if we go there, apart from the presence of the sea, which is very prominent in Liverpool, there's a certain, shall we say, northern England feel to both cities. Also of glory days past, sort of both were wealthy cities in a certain way at one point or another. And you can see it in the buildings and in the streets, but they're wealthy in other ways now or not.
[Aibéo]
Do you think it is possible to have a certain literacy increase for the normal citizens, how to reach the politics behind the urban planning?
[Panu]
Yes, I think so. And I think in practically all matters, I think there's a certain role that public education can play in teaching inhabitants and citizens to pay attention to the environment that is being built for them, etc. And also to record the details, etc.
The problem with this is that a lot of times the awareness is somehow compressed into sound bites. So there's a lot of talk about sustainability and so forth. But then again, how do ordinary citizens, how do they record the flaws in their own lives and their own everyday lives in terms of how a sustainable the city works? They'll have the easy answers. They will say that, for example, energy bills are sky high, etc.
So whether that is, whether that's sort of like a flaw in building, or whether that's just a glitch in the markets, that sort of like remains to be basically seen, or whether it's both, whether you can address the issue, the problem is with both. But nevertheless, it remains a bit of a sound bite rather than a real issue, tangible issue that you can touch.
[Aibéo]
You see also the power of language and law there, because you could set up a tone, which is slowly being set up, like now we're talking about a lifecycle analysis of a building, not just the building, but what happens after 30 years? What will be the usage? There used to be a myth that the biggest expenditure in energy was to be the life of a building. Now there's more and more studies showcasing that it's not, it's actually the construction, which always seemed very obvious for any civil engineer like me. But somehow, probably those studies are beneficial for some lobby group that just pushed that forward, because then construction needs their motor, and then they just get their return of investment, five years guarantee, and that's it. And then the public or the government takes care of the footprint. So we see a bit more awareness on that sense, I think.
[Panu]
There's a lot, I think there's a lot more transparency in these issues which then enables that awareness. But it's still an elite group of citizens, middle class, well-to-do citizens who have spare time to focus on these issues for whom it's relevant. Whereas, the problem is getting it all the way, getting the message all the way through to every level, every social strata of basically of society to the wealthy as well as the not-so-wealthy.
[Aibéo]
That's why you would see, in countries who are a bit better off like Finland, you would see a more concerned population. They have more free time to to deal with these matters. Whereas if you are in other countries like, let's say, Colombia, you are still fighting on a daily basis more for survival in terms of monetary income where you won't give away time for this kind of civic duties.
[Panu]
Yes, it's not that relevant in certain situations where you're struggling to get your rent money together. But there are a lot of people, even in countries like Finland, who are on that brink, and all they can do is to concentrate on getting the rent money together from one place or another and at the same time have their attention spanned, doesn't stretch out towards issues like architectural democracy or democracy and architecture or sustainable building. So I don't know, I have no answer as to how one can address that. But yes, certainly transparency, public education, these play certainly a role in it and it would be at least, I would see it as the groundwork that one has to do and then sort of at one point or another perhaps, hopefully, even those of us who are not that well off at this particular moment will have the possibility of then becoming more involved in how they are forced to live, what type of housing they're given and so forth.
[Aibéo]
Do you think then the government plays a role in setting up, not just laws, but also in been passing certificates, like the green housing, passive energy, do you think the government can play a role?
[Panu]
Well, the public sector, yes. Not necessarily like government in terms of the statist level of government, but municipal sort of government, like the city of Helsinki, yes, I think they would be sort of like one sort of ideal partner, etc. What the government could do is to support private initiatives that enable this sort of development.
But I think that at this particular moment in history, there's not really that much room for maneuvering. We need to wait for times when the government has surplus money to invest, because these are investments that only pay back in the sort of long turn.
I think there's another thing, another aspect to what you said, I don't think laws as such are very efficient at doing anything. Law is the stick, right? And it's not a very good form of regulating things. It's not the carrot. The carrot is much better. So basically what you need to do is you you need to sort of, you need to nudge actors, social actors, towards certain beneficial forms of contact and building.
[Aibéo]
But then you have two fronts of thoughts there. You have in one side architects like Ingenhoven leading the moral architects movement, saying you should not build stuff for obviously bad reasons. Like for example, he refused to build a parliament for Gaddafi back in the days, because he said it's not a democracy, why should there be a parliament there? He can afford to refuse the contract, but most architects would say yes to it.
On the other side you have, Schumacher, one of the heads of the Zaha Hadid architects. He wrote a paper about architecture and democracy, in which he says why should we architects even talk about democracy? Everything is political, everyone, everything we do is political, so we are not special case.
I disagree vehemently, because I think architects or the construction industry, which is the biggest consumer of the surplus of capitalism, has a word to say, like Ingenhoven says.
There should be some ethics or morality behind it, or it should be a more open case to what we are doing. Yet, of course, the money, the carrot in this case, is the survival of their office. So it's a tricky thing to navigate.
[Panu]
It is, but I'm sure they will find an architect to build it. I think it's the temptation of the big money, which is the big problem here. Because let's say that we have states which are democratically not perhaps the ideal employers or ideal commissioners of new buildings, etc. They tend to be very wealthy in natural resources or whatever, so they can pay really high fees to the designing architectures.
Now there's a certain temptation in that, and I'm sure there's a lot of biblical literature talking about that type of temptation, and also sort of warnings about what it will lead to in selling your soul. But I do understand that it is like if you want to keep your trade alive, which is not simply the name of the office. It's not just Renzo Piano, it's all these individual architects who work in his studio, who are using the name, whether it be Piano or Norman Foster or whoever.
[Aibéo]
That reminds me of a funny detail. Now that we talked about Qatar and the World Cup, in the opening bid, it was 2010, I think, 12 years ago. So Qatar made the bid, and they have to show always stadiums, proposal of stadiums, urban planning concept. Do you know who did it? Which office?
It's in the same city where I studied architecture, Darmstadt, and the architect is called Albert Speer, the son of Albert Speer, which was Hitler's main architect. So it's unbelievable in a sense that the Qatari bid asks the son of Hitler's architect to make all of the renderings and urban planning proposal of the bid, which happens to win.
At the end, he didn't build any of the stadiums, they were commissioned to other architects, Zaha Hadid and Norman Foster, but luckily, some Syrian and I think Saudi architects too, which is good. But it's a funny thing, the historical underlyings there. And how much do people know about this?
[Panu]
My mind is playing tricks on me now, so I'm wondering whether they, when they're there sitting and looking at the different sort of proposals that have come through, are they looking at it or do they even know that it's actually the son?
[Aibéo]
I met Albert Speer a long time ago. He died recently. The office has done great work. I admire an architect like he, who managed to raise despite having the exact same name, and the same job as his father.
[Panu]
And didn't even change his name. There's a certain, as they say in South London, respect. Holding on to the name.
[Aibéo]
It is one of the greatest examples, those regimes as Mussolinis and the Nazi regime, in using architecture and urban planning to boost their agenda, which you still feel it in the cities. Whenever you get your family coming to visit you, and you want to show the city, you have some feeling of pride showing the Eiffel Tower. As if it would be your achievement,
[Panu]
I take everybody to the Senate Square. I have this story that I can tell everybody about the different buildings and how they were there. I don't know if you know the story about Helsinki and how it was built, but the idea was that it should be something that the locals could be proud of. This was in the beginning of the 19th century. Also the Emperor, Alexander I, at that point, he wanted the city to somehow represent his might, his sovereignty, if you will.
And hence, it had to look grand. And there's a rumor that when he instructed Engel to design the Senate Square surroundings, with the sort of neoclassical buildings, he said to be a little like St. Petersburg, but not so grand. So he wanted to keep that grandness in St. Petersburg, but sort of nevertheless there's this resemblance. If you read the travel logs or travel diaries from the same period of people who crossed the Baltic to come to Helsinki for shopping, believe it or not, they will often be noting the resemblance of Helsinki and St. Petersburg. And how like Helsinki is a bit of a small version of St. Petersburg.
[Aibéo]
Nonetheless Helsinki is older, Helsinki is around 150 years older than St Petersburg.
[Panu]
Engel has designed a lot of buildings. I was surprised, my wife lived in the Oulu region, in the Pohjois-Pohjanmaa, as we say in Finnish. I have no idea what the English name of that county is, but nevertheless in the area.
And for example, lots churches from Engel and buildings. And Engel had a prominence in Turku even before Helsinki. So that's where they originally, Eerenström, who was the urban planner for the Helsinki city center at the time, that's where he originally saw Engel's work and was impressed.
[Aibéo]
That's also a fascinating thing about it, there are certain architects, companies, offices, that survived through governmental periods. Engel being one case, I would say.
[Panu]
Some of the buildings were completed even after he died, according to his instructions. And some of them were not completed according to his instructions, like for example, the cathedral is slightly different to what Engel planned. For example, the stairs, which are very prominent now, as you know, leading to the cathedral, where a lot of us sit at during the summertime and enjoy the ice creams until the seagulls come and dive down and snap them.
Those stairs were not in Engel's design, so there was a granite sort of hill, and the idea was to build the church on top of the granite hill, but they wanted to take some of the land out. They would blow up some of the stone and bring the church a bit closer to ground level. But they decided then, I don't know whether it was because of the costs, but they decided to build the church on top of the granite hill and then designed the stairs that would lead to it, which was not in Engel's drawings.
[Aibéo]
Yeah, well that opens up a very interesting topic, going back to the literacy topic in the reading of cities. Aren't we also to blame or its our human nature, the ability to adapt to so many circumstances, it gives an almost green card to any architect or urban planner to develop almost anything.
Whatever we can do, people will just accept it because they will accept the mastery of the architecture, some kind of a scientific process which is not scientific, but some kind of a process they are not aware of and they think it's well beyond their cognitive abilities to understand. They'll accept it as this is the best way process, instead of being a critical proponent with ideas against it or forward. You understand what I mean?
[Panu]
Well I think architecture, for me at least, architecture, it's a bit of a hybrid discipline in the sense that as you say, it's civil engineering, you build houses, but there is an element of artistry in it as well and there's an artist's license included in it and it depends on who's paying the bill as to how far you can go with it. So many modern architects, they indulge in, not only in aesthetically wild things, but like a Formula One in car racing. I mean Formula One car racing, regardless of what we think about motorsports as being a waste of energy and bad for the environment and what have you, is also one of the means through which the automobile industry develops its technology.
So a lot of the things that we have now in normal family cars were originally developed in motor racing, in car racing. It's still the case. So for example, certain technological adjustments to braking systems in modern cars were originally developed for the Formula Ones.
[Aibéo]
And even in a country like Finland where, for example, with the new Oodi library which has a spectacular setting with a metal arch construction, very expensive, and you know those kind of solutions are environmentally not the most optimal. Even though we have a very environmental aware society, these things just go on the side and are completely accepted as amazing solutions for the library instead of a very boring but the most energy-efficient construction possible. Those dichotomies, I find it fascinating how we can get away with, how architecture can get away with these kind of things with.
[Panu]
I don't think it can get away with it, that's not the point, because there was a point during the energy crisis in Finland where you had to build residential buildings with windows that were the size of these little squares here on my right hand side. So like a 12-inch record cover, basically, because of the supposed energy savings. Now the building like that, I don't think the architects are given a brief saying that, listen, you can build whatever you want.
I think they're giving a brief and saying that make it as energy efficient as you can, taking into account the large sort of window masses that you have here, the large amount of glass, etc. And I think these are the opportunities to push innovations forward little by little. So it's small steps, so that you don't make breakthroughs, in the sense that the analogy to the cars in Formula One, you didn't come up with the braking system in one go.
[Aibéo]
That legitimizes the NEON project.
[Panu]
Well in a way, if it was an architectural project like nowhere, but what you were referring to before I think this is what is specific about that project is that it's also supposed to be a window to the external world. It's a state trying to tell something about itself to the external world. Whereas that might be a bit problematic, more problematic in that case than already in the case of Helsinki for example.
Because Helsinki doesn't have that much to answer for itself.
[Aibéo]
Again I think it's a it's a question of scale.
[Panu]
It's a question of scale as well yes. But even if we reduce the scale, the context is slightly different in that sense.
[Aibéo]
Also the usage, because a society like in Finland they could afford to make an extravagant unorthodox library with more expensive means because libraries and a public usage of a building is some kind of a fundamental thing for for the Finnish society. In the same way like for example Dubai built the Burj Khalifa, the biggest skyscraper in the world, because it already has been doing it and the ratio of energy price and the height of a building is very good for that because energy's price is very low.
So they could exploit that. But now I think that's acceptable and I think that could work because they are exploiting something which is already a trend. But when you go too far, probably even the Qatar, the stadiums or the Neom, I think there is a bit of more of a political turmoil or a bit of a it's not about the architecture or what benefits we can get.
I think it's completely political.
[Panu]
Well it will be always political in terms of it being political. I think it's very wise for us to be always suspicious. Suspicion is I think the good starting point for everything.
But on the other hand we have to be able to also recognize that out of these projects there might be something good that comes along like which might be a technological innovation. A technological innovation that was only possible because of these extravagant investments basically into something. But it comes at a cost and whether the innovation was worth it at the end, we would only know if we had the figures of lives lost health deteriorated etc in the calculations, but we don't.
[Aibéo]
All the discussion about autocracies manage to move things faster and furious while democracies are slow paced and with more attention to minorities and so, brings consequences. Things are done with more care but at the same time less extravagant.
[Panu]
It's like Louis Gatton. Aas an autocrat you can basically be benevolent or you can be malicious malvolent but the problem there is that we never really know where they shift side or not.
[Aibéo]
So one could say if it's the benevolent dictator that it is a good thing.
[Panu]
Well we can only know afterwards.
[Aibéo]
It's a post-mortem. It's often being said that about the case of China right. So far so good!
[Panu]
And I guess a bit better again during the recent weeks or so. Exactly, but you never know. A roller coaster.
[Aibéo]
But we are seeing also a bit that in democracies.
[Panu]
Yes of course and especially now that democracies themselves if we're not talking about the architecture have become more sort of executive led which means that prime ministers are much more powerful than they used to be. They used to be subject to the parliaments.
[Aibéo]
And this trend has been changing why and for when?
[Panu]
I think if we look at the Western countries, Europe especially, it's been a gradual process in which the political system that we have in continental European countries or states has been gradually moving closer to the English, the UK model which is basically prime minister led. The prime minister is a bit like the CEO of his political party that has absolute majority in Parliament. So during that Parliament he can run government as he sees fit unless his own start to make noise.
So this type of Westminster model is the counterpart of the common European system which requires coalition governments, which requires compromises between the different parties etc. and is a bit more shall we say easier to handle than the other one. But if there has been movement etc. it's been this central European model which has come closer to the Westminster model in the sense that our prime ministers have become much more powerful than they used to be.
[Aibéo]
That's a dangerous trend and probably needs revision or needs more discussion right?
[Panu]
One of the things that where I see it in my work is that the courts have become more active. The courts are more ready now to impose limits on what the executive run governments can do. Constitutional review of what they can do and this is also in most of European countries.
[Aibéo]
Which adds more again to the time that anything takes, to review those processes, and then they are analyzed again after they are done. So it can have also very negative consequences.
[Panu]
Yes correct. But also I wanted to say that all it has to be seen as an innovation not only in terms of architecture but it completely revolutionized the idea of what Finns had about a library. A library used to be a place where you read. I mean Finns read a lot like as you were implying. They borrow books a lot.
They are I think one of the most reading sort of nations in the world. We drink coffee more than you do in South Europe. The coffee is not that good but it's really plentiful.
But anyway , they read a lot newspapers and books and libraries have always been important but they have never been like an Agora. Like a central meeting place.
[Aibéo]
It's controversial for that. Some people love it some people hate it.
[Panu]
It's sort of any meeting places like that. It's a bit like a party. You go to a party basically some guests you like some you don't. But to me it's just like a positive development because otherwise first of all in a country with this climate we don't really have outside Agora in that sense where people can you know meet in groups separately freely. So it has to be inside.
To me it was it was a really positive thing to find out that you would find you know people playing around with the printing machines the 3d printing and the computer rooms and the music rooms in the cinema theater etc. And then also of course books and CDs and what have you. But then also groups of school kids also the Romani people who were shivering outside had come in to keep warm etc.
Of course they're these groups are not friends amongst each other. But you know you don't have to be friends but you share the same space and you show a little bit of respect for each other's lives in that way.
[Aibéo]
Well there is the public square in front of the Parliament there which the old library builds up now closes with the Sibelius with the Chiasma and the Sanomat building creates a little square there.
Panu]
Which is great for summertime.
[Aibéo]
And also for public manifestations and discussions there have been a lot of manifestations there. Although there was a big street crossing to the Parliament. So that's a shame.
[Panu]
You mean the Mannerheimintie. This is a deliberate thing. It's a bit like Senate Square from my point of view.
Senate Square is not an agora. It's what you would call a pen. It's not there to allow people to gather together and to speak their mind or anything like that. It's for the authorities to be able to manage those protestations and demonstrations.
You can only be there if you have a permit that defines the number of people that are there, the time that's there. So it's management. So it's not an agora that would freely allow you to democratically use your sort of voice to be heard.
[Aibéo]
But when you say it was on purpose, was it planned like that?
[Panu]
Yes they're planned like that. This is the Haussmannian argument.
You know Haussmann's boulevards for example in Paris and in Brussels etc were made wide so that the troops could be put out on them etc. It's not the only reason.
There's also the aesthetic appeal of the wide boulevards. The historical layout of the city.
But a lot of these designs were made by destroying whatever was underneath. A bit like the Brussels courthouse was built to this ugly, ugly, ugly building that's still standing there. It was built by basically destroying a working-class area. A lot of these wide boulevards that were built in the 19th century, that somehow run by the neoclassical buildings, were built by destroying whatever was underneath.
[Aibéo]
But it's good that you tell that because probably is not like one person's decision to let a street like Mannerheim be in front of the Parliament, crossing through a public square where the manifestations are.
Because then it's such a physical barrier like those manifestations will go to the Parliament and make a mess.
[Panu]
Well this is a good question. I'll have to sort of find out also because Mannerheim has been big all the time. And of course the area, the ground that's there now, we're sort of close to the Finlandia Hall and etc. A lot of that was rail tracks. And red brick buildings. Industrial buildings.
But so they weren't really in that type of use before. But Mannerheim was really big to begin with. Now why did they build the Parliament building anyway so close to such a big and wide thoroughway?
It's not as if there were so many parliamentarians wanting to come in.
Why didn't they move it a bit further off? There's even a sort of another thing which I haven't really found out yet.
But when they were designing what we now call the Historical Center of Helsinki, the Senate Square area, you'll find that you have all the different powers of state powers. They were originally represented there. You had the church of course, which is a Lutheran country.
And the Orthodox Church representing the Russian authorities of the Grand Duchy period a bit further away. You have that. And then you had the epistemic power, the university and its twin sister, Senate House being the executive.
And all those houses which are at the south end of Senate Square, they used to be government buildings as well. So you have, starting from basically looking from the statue, starting from the left, you had the courthouses and then you had different sort of police headquarters and prisons basically there before they were then transformed into consumer shopping and tourism sort of buildings. So all of that basically, but then that one democratic element that Finland had during that period of its history, which is the House of the Estates, was built further off, a bit as if one is saying that, well, no, you know, the democratic element doesn't really matter.
It doesn't deserve a building of its own in this concentration of important buildings at all. So that's sort of like further off, is it Liisankatu or Snellmanikatu?
[Aibéo]
Yes, we know where some embassies are, right?
[Panu]
Well, there's, you have the National Archives opposite, as well as the Bank of Finland is opposite.
[Aibéo]
Very nice. But I think we need to close this up?
This is great. I really enjoyed this.
[Panu]
Yeah, I did too. I look forward to working with you and your group in the future as well.
[Aibéo]
We're trying to engage in discussion around this, also publications, research, it's a heavy topic. It's an important topic because we need to be self-critical. As David Harvey says it so well, like the cities are now the entities that absorbed the surplus of capitalism. So capitalism needs the growth of the cities to maintain itself. So construction industry is the big motor of economy. So what happens if we don't build anything?
It's a disaster. So we need to destroy. So we need wars than to build more because we always need to build.
And then what do we build and what for and how we build it and to whom and to whose benefit should be a subject of very critical regard. And I think it is very, very important to discuss this topic as to enlighten some of the audience also for us ourselves to understand because it's so complex. It's not easy at all.
So I thank you for coming over, Pano.
[Panu]
It was a pleasure.
Transcription from the Architectural Democracy's podcast interview with Panu Minkkinen, (Episode #1: Panu Mikkinen), Nov 23rd, 2022.
Reviewe by Pedro Aibeo
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