To Build Law

As we keep thinking about architecture’s responsibility in the myriad ecological crises resulting from centuries of human impact, we wonder whether we’ve reached the point where we should stop building. Or perhaps stop demolishing. In our present moment, how do we understand the making of architecture, an activity that is mainly concerned with transforming land through processes of extraction, construction, and destruction? These are some of the underlying questions addressed in To Build Law, our new film and exhibition opening tomorrow.

To Build Law is the second chapter of Groundwork, a project that investigates how architects are situating themselves in relation to changing natural and disciplinary boundaries, questioning how to engage with the environmental and social complexities of a site. With this project, we explore new forms of practice that reposition the role of the architect in response to the urgency of the climate crisis and its effects on multiple communities. This reflection is also developed through our associated web issue, Forces of Friction. This work expands on some of our older projects that highlighted how ideas, rather than buildings, shape our built environment, including 1973: Sorry, Out of Gas, Goodbye Oil, and It’s All Happening So Fast.

The making of architecture is ultimately framed by rules and regulations. Despite their centrality to the design process, often architects feel a lack of agency when dealing with law and policy. We began examining this complexity with our Hall Cases installation File Under: Law and Policy and continued it with the web issue Keep Safe, which concluded last week. Throughout the issue, authors addressed how infrastructure, materials, memory, storytelling, and mythmaking shape our understanding and experience of safety, protection, and order. From Hong Kong to Los Angeles to Johannesburg, they considered the implications of law and policy on the design, construction, and experience of architecture and our built environment.

These parallel lines of inquiry intersect in To Build Law. The exhibition and film, conceived by Francesco Garutti and Irene Chin, and directed by Joshua Frank, follow Berlin-based bplus.xyz (b+) and the chair for architecture and storytelling s+ (station.plus, D-ARCH, ETH Zurich) as they organize HouseEurope!, a European Citizens’ Initiative that proposes new laws through direct democracy and signature collection, catalyzing a shift away from demolition and new-build development toward renovation and adaptive reuse as new norms.

Observing the b+ team closely during various phases of the conceptualization and development of HouseEurope!, To Build Law is a layered reportage of urban fragments and legal pathways in which architecture reveals itself as an open process of establishing partners, drafting positions, convening meetings, strategizing campaigns, and collecting votes to build a movement that could change the conditions of architectural practice in Europe.

To mark the opening this week, we share an interview by Federica Zambeletti (founder and managing director of KoozArch) with Arno Brandlhuber and Olaf Grawert of b+. Part of Forces of Friction, the conversation reflects on how architecture can also become a process for designing a new legal system that prioritizes the reuse of existing building stock over new construction, with a view to promoting a more affordable and social architecture.

If you’re in Montréal, join us tonight, Tuesday 10 December at 6pm, for the vernissage and a talk by Olaf Grawert (b+/HouseEurope!) and Alina Kolar (s+/HouseEurope!). We also invite you to a roundtable on renovation and rehabilitation policies in Canada on Wednesday 11 November at 6pm. Olaf Grawert, Alina Kolar, Alexandre Landry (L’Ensemble), Conrad Speckert (LGA Architectural Partners), and Juliette Cook (Ha/f Climate Design) will discuss the economic, environmental, and legal challenges of renovation.

With our new chapter opening this week, we are happy to share that the film from the first Chapter of Groundwork, Into the Island is now available online for screening on PIN-UP’s website until 21 December.

To find out more about Groundwork and conversations coming up in 2025, or about our film, research, publication and curatorial projects, subscribe to our newsletter.