At the end of the first season of the interview series "Visions", we asked one of the masters of sustainable construction: Dietmar Eberle. He has 40 years of professional and even more life experience andbrings with him a serenity that is good for the conversation about the future of construction. This creates space to reflect on the core tasks of architecture – these are, according to Eberle, no less than the key to sustainable architecture.
The anonymous builders of the past handled what was available extremely carefully and intelligently, thus creating a high utility value. This art of building – and the knowledge of it – is central to the founder of baumschlager eberle architekten in order to build sustainable buildings.
In addition to a minimum consumption of resources, a long service life is another building block for sustainable architecture. Research projects initiated by Dietmar Eberle at ETH Zurich came to the conclusion that buildings that have a high architectural quality are getting older than those that lack them. The message that he derives from this is as simple as it is unambiguous: Build the best architecture you can build. This is the most important contribution to sustainability.
Dietmar Eberle, co-founder of the international office "Baumschlager Eberle Architekten" in Lustenau. Since the 80s continuously commissioned with teaching activities at universities worldwide. (Zurich, Vienna, Linz, Madrid, New York, Darmstadt and Hong Kong)
Christine Müller is an architecture journalist. In 2002, she began her work at “Österreichischen Wirtschaftsverlag” as a specialist editor of the architecture magazine Architektur & Bau Forum, whose editor-in-chief she took over in 2012 and held until her appointment at the end of 2020.