30:70. Architecture as a Balancing Act

Tchoban, SergeiSergei Tchoban (b. 1962 in Saint Petersburg) is a Russian-German architect who works internationally. In 2013 he established the Tchoban Foundation - Museum for Architectural Drawing in Berlin. He has twice curated the Russian Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale and in 2015 he designed the Russian Pavilion at the EXPO in Milan. He is the founder of the first biennale for young architects in Russia and chairman and member of numerous international architecture and architectural drawing competitions.
Sedov, VladimirVladimir Sedov (b. 1960 in Moscow) is a Russian historian of art and architecture, archaeologist, Slavicist, and leading research fellow at the Institute of Archaeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He has a doctorate and habilitation in art history and is a professor, corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and head of the Department of Russian Art at Lomonosov Moscow State University's Faculty of History.

Schulz, BernhardBernhard Schulz (b. 1953 in Berlin) is an acclaimed architecture and art critic. He studied economics, political science, and subsequently art history in Berlin. Between 1977 and 1987 he worked as an exhibition curator, and since then he has served as editor of the arts section of Berlin's Tagesspiegel. He has lectured for many years at various Berlin universities, published numerous essays for books and catalogues, and is on the regular staff of a number of prestigious professional journals.

Never before have so many buildings been constructed as today, and never has architecture had so many technological and design possibilities at its disposal. And yet there is a sense of unease about contemporary architecture. In their book, Sergei Tchoban and Vladimir Sedov show how in modern times we have lost the balance between outstanding works of architecture and the background structures that surround them, with every building striving to assert itself in relation to all the others - to drown them out if it can. Yet the modern age is certainly capable of developing a harmony of contrasts - it has everything it needs at its disposal. After taking the reader on a foray through 2,500 years of architectural history, the authors arrive at the anomaly of modernism. They show what contemporary architecture must take into account if it is to achieve a satisfactory overall architectural impression that is harmonious in an entirely new way.