Funny enough often without high commercial expectations. The first half of the twentieth century has been the age of manifestos: from Ornament und Verbrechen by Adolf Loos (1870-1933), Towards a New Architecture (1920) by Le Corbusier to De Stijl (1923) by can Eesteren / Theo von Doesburg / G. Rietveld.

Architects really have believed in their educational duty and influence - no wonder: last centuries architectural manifestos have been the result of heavy social and technological changes: the rise of mass productions, industrialization, labor movement, reconstruction after war, etc.

And today? It seems that architecture has capitulated to commercialization and the market economy - idealistic world changing thinking has been replaced by the omnipresence of images. Manifestos, if they exists, are lacking attention. It seems that architecture has troubles to come along with today's fast-changing world: Most architects seem to be unaffected by globalization, new communication technologies and the growing markets (ok - architects use Emails). "In the early 21st century, there are as many potential manifestos as there are people" Justin McGuirk writes in ICON issue 050. So ideologies have been replaced by individualism?

For the special 50th issue, ICON magazine asked 50 of the most influential [sic] architects, designers and thinkers to tell them what they believe in. Geoff Manaugh (who is actually in the issue - congratulations!) of BLDBLOG has done a great summary about that. Anyway, my favorite manifesto is from Bruce Mau. And yours?

The manifesto of Zaha Hadid. Instead of a text some images.

vía anArquitectura