German people that I know always complained about the lack of a truly German contemporary architecture style. On the contrary I’ve seen them praise Dutch urban planning and all the laboratory wise architecture they come up with, or even the silent Portuguese architecture. They would praise them with academic seminars, lectures, field trips, exhibitions.

Even if that absence might be true, the fact is that there definitely is a German method. The main motto is effectiveness, of course. Given a program and a situation, the analysis starts. Pros and cons are listed and written down and the design is done right away.

As opposed to this, Dutch and Portuguese would do it  in quite different ways. After analyzing the program and the situation, the Dutch would grab any kind of moldable material and start trying shapes, hundreds of them. Meanwhile the Portuguese would be still analyzing the history of the location so that the time line would be caught as if it was a tram passing by. Then they would feel it as inspiration and a nice and balanced embryo-solution would start to take shape.

Of course Portuguese are keen on creating rules and regulations that tend more and more to constrain creativity. But that’s ok because they are masters in escaping rules and regulations. And so, with a little bit to the left, here 50 cm higher and there 10 cm lower, the Portuguese spend extra-hours every day changing and re-changing little details for the sake of divine proportions. Meanwhile, the Dutch already chose a few shapes which they envision as the most breath-taking, and are still producing new ones and at the same time variations of the chosen and of the newest and variations of those variations and variations of this new one that actually was one that was kicked out but was upside-down and so it looks great. And the day is dawning and it’s winter, so it’s really late. The Portuguese went home hours before but secretly they keep working a few more hours. Everything under control, but architecture is a passion.

It’s the last week before the deadline and 2cm to the left, 1cm higher here and 1,45 cm lower there the Portuguese may start thinking that the divine proportions are almost there. Meanwhile they are sleeping 3 hours per night and getting stressed and pulling hair while stuck in traffic jams and the ones who smoke may spend 50€ per day in cigarettes and they will share with the ones that don’t have cigarettes now but will buy later so in the end it makes 1550€ of cigarettes in one week and they may start buying cheaper so in the end it may raise to thousands of cigarettes smoked. Everyone starts the day with double espresso. While insanely drawing and model making and redrawing and re-gluing and copying and pasting what they can they do 5 minutes intervals each half an hour in which they drink one more espresso and / or smoke another cigarette and complain about the ineffectiveness of that colleague/boss/where did you buy that shirt/ ZARA is on sale. Meanwhile the Dutch have chosen their striking shape 6 days before the deadline and there is expanded polystyrene white, green and blue all over the place and everybody refrains from thoughts about sleeping, which they may or may not do, whether they are trainees or not, and it’s day again and it’s night again and great sculpture of Redbull cans/ this coffee is too acid and tastes like burnt says a Portuguese guy in the Netherlands. At the end, some are zombies, some are broccolis, some are walking lettuces, shacking insomniacs, but the deadline is respected and everybody goes home and sleep. Let’s not refer how you are at the end of a couple of years working like this. Cipralex and Valium may be part of the equation.

Parallel to all this paraphernalia, pragmatically the Germans have chosen the solution which is the most cost-, ecologically-, time-effective one. They start the design. Models must be stainless. Then this design goes through a list of pre-defined steps, which are probably written down in a slightly dusty book in a decades old library, so that all the parties involved are happy. Everything is insanely carefully checked. No one will be blamed in the end because there won’t be mistakes, everybody minded their own job. No interferences. And at the agreed deadline everything will be more than ready. They worked from 9 to 6, slept 8 hours every night. Some drank coffee, some smoked their cigarettes, some drank beer, now and then they laughed with each other, they asked about the weekend, made comments about politics. The job is done. They all went home peacefully.

We had one more of our deadlines today. I love those days. I always arrive home earlier.

Isn’t the Deutsche-Methode wonderful?