The Pro-Brexit Architect

Patrik Schumacher, longstanding business partner of Zaha Hadid and sole head of Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA) since she passed away last spring, recently published a text at uk.archinect.com, which appreciates the Brexit as a door opener toward the realm of market radicalism and has – unsurprisingly – caused a passionate debate in the comments sections.

Great Britain could now free itself from the paralyzing embrace of the regulatory and leveling exaggerations of the European Union, says Schumacher. "The tendency of the EU to govern, control and 'harmonize' more and more aspects of the social and economic life in the cause of the protection of its citizens and the creation of a leveled economic playing field paralyzes any entrepreneurial innovation and leads to stagnation," he criticizes. He thus clearly dissents from his colleagues in the UK, who had predominantly acknowledged the pro-Brexit vote with dismay, as this writer reported.

Schumacher emphasizes three aspects in his polemics, not least since they directly affect his profession: immigration, labor legislation, as well as building and planning regulations. Especially when looking at the latter it becomes clear that his criticism is not so much directed at the EU but in the most general sense at all levels of the state. As a London-based architect, he finds fault with the over-regulation of the building sector by national legislators, city governments and district councils. So there can be no talk of a Europe-wide leveling. It's the communally determined standards regarding flat sizes, building density or the share of "affordable" housing space of new buildings, which should, in his opinion, be abolished so that investors could better trace the wishes and requirements of a dynamic population.

That, of all things, a competition of investors, which is freed from any form of state intervention, is able to solve London’s housing crises is probably not believed by anyone who has in recent years observed how exactly the existing demands on building projects in the British metropolis have been partly leveraged by investors in creative ways, while rents and property prices simply continued to soar.

Only "competition," no "cooperation"
In Schumacher’s text, there is generally much talk of "competition." The word "cooperation," however, is not mentioned once – as if only the rivalry of entrepreneurial individuals but never collaboration between actors and institutions could yield the innovations Schumacher demands, whose content he does not elaborate on either.

The architect also wishes for more competition on the job market, the regulation of which is definitely a matter of the individual states. Schumacher explicitly shows his positive feelings about the fact that Great Britain significantly departs from the European Continent in terms of employment law already. In Germany, so he argues, a firm like his could not exist as it would have to consider social indicators, therefore making employees redundant, and they would not be able to keep those who are most "valuable" for the company. By implication this probably means: the competitors from Munich, Berlin and Düsseldorf are unable to hold a candle to ZHA in terms of creativity and aesthetics, simply because the welfare state trammels them.

Just as if, for example, the gender pay gap was nothing but an old wives’ tale (to stay with the gender-specific and, by Schumacher, negatively connoted image of the "nanny state"), the head of ZHA regards the anti-discrimination laws concerning the working world passed on the EU level as irrelevant, because discrimination in developed societies does practically not exist anymore. They were anyway contrary to the interests of entrepreneurs, who solely use performance as a benchmark. Instead, Schumacher claims, such laws would invite their regular misuse by people who do not want or are not able to perform. Schumacher bluntly argues that discrimination would, if anything, always and everywhere emanate from the staff rather than from the employer.

Big government instead of slender state
Although the EU referendum was primarily decided upon regarding the immigrant issue, Patrik Schumacher thinks that Great Britain’s withdrawal entails the opportunity to create a more open, more immigration-friendly society and economy. And how? By controlling immigration according to purely economic criteria and restrict public welfare benefits for newcomers, because automatically only the employable human capital would then arrive in the country.

Schumacher explains that proposals of the British government to limit the access to government grants for immigrants from the EU have been rejected by Brussels. Indeed Cameron had been able to enforce at least a four-year suspension against the other member states during the negotiations on a reform package. The majority for the Brexit came about because the voters did not think that this was restrictive enough. Additionally, the many people with precarious employment situations in the North of England consider working and tax-paying East and South Europeans as competitors on the job market and, due to successful indoctrination by Ukip’s right-wing populist slogans, also as putative hazard for the cultural identity of their communities, which have been deindustrialized over many years.

After taking office, Theresa May, Britain’s new Prime Minister, addressed her first words primarily towards these segments of the population, who have been upset or indeed outmaneuvered by the effects of globalization. These words suggested that May will not pursue a withdrawal of the state to master the problems at hand, but rather bank on an economic and social policy, which has a stronger orientation towards interventions than that of her predecessor, David Cameron. In this difficult phase the country is currently facing, not even the Tories, much appreciated by Schumacher, want to happily follow Maggie Thatcher’s ideology, which resonates in his anti-etatist rhetoric. Consequently, a market-radical Albion will remain to be the soggy dream of the architect.

This article originally appeared as "Der Pro-Brexit-Architekt" on German-Architects. Translation by Bianca Murphy.