Architecture today offers a paradox: on the one hand it is more popular than ever, on the other hand it is losing all the aspects that once defined this art and craft. More fullcolor magazines, websites, books and tourist destinations with a great emphasis on, or totally devoted to, architecture are published than ever. But this architecture is more about images than about objects. In contemporary architecture, tastes are changing even faster than fashion. Ben van Berkel of architect's firm UN-studio proudly claimed that “the architect is the fashion designer of the future.” Is this the result of the fact that the production of buildings is increasingly seen in terms of materialistic real estate development rather than a functionalist approach to provide shelter or as a meaningful reflection of social values? In this process the idea of architecture as a slow art, meant to survive the centuries and taking place in landscapes or townscapes loaded with memories and artifacts of distant times, seems to be almost lost.

In Utrecht, both faces of architecture can be found. In the “Brainpark” of the Utrecht University (and other institutions for research and higher education) an open-air museum of the latest trends in architecture with star-architects has been built and is still under construction. The renowned architect Rem Koolhaas and his Office of Metropolitan Architecture – who have designed the master plan for the Utrecht University campus – but also UN-studio, Mecanoo, Wiel Arets, Neutelings and Riedijk, Jan Hoogstad and many more famous architects or young architects on their way to become famous, all seem to be engaged in a competition to show the most impressive, colorful, weird or funny designs.

Battle Between Gothic and Renaissance

It is also telling, however, that the ceremonial center of Utrecht University is still located in the heart of the old city: the Academiegebouw (University Hall, page 184), situated just inside the limits of the Roman castellum, which was built to defend the northern border of the empire, formed by what was then the stream of the river Rhine. It was within the remains of this castellum that some of the first Christian churches in the Netherlands were constructed and a diocese was founded.