Engineering better solutions

CHRISTOPH Ingenhoven believes that "architects are over-rated". It is a sweeping statement that many architects would pooh-pooh if not for the fact that Mr Ingenhoven is an architect himself.

Mr Ingenhoven is the founder of Dusseldorf-based Ingenhoven Architects. His opinion of architects, especially "signature architects" or starchitects as they are sometimes known, stems from his assessment that architecture appears to increasingly be merely about facade treatments.

On signature architecture, he says: "I would like it more if the signature came from a real intensive problem-solving approach and not so much from …