What do you define as "good" architecture?

Hard to define! "Marken-Brand" (station architecture)

• How would you translate this? It is about the new trends in railway station architecture, and the word that is causing me headaches is "Marken-Brand". What is the writer trying to say? "Die neue Stationen stärken somit nicht das bestehende Image der SBB, sondern sind Ausdruck einer tiefgreifenden und durchaus fragwürdigen Veränderung, von der alten Bahnhof-Identität hin zum ausschliesslichen Marken-Brand."

• Answer:

  Dear leander1, The strange expression "Marken-Brand" is without any doubt an exemplar for a linguistic trend in all German-speaking countries, and though it is most distinctive in Germany, Switzerland is not spared from it: The sometimes erroneous adoption of English and English-sounding words. For example, a cellphone has the pseudo-English name "Handy", and a TV show host is a "Showmaster", to mention only two examples. I admit, those two are exceptionally horrible; most terms are adopted correctly. Nevertheless, the excessive adoption of Anglicisms has become more and more controversial in the past few years since the newly adopted terms do not only not facilitate communication with speakers of the English language, since they are often used in a sense different from the original meaning; they are also used to previous German terms just because they sound "cooler" or more professional. In this particular case, the combination "Marken-Brand" is quite funny. "Marke" is German for "brand". And the second part of the combined term is, without any doubt, the English "brand". There is a German word "Brand", which means "fire"; but it is clear that the author did not have it in mind here since it would not make any sense. (By the way, the German "Brand" and the English "brand" are distant cousins, since the expression originally derived from the custom of branding livestock). So "Marken-Brand" basically means "brand-brand". Reading the paragraph, I would say that the author tried to give his text a certain "modern-dynamic-professional" feeling by using this interesting creation, regardless of the fact that it is actually saying twice the same. Through the context, I can say for sure that "Marken-Brand" is meant to express "brand building", in the sense of "to disperse its corporate identity". So the paragraph would translate as follows: "Thus, the new train stations do not strengthen the existing image of the SBB [Swiss Federal Railways], but they rather express a drastic and by all means questionable change, away from the old station-identity to sole brand building." I hope this was helpful. Best regards, Scriptor