I haven’t paid attention to Big Architecture lately. It’s refreshingly clear that small-scale architects are turning toward sanity. Recent new houses around here are remarkably resonant with the older neighbors, neatly transitioning toward the existing house on each side. It’s impressive in a NON-radical way.
If this article is generally true, it sounds like Big Architecture is suffering the same richly deserved fate as Big Journalism and Big Entertainment and Big Academia. Architects are aware that everybody hates their brutalist Gaia-worshipping monstrosities, so they want to fix the problem with even MORE brutalist Gaia-worshipping monstrosities.
The description of the problem is realistic:
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The whole enterprise increasingly has the appearance of a lost cause, many architects worry; the battles over what good buildings should look like and what they should do are now waged, mostly in futility, by a rarefied set of people working to enact an even more rarefied set of values, to the applause of no one and the criticism of many.
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And here’s the reform:
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But even though de Graaf wants to rescue the field from its marginalization, self-imposed or otherwise, his new book is deeply mired in the same nostalgia that plagues the architects he faults for creating the current crisis. Architect, Verb eagerly and cynically points at everything that’s wrong with architecture: The “green” standards are insufficient! The awards are pay-to-play! Real estate interests supersede good design!
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Theory kills. Experience survives.
Polistra's Mill 