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We often like to think we are morally superior and smarter than our ancestors, yet the success of Philippe Stark (The Caliban, as nicknamed in 2100's History books) is a clear sign of our own moronity - the moronity of our times as we should call it - and will be the subject of mockery from our grand children. The damage these people did (Starck and the architects in the same school, wich are currently overwhelming) to our cities and landscape would have been more than enough for a guillotine ride two centuries ago. If you want to figure out what we have escaped from these people, look at this nightmare : "Until recently, European architects have either connived at the evisceration of our cities or actively promoted it. Relying on the spurious rhetoric of Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius, they endorsed the totalitarian projects of the political elite, whose goal after the war was not to restore the cities but to clear away the “slums.” By “slums,” they meant the harmonious classical streets of affordable houses, seeded with local industries, corner shops, schools, and places of worship, that had made it possible for real communities to flourish in the center of our towns. High-rise blocks in open parkland, of the kind that Le Corbusier proposed in his plan for the demolition of Paris north of the Seine, would replace them. Meanwhile, all forms of employment and enjoyment would move elsewhere. Public buildings would be expressly modernist, with steel and concrete frames and curtain walls, but with no facades or intelligible apertures, and no perceivable relation to their neighbors. Important monuments from the past would remain, but often set in new and aesthetically annihilating contexts, such as that provided for Saint Paul’s in London." If you want to learn about a real architect, you should start by Léon Krier : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Léon_Krier He says : "“Humanity lives by trial and error, sometimes committing errors of a monumental scale. Architectural and urbanist modernism belong—like communism—to a class of errors from which there is little or nothing to learn or gain. . . . Modernism’s fundamental error, however, is to propose itself as a universal (i.e., unavoidable and necessary) phenomenon, legitimately replacing and excluding traditional solutions.”" The ugliness of US cities all has to do with the "modernist" rational approach to architecture. Unlike the europeans brains, cities were not importable. What is the point of living, sleeping and working in ugly places ? The damage done in Europe was attenuated because of our patrimoine, aka the things that our ancestors gave us, but we still have to fight against crooks like Starck. They have success, they have recognition, they have money, and they are the prominent icons of what we lack in our days of cultural relativism : taste. Full article about Krier (a must read) : http://www.city-journal.org/2008/18_2_urb-leon_krier.html |
I think New York is pretty awesome. It's not ugly, it's intensely functional. With the density of services, a life can be lived on any given street. You can find a town's worth of people that share any given common interest. Despite being immense, it feels cozy and organic in a way that DC does not. It has thriving art and theatre scenes and hundreds of subcultures. Does any European city come close to its beauty? I'm asking honestly here, not rhetorically. New York is the most awesome city I've ever seen, but I've not traveled much.