[yubblegum]

> Architecture professors have focused on “innovation” for 100 years and have achieved little.

The issue is that architecture is not a science. It has nothing to do with the past 100 years. There is simply, to date, no solid theoretical foundation that can inform design. Corbu made a lame attempt in his early phase to establish a set of axioms, and that didn't work out.

So the search in the past 100 years wasn't entirely based on "innovation". The field is searching for something resembling a theoretical framework.

> So the whole profession has failed, since about the introduction of the Bauhaus.

This is a reactionary statement. There are numerous amazing works of architecture from the 20th. And your dragging in Bauhaus indicates you actually are not well read in the history of modern architecture. (This negative fascination with bauhaus carries a strong whiff of the National Socialist Germany, btw ..)

> In survey after survey, 80% of the people prefer traditional over modern(ist) designs.

Well, Architecture (contra building design) is high art. It is not for the unwashed. 80% of the people also prefer drivel for their cultural fare.

[cmarschner]

Your reasoning follows the exact playbook that is repeated by architecture professionals around the world. It is exactly these kind of statements that lead me to comment in the first place.

No, architecture is not high art. It is the most public of arts and hence needs to serve the people. And people know very well which environments they like and which ones they don‘t. Where they find emotional well-being. That is not a political question at all. The studies are consistent.

We also don‘t need a theory. Architecture is a bunch of patterns and insights into human nature that has been known for thousands of years.

[bmicraft]

> Well, Architecture (contra building design) is high art. It is not for the unwashed. 80% of the people also prefer drivel for their cultural fare.

The people should get what the people like, not what the elite likes. Nobody cares what you consider "high art". The term in itself is pretentious.

Your "high art" is too desperately trying to make a name by standing out through being weird instead of better.

[yubblegum]

People do get what they like and they should. We are discussing Architecture with a capital A. It has always, since day 1, been an elite concern. No one took polls of e.g. Greeks to see if they approve of the Parthenon. The English common man was not consulted by Christopher Wren. The list goes on and on. What is ironic is that this "traditional architecture" that reactionary ones like you keep raving about is nothing about recyclying "high art" of their ancestors.

Materials change. Scale requirements have changed. Techniques have evolved. The forms are reflecting that. It is entirely correct to note that many of such efforts (mostly copycat rehashing of masterpieces of modernist architects by lesser talent) have proven ineffective, but that it is just the nature of the field. Architecture is not software. It takes generations to iterate through the possible solutions.

> Your "high art" is too desperately trying to make a name by standing out through being weird instead of better.

You have zero idea of what I consider high art in architecture. You are tilting at your own windmills buddy.

+There is nothing pretensious about distinguishing high and low cultural efforts. Let's consider our own field: should we all be forced to code in JavaScript and disavow more powerful constructs such as e.g. Haskell since the "common man" is incapable of groking it??