Form and content in contemporary architecture: issues of style and power

Abstract

Architecture, the craft of making buildings, has been reduced to an alliance of taste and capital, of art and profit, of style and power. Contemporary architectural practice is, we content, an alienated practice: form torn constantly from content; the aesthetic negated, reduced to looks, dressed up as Art. This, the taken-for-granted orthodoxy of architectural thought must be opposed, resisted. Such resistance is rooted in the concept and practice of craftsmanship, in the fusion of pleasure and work — an overcoming of alientated labour.