Abstract
Many, if not a majority, of the world’s citizens view contemporary architecture as ineffective in accommodating the lives of everyday human beings. And yet, voluminous texts by prominent architects and the media argue just the opposite; that, in fact, flashy and expensive new projects profoundly benefit humanity. Those buildings supposedly provide continued advancement in how humans occupy the world. While there is no doubt that the built environment is instrumental to human achievement and wellbeing, what is the true value of the ill-formed, and perhaps ill-conceived, products of today’s leading architects? This essay argues that the elite power structure behind high-profile architectural projects is focused more upon promoting like-minded architects, and their narrow ideological interests, than in satisfying the ordinary everyday user. In doing so, this activity irrevocably damages the environment and markedly diminishes human neuro-physiological engagement with the man-made world. The logical conclusion from this purposeful misrepresentation is that the profession deliberately manipulates both the general public and architecture students to serve its own agenda.
Highlights
Many, if not a majority, of the world’s citizens view contemporary architecture as ineffective in accommodating the lives of everyday human beings
The unconventional and unnatural forms embodying this ideological construct are often considered sacrosanct, so much so that architectural academia, today’s design industry, and Western media zealously defend these architectural manifestations as unquestionable and exalted, if not divine (Mehaffy, Salingaros 2002). These aberrations of fashionable architecture are so unusual that many are fooled into believing that what they are seeing is a genuine advancement in architectural thinking
The obscure ideas that accompany these forms have been institutionalized in the modern education of young architects without question or debate. To support this purely aesthetic ideology, the institution of architectural education has spent the past several decades insulating itself by way of its own internalized valuing system (Salingaros 2002)
Summary
If not a majority, of the world’s citizens view contemporary architecture as ineffective in accommodating the lives of everyday human beings. Most Modern architects have been trained in this paradigm, and many take this edict to its extreme by completely denouncing program, function, purpose, and site (i.e. all practical measures of the built environment) in the pursuit of purist unencumbered architectural expressions (Salingaros, Masden 2010).
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