Sublime

When we ponder the layout of ancient cities, we must acknowledge that they are the by-product of thousands of years of human tinkering. People came together in villages and tried different living arrangements. What worked, they copied and expanded. What didn’t work, they discarded. That is, if those experiments hadn’t already killed or disbanded th

Street life is drastically reduced when small, active units are superseded by large units. In many places it is possible to see how life in the streets has dwindled drastically as gas stations, car dealerships, and parking lots have created holes and voids in the city fabric, or when passive units such as offices and banks move in. In contrast, exa

“You hit on one of the central questions of our time: What is our relationship to place? Is there more or less nationalism in a world where people can freely move across countries?”

In the years since Venturi built his mother’s house and published his two seminal manifestos, it has become the conventional wisdom, at least among architecture’s avant-garde, that architecture is a kind of language and that all its various elements—the gables and arches and columns, the axes and patterns of fenestration and materials—are best unde

making distinctive places that bridged the gap between high architectural culture and the general public.

Life has not accelerated, but still dawdles along keeping time with the seasons. The markets still sell real food that has escaped the modern passion for sterilizing and shrink-wrapping. The countryside is still wild, and unscarred by golf courses, theme parks, or condominium colonies. It is still possible to listen to silence. Unlike so many other

Pragmatic Chaos