I
have to believe another way is possible. How can it be that in our modern age of untold wealth and technique, only one in a hundred buildings can be worth even a second glance, and barely one in a thousand merit a compliment? How have we lost so utterly the ability to build homes, places or work, places of worship, which came so naturally to our unlettered forebears? What vulgarity in our souls allows us to accept so uncritically the bare walls, the misplaced windows, the awkward stiffness, the utter lack of character of these environments that are meant to sustain us?
This is a great mystery to me. Traditions are lost every day -- but making beautiful, functional buildings has been with every single culture since we learned how to chop down trees. How could we have forgotten our ways so completely, that we don't even know to ask for better? And how long will it take us to re-learn the lessons that anyone would have thought imprinted in our very beings?
The damage done is unutterable. If a revolution in architecture were to start today, it would still be generations before our cities and countrysides could begin to heal. The insidiously-named International Style squats over all, tainting every facade and doorway. John Ruskin decried the spiritless architecture that he saw surrounding him in the middle of the nineteenth century; I'm sure he thought things could get little worse, but I don't think we've yet hit the bottom, a hundred and fifty years later.
I don't know what to tell people, but there must be another way. Don't be inspired by anything new; get it as far away from you as you can. Do as many things as possible with your own two hands. Ornament your homes. Integrate your dwellings with the landscape. Notice problems, and try to fix them in the most direct and beautiful way you can. Don't sell. Make things in your home a little better each day, and tell other people what you've discovered.