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Tuesday::Jun 04, 2024

Modern Wonders

I

t's hard to tell if something's good. Sometimes I envy men like John Ruskin and Christopher Alexander, who are so confident that their judgements about beauty and goodness are correct (or close to it). What's funny is that I agree with their views on architecture, by and large! I find their arguments convincing, my preferences for buildings run parallel to theirs. But I'm still not quite there with being able to articulate what the hell I'm talking about when I talk about beauty, and I can feel that I'm working with some baggage when I try to think about it.

A digression: I've given anime every single chance. I've sought out what people consider to be the best out there, and I've watched it with an open mind, actively straining to find what people are seeing in it, and hoping that I'll like it. But the fact is that the vast, vast, vast majority of anime is garbage, and that includes the stuff that routinely tops the lists of the best anime of all time. Each show might have little facets of good things going on in it, but the overall unity and quality of dialogue, plot, animation, humor, and characterization are roundly mediocre, with vanishingly few exceptions. I say this as someone who once thought fondly of anime, fell away for a while, and then tried to get back in and see what was there -- I did not want to find something bad, and yet something bad was found. In this way, I feel confident in my assessment of anime as a whole.

Let me turn now to modern architecture. I cannot look at modern architecture in even the same way that I permitted myself to look at anime. There is something in the way that architects have been working for the last century or so that deeply, deeply upsets me, in a visceral way; like the way it feels to be betrayed. I find it very difficult to put this perspective aside, and look with fresh eyes at modern architecture, and therefore I am not confident that I'm missing something (though Christopher Alexander and Nikos Salingaros would tell me I'm not).

I read an interview recently here about developments in modern church architecture. The interviewee was organizing an exhibition of how Christian churches are being constructed to accomplish various ecclesial goals, and was extremely excited about the innovations and theology on display. I haven't been in these buildings, only seen little photos projected on my computer; but every one of these churches left me cold, or worse. I understood what the architects were trying to do (which, admittedly, is not necessarily a good sign), but all felt gimmicky, or inhuman, or kitschy, or boring. With practically every one, I could not imagine them serving healthy congregations in fifty years. The novelty will have worn off, their style will look phony and outdated, and most of them will probably be torn down or neglected or maintained as "sculptures" instead of churches.

But I could be wrong. I could simply be a reactionary who doesn't like change, or something. But I just feel that contemporary architects are just thrusting out in completely the wrong direction, and their skill or competence means nothing (or worse than nothing) if they aim at the wrong target. I'd take a pretty, modest farmhouse over any of these modern wonders any day of the week. What is going on here?