an excerpt from WG Clark's essay "Replacement", published in the monograph Clark and Menefee:
"...I cannot convince myself that settlement, even the most thoughtful, the most beautiful, is better than wilderness. Even the [grain] mill is not better than no mill; but the mill is necessary for our existence, and therefore worthwhile. It is an image that keeps returning, proof that the use of the Earth need not be destructive, and that the architecture can be the ameliorative act by which, in thoughtfulness and carefulness, we counter the destructive effect of construction. Nothing else is architecture; all the rest is merely building.
The American landscape is being sacrificed to building. The result is dismal, adding up to nothing satisfactory or even significant except as an accurate self-portrait of our culture and ethical dissolution. This is an observation neither rare nor subtle. The condition is one that we all see and feel daily, one that we abhor yet perpetuate, a senseless spread of profit-motivated building that has none of the good characteristics of settlement, and looks remarkably more like a midway, uprooted and designed to be put up anywhere. The comparison becomes more apt with the realization that most of the things built are unnecessary..."
2 comments:
I love the redesign! Also, thanks for putting my blog in your blog list. I've just gotten to a point where I'll be posting some more content soon. Love what you're doing here! Keep it up!
Justin
www.architecturalmusings.com
right back at you--the posts on "architectural musings" are great as well. i understand how difficult it can be to have original posts [and on a regular basis]--somehow life just keeps getting in the way.
; ]
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