There’s an interesting article in the New York Times magazine where Deyan Sudjic, director of the Design Museum in London, argues that many arts fail to stir us – positively or negatively – and it is only architecture that still carries an emotional punch.
After a century or more of twisting the bourgeoisie by the tail, the cultural shock tactics of visual artists are subject to the inevitability of diminishing returns. Equally, it is questionable if the kind of people who get angry enough about books to want to ban them actually read them… Architecture, on the other hand, is a subject that is fraught with genuine conflict, and it seems to have acquired an extraordinary capacity to make all kinds of people extremely angry about issues that range from the most intensely personal to the most diffusely political. Architecture causes neighbors to go to war over tear-downs or allows a wronged spouse to expunge the memory of an ex-husband from a former family home.
In recent years, it is architecture more than any other aspect of contemporary culture that has touched the rawest nerves.
Architecture, it seems, matters more than ever. It affects us personally, in ways that we have all come to know. Certainly it has never been more talked about than it is now.
Facebook
Twitter
Digg
Reddit
StumbleUpon
