A Perspective on Architectural Directions

Abstract

In the area of inner urban development, both in what is allowed to be built and what architects choose to build, we are in a time of great conflict — in a cultural dilemma that has become alarmingly evident in most developed Western countries. Given immense thrust through the media, the emerging new laws and images make us believe that the direction of development in the last 80 years or so has been totally ill-orientated, that it has created nothing but environmental and visual chaos. We are told forcefully that the time has come for a complete turn-about. We should abandon all past notions on city planning, discard theories on architecture developed in our time and change direction totally. I find the propositions and the ensuing visual results thrust at our eyes appalling and quite unbelievable. They constitute a violent reaction, an irrational turning back of the clock from gradual logical and consequential development in our time — a totally antiintellectural stance.