ABSTRACT

Can we imagine an architecture that is both beautiful and contributes to the common good? Given our complex world, burdened by environmental degradation and social inequity, the question of architecture's contribution to humanity's well-being is not an obvious one, but it seems to have an urgency that it lacked during the earlier, more optimistic phases of modernity. Our central modern institutions have become problematic. Democratic national governments act like police states and corporations operate like pathological criminals. Should architects design comfortable hospitals more concerned with business than with healing, or well-detailed prisons that will never hold the real criminals that destroy the environment or exploit and decimate the economic and social fabric of the world?