ABSTRACT
This comes about as agency fractures into ever more specialised streams of advice, the ‘making sense’ of the world that architecture provides becomes devalued, and our cities fail to represent us unless we agree with Strindberg that graph paper conveys accurately a world in which individuals have become ciphers at home and at work. In defiance of this notion, good architects (properly supported by appropriate remuneration) – like athletes in sport who keep pushing the boundaries – consistently find ways of meeting the demands of low unit costs and providing the qualities that make our inhabiting meaningful. They do this by innovating. Like any human activity, architecture cannot stand still. Even the act of copying great works results in (unintended) innovations. We understand this well in art, where the forgeries of Van Megeren that so fooled his peers exemplify the way in which the mental space through which a community sees the world may subsume everyone at the time, though its particular lens is all too evident to following generations. Raymond Erith, the English classicist, chose to work in an unfashionable mode, but had an acute eye and a great sense of humour, imbuing his designs with qualities that any but an ideologue can appreciate. Other more contemporary classicists have a more questionable eye, a less compelling wit and a greater reliance on the symbol – making the tracts of development over which they preside shallow advertorial assertions of quality without delivering an architectural experience.
