I do not mean to sound cynical, because I am very much concerned with the directions now being taken. Something legitimate is going on; in the customary and inexorable way that architecture makes worlds that we cannot escape, post-modernism is beginning to set the stage—slowly, and in special structures—which is always how new styles begin. I find some of these directions just as intriguing as those who see the break with the conventions of modernism as the sign of a new age; I only differ with their somewhat overwrought assessment of what makes a revolution.

Other attitudes I find disheartening and even dangerous. Because, as usual, the rush to join an international coterie of tastemakers who appear to be onto something special obscures reason and judgment. The need to embrace, rather than to analyze, the fear of being branded reactionary if one does not accept the new unquestioningly, the inability or unwillingness to separate that which has genuine architectural merit from that which is merely novel or momentarily seductive, are all characteristic of our times. These are times that feed on sensation and opportunism rather alarmingly. But I suspect that we are also witnessing the classic attitudes of any period in which the proponents of change have seen themselves as apocalyptic messengers with the mandate to convert.

What is already clear, however, is that this is a moment of some importance and more than routine interest in architectural history, with the doctrines of modernism being seriously questioned, and new approaches and answers being sought. In fact, the changes that are taking place in theory and philosophy are far more important than much of the architectural work, and the publicity, that is signaling them. And the signals are being given in what seems like record amounts of obscure and pretentious language. When embracing the new means rejecting the old—and when doesn’t it?—a lot of mistakes in judgment are bound to be made. The modernists are suffering from those mistakes now; it is just that kind of messianic shortsightedness and self-absorption that has made them vulnerable to attack. The post-modernists are heading for a different set of troubles.

It can be far more revealing and helpful to take a longer view, if possible, of the architectural turmoil today; to see what death and failure are metaphors for; to try to understand the unique contributions of building in this century rather than to condemn them out of hand. Taste, of course, is a pendulum, and every artist is an explorer who wants to be on the leading edge of the new. Among those who follow there is a distinct disinclination to stand outside fashion and miss the action. The historian of architecture has a sense of having seen it all before. If it is much too early to write the history of this century, it is still worth seeking a perspective beyond the grasp of a single, and understandably self-serving, generation.

I believe that the art of architecture is in uneasy but significant transition. The high period of modernism is over; the Age of the Masters—Frank Lloyd Wright, Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier—is finished. We are clearly—or I should say, unclearly—moving on toward something else; in fact, we have been doing so for some time. But whatever comes next will be the product or inheritor of modernism, not the radical break that the new work is advertised to be. It will have as its heart the twentieth-century revolution that we call modern architecture. Anything that follows now would be impossible without those unprecedented technological and aesthetic innovations. No renunciation will get rid of this fact of art and history. No catalogue of misuses and abuses will change it. Modern architecture is too much a part of us and our world, for reasons at once simple and profound, to be finished by fiat. It takes a very small vision or a very large ego to think that modern architecture can be banished as an act of will, or tossed on the historical rubbish heap. It is just not possible to repeal the style of our time.

However, the issue is not really death; it is failure. 

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