build beauty, bury boring

The acropolis of Athens was built sometime in the 5th century BC and still stands today. Thousands of tons of marble were mined from a quarry about 10 miles from Athens and then upon arrival had to somehow be taken up an incline (the word acropolis in Greek basically means highest point). Imagine lugging all of this 10 miles and then having to fling it up a mountain. The dedication and enthusiasm to create something like this is astonishing.

I wonder if the Greeks, or any of these ancient builders, every wondered how architecture would look in the future. "As technology develops, things can only get easier and more beautiful" they must have thought.

Wrong :( 

In the year 2024, if you see any new building, there is a 0.01% it is interesting. We have engineers, we have access to resources & knowledge from all across the world, we have the biggest budgets ever, and yet we have ugliness.

I'm against most modern architecture because there has been a shift from ornament and detail-oriented buildings to plain and soulless. Business districts from Frankfurt to Singapore and Sao Paulo are all seemingly the same. As are modern homes. As are university classrooms. Shouldn't society be exceptional based on its technological advances?

Of course, most people aren't wealthy enough to fund the construction of these megalithic tombstones, so that begs the question, who is forcing us to look at and live in these bleak monstrosities when a century ago, our cities were filled with all manner of beauty?

I think a lot of contemporary architecture is built the way it is due to societal constraints not necessarily under architects' control. The corporate and banking climate encourages the developer mindset where extracting as much monetary value per sqm is the priority.

Things that can be easily quantified and measured, such as fitting more ensuite bedrooms into the same apartment block, are prioritized over something qualitative, that is hard to measure, such as beauty.

The corporate and banking executives making these decisions are probably…a bunch of men! And regretfully, most men don't seem to have good taste.

And I can't help but wonder if all of these men, or people, in charge of these real estate firms, are then taking their profits and running on vacation to Monaco and Amalfi…to then be surrounded by the architecture of the old world?

We are capable of beautiful design, and we are so lucky to have inherited so much beautiful architecture from the past. From Roman remains to the Chrysler building, what modern day structures have we set up that will be jaw dropping for generations to come?

I encourage you to look at the images below to help think this through:

Telling our cities, developers, designers, to put love into modern day street poles almost sounds like it would be laughed at. But when something as random as street poles lacks love, the ugliness will compound.