We settled this continent without art. So it was easy for us to treat it as an imported luxury, not a necessity.
We are yet to have a conscience at all about the exploitation of human cultures.
The new architecture of transparency and lightness comes from Japan and Europe.
The artist likes to seem totally responsible for his work. Often he begins to explain it, to make it appear as if it were a reasonable process.
The way of architecture is the quiet voice that underlies it and has guided it from the beginning.
The details are the very source of expression in architecture. But we are caught in a vice between art and the bottom line.
There is a single thread of attitude, a single direction of flow, that joins our present time to it's early burgeoning in Mediterranean civilization...
Does an architecture to assuage the spirit have a place in all this? Unfortunately we are no longer the interpreters of our culture's myths but the followers of that dubious client, the developer, who has little patience with the art of architecture, the fine detail and obscure promise, which can upset his financial activity.
What is the thread of western civilization that distinguished its course in history? It has to do with the preoccupation of western man with his outward command and his sense of superiority.
We are stymied by regulations, limited choice and the threat of litigation. Neither consultants nor industry itself provide research which takes architecture forward.
This great, though disastrous, culture can only change as we begin to stand off and see... the inveterate materialism which has become the model for cultures around the world.
Materialism has never been so ominous as now in North America, as management takes over.
Today's developer is a poor substitute for the committed entrepreneur of the last century for whom the work of architecture represented a chance to celebrate the worth of his enterprise.
Compared to industry in Europe or Japan, where industry was based on a craft tradition, we are sadly behind.
We are not peddlers of the fashionable. We believe that good design defies fashion, is truly innovative, eminently sensible, yet a source of inspiration to those who have the pleasure of living with it.
