Patrick Beseda

[Thoughts] on style and war

I read a pretty interesting and almost compelling article. Its long but you should give it a good skimming.

In summary Mr. Shumacher makes a case for “parametricism” as the next enduring style in architecture. He says that there will be a style war against modernism hiding in the disguise of minimalism and that a generation of young architects are the new army adhering to the dogma that is parametricism.

And he uses a lot of long words and long winded paragraphs to make his case for a unified style. We really could have been spared a page or two, but it wasn’t unbearably boring, just almost unbearably boring.

My $0.02 is that as with any other kind of style(clothing, art, cars, hair, etc.) people are just going to do what they want. And they should; they shouldn’t do anything other than that.  Some styles will be popular and lasting (classical music) other will be fads that fade away(Furbies).  Shouldn’t architects just do what they want without worrying about the Do’s and Dont’s of some unified style? Some are bound to be better than others, but its important that they are diverse. I don’t ever want someone to tell me how to design something because it is whats “in style.”

Go ahead, fight the war.