“But the joke was on the socialists, really, because as it turned out, this obsession with minimalism was also uniquely compatible with capitalism’s miserable cult of efficiency. […]
There was a good reason why, historically, religious architecture has been the most concerned with beauty for beauty’s sake; the more time is spent elegantly decorating a cathedral, the more it serves its intended function of celebrating God’s glory, whereas the more time is spent decorating an office building, the less money will be left over for the developer.
But let’s leave aside God’s glory—what about ordinary human happiness?“
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If it doesn’t make you feel desperately, crushingly alone, it’s probably not a piece of prize-winning contemporary architecture.
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I enjoyed reading this article – a total condemnation of styles like brutalism and postmodernism in favor of traditional aesthetics and a re-emphasis on architectural beauty – within a day of reading McMansion Hell’s Reflections on Preservation, which defends brutalist and postmodernist buildings, not just for being artistically important, but for genuinely enriching the lives of the people who live among them. I recommend reading both.
Yeah, and you can also get tired of criticizing something you love. You can get completely fed up with it and decide, “You know what? Flaws aside, I love this thing, and I don’t have to waste hours of my life admitting its flaws to strangers on the Internet in order to somehow justify my love of it.” You can get sick of watching others gleefully tear it apart, for no reason other than that it’s popular and they hate that you love it. You can get sick of watching others tearing it apart with good intentions, too.
In the end, it’s just a cartoon, or a book, or a movie. It’s not that serious, and you can enjoy it without hyper-focusing on its flaws. You don’t need to justify your love of something to someone else, least of all a person you don’t even know.
Only the Avatar, master of all four elements, could stop them, but when the world needed him most…
no offense but male protagonists whose strength comes from empathy, compassion and humanity will always be more interesting than snarky assholes who punch everything and treat everyone around them like shit
daisychainnihilism 