People built 1000s of churches and cathedrals which, at face value, was a collossal waste of manpower, materials, and space.
And yet we admire them and keep them around for 100s or 1000s of years, because of their greatness. The same for the pyramids. Of course, the effort served a function as well: to establish and maintain a power structure, to give people whose lives hung on strings far more often than ours do a sense of safety and hope.
Man needs greatness. A glimpse of the divine. Our civilization has lost this, and the hyperfunctionalism has taken over our cities. We have removed even ornament and other signs of beauty from our buildings. And it has made them worse.
But these trends come in waves. 50 years from now and we might again spend extra money on whatever will be the equivalent of neogothic or classicist buildings.
And I‘m looking forward to it.
And yet we admire them and keep them around for 100s or 1000s of years, because of their greatness. The same for the pyramids. Of course, the effort served a function as well: to establish and maintain a power structure, to give people whose lives hung on strings far more often than ours do a sense of safety and hope.
Man needs greatness. A glimpse of the divine. Our civilization has lost this, and the hyperfunctionalism has taken over our cities. We have removed even ornament and other signs of beauty from our buildings. And it has made them worse.
But these trends come in waves. 50 years from now and we might again spend extra money on whatever will be the equivalent of neogothic or classicist buildings.
And I‘m looking forward to it.