Good design is not always pretty.

Kudos to Risa for pointing me toward this article on architectural trends from Toronto's The Globe and Mail:


"JACK DIAMOND
From Monday's Globe and Mail
March 23, 2009 at 12:00 AM EDT

Architecture is an expression of its time and place. It reflects the values, power and dominant elites of the prevailing social structure and the relevant position of nation states in the global context. It even demonstrates the attitudes of imperial powers to their subject peoples.

The most obvious example is the pyramids of Egypt. In a hierarchical culture in which the disparity between pharaoh and fellaheen was immense, so was the difference in scale between royal monuments and the hovels of the poor.

The power of the church in Europe from the 11th to the 17th century was equally clear. Cathedrals were the largest, most elaborate structures at the centre of most European cities. In the 20th century, bank buildings reflected the importance of a mercantile culture: They became the new temples, the dominant structures. It was clear where the power lay.

And what of our time? The excesses of the late 20th and early 21st century are only too apparent. The extremes of individualism, and its accompanying greed, have ruined financial systems and left chaos in its wake. And once more this is reflected in architecture. The so-called iconic buildings (more egonic than iconic) were monuments to ego and extreme individualism. The emphasis was on the dramatic exterior: the way the building looked, rather than how it worked. The interiors could be perfunctory or dysfunctional.

Many iconic buildings are a direct reflection of conspicuous consumption. Instead of exploring engineering, electrical, mechanical and materials technologies to determine the most economic systems, there is a flagrant disregard for cost. Excess is celebrated: the highest, most expensive, most dramatic. The pick-a-shape school of architecture. It isn't simply the money unnecessarily spent on construction, but the energy necessary to heat and cool the building, the steel used to build it.

You can build structures that are both dramatic and sustainable. Consider Buckminster Fuller's domes that were designed to have the smallest ratio of structural steel to the area enclosed or load supported. He was looking at an elegant way to use the least amount of material. Fifty years ago, he explored a dramatic and sustainable path to the future, a path followed by relatively few.

The world is changing quickly and industry has been slow to adapt. The automobile industry, with all its resources, and research and development, was suddenly, and perhaps fatally, revealed as a dinosaur, unable or unwilling to adjust. The building industry should not follow suit.

There isn't a shortage of technologies. The automobile industry had dozens of alternatives that were either ignored or tentatively explored (Henry Ford had intended the Model T to run on ethanol; the electric car is more than a century old). The building trade has dozens of options that are underutilized or deemed too experimental or expensive. But the cost of a building has to be considered, not just in its initial construction, but in its maintenance, and the resources it consumes.

There is recognition that the resources of the planet are not inexhaustible, that the environment's ability to replenish itself must not be pushed beyond a point of no return. It is now an existential question.

Banks have been caught out investing in poorly understood and inadequately researched instruments that ultimately benefited very few while devastating millions. It was a short-term strategy designed to satisfy the pressures of quarterly results. In this new climate of value, banks could assume a leading, progressive role. They could, for example, peg their financing to the sustainable value of projects.

Architecture, in the new era, should exhibit commensurate responsibility. Buildings that were conceived essentially as advertisements for a company or a museum or a city are now advertising an outdated and unfortunate ethic. We need new standards for beauty, one that is gratifying environmentally, technically and functionally. Economy, a word that is re-entering our vocabulary with a vengeance, carries a stigma, but it shouldn't: There can be beauty in economy.

Evolution has shown us such economies: the amazing cantilevered branches of trees, the strength of a spider's thread, the streamlined form of fish, the intricate and delicate strength of plant life. These have survived by being responsive to the forces to which they are subject, using the least - not the most - material in that effort. Man-made objects such as Shaker furniture, a racing yacht, or a geodesic dome, fuse form, function and technology. And we marvel at their beauty.

Jack Diamond is principal of the firm Diamond and Schmitt Architects Inc."