Unfortunately, we have since forgotten this soulful approach to architecture and design, following instead the prevailing planning model of big budgets, large-scale structures and isolated behaviors. Consequently, our habitations have become fragmented and we fail to see the city’s infrastructure and life in an integrated way. — The New York Times
Celebrated Indian architect and 2018 Pritzker Prize laureate, Balkrishna Doshi, pens a passionate NYT opinion piece in which he calls for a renewed harmony of human settlements with nature rather than pursuing more resource-consuming megastructures.
"In addition to such quietude, other aesthetic measures of settlements include grace, love, compassion and humility," Doshi writes. "To animate a settlement one must create humble and tender connections, which encourage humans to come together and to share and to feel themselves a part of a larger order, a part of Mother Earth."
5 Comments
A Pritzker for a humanist. WTF were they thinking?!
I'm hoping he doesn't succumb to the disease of instant fame and too much "success".
it’s too bad the New York Times is the leading lobbyist of developer McUrbanism
"To animate a settlement one must create humble and tender connections, which encourage humans to come together and to share and to feel themselves a part of a larger order, a part of Mother Earth."
I like this guy, but I see this quote as a little short sighted in the sense of the long term evolution of intelligent species (assuming we are one). Type zero, but we on the way...Is it possible that our “natural” trajectory is to completely take over the planet, render it a wasteland, and take off to proxima b on some ship built by Elon musk the 5th? I’m just not sure our rational and philosophical minds can overcome our natural destiny...even if we know this planet is our only hope...exploration and manipulation of the planet to suit our fat asses has been the reoccurring theme...who’s to say that’s not our most natural destiny as sad and terrible as it may be? Who’s to say nature is fluffy and happy. Often it’s cruel and brutal. Perhaps we are part of a larger order than “mother earth”...mother universe...just need to get to at least 1/10th c and we will be on a long journey to the next planet waiting to be painyed with McUrbanism...hey, did you know that the sun is 9 light minutes away....the closets star is 4.23 light years...take out your scales boy and girls! If you tried to draw that to a scale of 1”= 1 light minute, you would have a tiny dot . representing the sun about nine inches from a microscopic dot representing earth! The closest star Alpha Cenuri would be a tiny dot . (<that big) over 36 miles away! That’s a lot of paper! Better save it! Maybe earth is our only hope:)
9 c min = 9”
4.23 c years = 2,223,288“
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