Illustrations courtesy of Maison d’Ailleurs, Yverdon-les-Bains, Switzerland
My friend Nathaniel Walker, who got his doctorate at Brown last spring and now teaches architectural history at the College of Charleston, has contributed this essay.
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From the Ground Up: How Architects Can Learn from the Organic and Local Food Movements
By Nathaniel Robert Walker
As a supporter of traditional urban design and a believer in the contemporary relevance of traditional architecture, I cannot count the number of times I have heard generally well-meaning, otherwise reasonable people say the words: “Well, we cannot pretend that we are building in the nineteenth century.” This statement envelops within its svelte hide a veritable swarm of debatable assumptions, many of which lie at the heart of global architecture culture’s current malaise.
I find it is usually useless to attack these assumptions directly by asking complicated questions such as “What is it about symmetry or…
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