80% of Everything Ever Built in North America...

eyeofodin: 24th Mar 2008 - 06:29 GMT

Those words vibrate through my veins....and get recycled through my heart, and I see a pattern of beauty in it after all. Or maybe it's because you captured the angles and shades so well, it can make anything soulless and sterile seem 'alive'.

EvilGentleman: 24th Mar 2008 - 08:14 GMT

The house in the second-last photo is not too bad looking for a recent construction, even though it is somewhat lacking in "soul". Perhaps the soul will be acquired over time, although the building rising behind will make that a challenge.

So many of the other pictures show such a bland sameness. It's a shame that real-estate developers don't see anything but the bottom line anymore. Just imagine if they used more architects and mixed their differing styles up on each block. At least try to make each house on a block unique from the others.

And can you imagine if they actually planned more carefully before clearing the land? Perhaps they could have saved a few strategically located older trees, and helped to preserve some of the original spirit of the place.

Franny Wentzel: 5th Mar 2009 - 15:32 GMT

To think it was the intellectual forebearers of Mr Kunstler that put us in this situation. The people of the 1920s knew how to build cities and suburbs with a degree of architectural grace but their designs were popular with the people and the eggheads couldn't have that so the esparanto of the 'International Style' was foisted upon the world. It had its moments but by 1965 it was clear that it was not The Answer and the world has degenerated ever since. Nowadays we get the shrill krep of the Freedom Tower or the pile-o-crap that is anything by Frank Gehry or the Fetish archtecture of Turning Torso or The Gherkin or the Chicago Spire while the suburbs fill with unaffordable McMansions and those Stucco on Styrofoam strip malls.