Berthold Lubetkin: Architecture and the Tradition of Progress

a great piece. Dennis Maher’s essay on architectural dilemmas in the declining rust-belt city of Buffalo, New York, points out that the literal ruins, which are the obverse of the shiny surfaces of signature architecture, entail situations in which despair is not the only option. Nor does Maher take “death” at face value, noting that complexities in how death is understood both medically and anthropologically might have implications for how we understand what – analogically – we call the death of buildings or cities. His writing is attuned to the specificities of place and history in a way that most of the essays in this collection are not; it tries out ideas as an essay/assay should, without its theoretical apparatus being overbearing – could a general revivification of architectural theory be as engaged and as deft?