The Metropolis Strives To Reach

Japan Lives With Drastic Segregation Between The Sublime, The Ugly, And The Utterly Without Qualities. Dominance Of The Last 2 Categories Makes Mere Presence Of The First Stunning: When Beauty 'happens', It Is Absolutely Surprising.

Manhattan Has Generated A Shameless Architecture That Has Been Loved In Direct Proportion To Its Defiant Lack Of Self-hatred, Has Been Respected Exactly To The Degree That It Went Too Far.

All Important Architecture Of The Last Century Was Strongly Influenced By Political Systems. Look At The Soviet System, With Its Constructivism And Stalinism, Weimer With Its Modern Style, Mussolini And, Of Course, The Nazis And Albert Speer's Colossal Structures. Today's Architecture Is Subservient To The Market And Its Terms. The Market Has Supplanted Ideology. Architecture Has Turned Into A Spectacle. It Has To Package Itself And No Longer Has Significance As Anything But A Landmark.

Miami Beach Is A Completely Interesting Hybrid Because It Is, On The One Hand, A Resort And, On The Other Hand, A Real City. This Condition Of City And Water On Two Sides I Think Is Really Amazing. And In The Heart Of That City, It Has Put An Enormous Convention Center, An Enormous Physical Presence.

Talk About Beauty And You Get Boring Answers, But Talk About Ugliness And Things Get Interesting.