jon zellwegerTime for a bit of ‘professional development’ reading. When did the tide (start to) turn from progressive, future-thinking agendas in American culture —specifically as reflected in architectural projects— to what in 2025 can only be described as a society gripped by nostalgia and almost completely absent of innovative, creative endeavors? Well, this book by Douglas Murphy starts to make a good argument for the 1960s and 70s. Murphy’s book takes us through the realm of World’s Fairs, Buckminster Fuller and Brutalist estate projects to shed light on a period of architectural history where Post-Modernism captured more attention in the books than these last grand projects of Modernism. Murphy does a really good job of not being exhaustive but, rather, focused on a selection of strong cases that illustrate the point: that these top-down projects were not resonating with a society where current events were undermining any confidence in the experts. The civil unrest of the late 60s knocked a few things loose, and the economics of the 70s continued to foster dissatisfaction in the citizenry. But the following couple of decades managed to be, arguably, a distraction from the continued erosion of confidence in the experts. And here we are today, where teachers, scientists, politicians have joined the architects as untrustworthy. These things really do take time to manifest profoundly in the everyday. <br>
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