When you have to make a decision about something, how would you do that? On what basis?

An answer could be - base your decision on your best possible knowledge of the matter in hand and as close as you can get to certainty.

So with much of modern architecture, given on any level of analysis, these have not been successful projects over a long term, surely something went wrong at the decision making phase at inception. Consequences went against predictions. Why? Obviously because the predictions were wrong! How were they wrong? They were not based on the (as close as possible) certainty of knowledge.

Ok, so what do you do when you know you do not possess all the requisite knowledge to make a sound decision? Well, you do the next best thing. You look around for an example of a success and copy it. Success in architectonic terms means everyone likes it, some even adore it. People would miss it if it were not there.

What are people's conciousnesses made up of, if not everything that the shared space contains. From everything one can only discriminate to a point, what to take in and what to ignore, in fact one shouldn't ignore anything yet one tends to ignore the ugly things because we don't like the dull thud to the senses upon noticing.

So since this refusal seems instinctive, why mess up his consciousness with your egocentric assembly of unsuitable building materials? Please explain the necessity of this particular inter-personal causality! And because there is a psycho-physical link, the tactile, sensory qualities of the shared domain matter critically! What is in the foreground are the sounds and the sight of those talking. What should be in the background is the architecture. Planners declare proudly they know all this, and then go right ahead and allow men to pile up the junk anyway.

Perhaps in ignorance you might consider architecture as not actually being of human creation; that edification could be considered a sacred act. Again in ignorance you might appreciate the sheer poetry of the vision of Apollo playing a flute as the masonry stacks up, ornamentation and all revealing the architectural order, all by itself, to music.

Oh No! You will say, "An artist must be original to be a real artist." Well, you say that but who do you think you are? "No, it is not about me, it is the zeitgeist." Now if that is not a statement of religious faith, then I don't know what is.

I will blame it on the zeitgeist but what is wrong with copying success?

The point is, what we need in architecture and town planning is a complete paradigm shift, not so much in the minds of the public but in the arrogant presumptions of professionals who think they know what architecture is without any understanding of what that assumption implies. First of all, it is just an assumption because no one can know what architecture 'is', per se. It has to be thus, sort of by definition, because all we know about are the necessary enclosures and many can do that but who will throw the first stone, in an authoritative sense, on how to decorate it... truly?

So he does his stuff in and around the orders and we can see and hear the eloquence but even he could not say absolutely for sure why, a Doric column differed in aesthetic value from a steel 'I' section. So when one doesn't know, one just copies. What else is there to do if you are serious about what shapes consciousness itself if not architecture? And if science doesn't know what consciousness is really, how can anyone think that one person can be so qualified to determine its very visual structure on behalf of another?

At least stop using subjectivity as an excuse. How is the look and feel of the city a subjective matter? If 50,000 people live in a single city. That equals to the physical enclosure of 50,000 mindsets. So why is it too much to ask that the city should please every single individual who inhabits that city. It is not like we have to invent anything new in achieving excellence in the realm of habitable order. Ignorance is indeed bliss. It makes life so much easier.

To admit that music sounds good, it must be good. Music like architecture is a bit of a mystery yet professionals exist everywhere to make dull technically brilliant music. Still, much pleasure is already guaranteed by the notes and the order in which they must be played. Must not ask too much to please. Yet, to achieve this simple enough aim, many pass through, first, the tyranny of incompetence, then, the getting of discipline in order to fight the tyranny, then, having mastered the tyranny, gain freedom. This is what in art is called fairness because just to be where you were before all that is a tough call.