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Entry: A Worthwhile Book Link: http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/a_worthwhile_book#15161 Post contents: Lester, The line between the classical and modern is thin and usually, modern architecture is better when the line is most thin. The architecture of Mies and his heir Meier is , at root classical in it's pure form and attention to craft....albeit modern craft expressing modern materials. The landscape architect Dan Kiley was essentially a classicist more than a modernist even though he is described s a modernist. His heir , the Spanish L.A., Fernando Caruncho is equally informed by the Classical idiom. Modern architecture, ....originally the outgrowth of a return to chaste and disciplined classical forms in reaction to the florid qualities of romanticism..... was corrupted by the marketplace and this era of cheap oil coming to a close. I do not know why deconstructionism in the arts, aside from being an expression of the chaos of the age is so trendy now. The buildings of Zaha Hadid and Gehry are compelling but too much of it is brutalistic, confusing, impervious to any notions of comfort at a pedestrian scale along the street and always anti-context. Admittedly, being contextual with alot of todays built landscape is like joining a mob of toothless brigands but ..........an urban area should be like a piece of fine music and so some lyrical and narrative qulaity is demanded. Much technological skill goes into these buildings but it is skill in service to chaos, much like the skill of the arms manufacturer. Perhaps this is their context. Sent at: 2008 11 21