Meridor’s generation—a younger one—has no faith in grand architectural plans to make a better world and especially not a best of all possible worlds. Yet a certain idealism remains. For some it takes the form of environmental consciousness and sometimes grand plans for healing the damage done to the planet by humankind—or, for more modest, ecologically sustainable designs. For others it takes the form of technological innovation using computers, the internet, and other electronic wonders. For only a relative few, however, does their idealism take the forms of isolated buildings that are the focus of the present generation of innovators—radical ‘new forms’ fail to inspire as they once did. The idealistic architects of Meridor’s generation are more critical and reflective than any in recent memory, which leads them to an emphasis on process rather than product, and into either direct engagement with communities in need or into teaching careers, which are not altogether unrelated activities.

Read the whole piece, which explains why it is nonetheless worthwhile to understand Meridor’s collages as architectural proposals. You’ll want to see Meridor’s collages, as well…

Varnelis responds, arguing that Jones’ rhetorical adoption of Archigram inadvertently reveals an absence of critique in contemporary urbanism. The comments on Varnelis’s post, including those from Enrique (a456) and Geoff (bldgblog), are perceptive. I’d like to think that its possible to be both enthusiastic and critical, or at least that there’s room for both enthusiasts and critics. If one accepts Geoff’s description in which criticism describes problems and enthusiasm locates positives, then it seems rather obvious that both are necessary. So while the presence of only one but not the other is certainly problematic, I’d be more likely to describe architecture as suffering from a deficit of both done well (particularly if ‘enthusiasm’ is defined as something like a BLDGBLOG-ian, wide-ranging sense of wonder, rather than the mere acceptance/promotion of whatever seems exciting) than as being dominated by one or the other.

Things also respond, exploring the persistence of, well, things in the utopian data city. See also Millennium People’s comment on Things’s comment on Jones’s comment…

Lebbeus Woods’s recent post on utopia isn’t explicitly linked to this conversation, but Varnelis’s comment on the “decline of utopian thought” makes the connection obvious.