Astonishing
At a recent conference on school design, an eminent Scottish architect prefaced his comments to a keynote speaker with ”Well that was astonishing . . . but not in a good way”.
Direct and open debate is often diluted when it is prefaced by caveats. It is often enlivened by the honest recognition of visceral responses to the sound of beliefs being broken. To my mind, that comment allowed passion into the discussion and patted several elephants in the room. And it was an articulate reminder of the power of architecture to celebrate the values we care about most.
Good architecture has the power to astonish us . . . in a good way.
