BUILDING STACK

A review of buildings with an eye to design institutions and processes as connector and leading force of change.

Where did design leadership go?

In past eras, design organizations like Bauhaus, Deutscher Werkbund and MoMA established collaboration between designers, architects, industrialists and governments in order to shape new technologies and industries for the betterment of humanity. Even further back, loose associations of designers in America, such as the Chicago School of Architecture changed the shape of building design and cities with organic and seamless integrations of iron and steel framing and historic building styles.

Today design is mostly passive to the whims of fragmented politics and visionless organizations like the New York Times that have mostly abandoned design as a shaping force that doesn’t just respond to politics but transcends it.

Today’s technology, design, institutions, politics and governments have never been more fragmented. It’s no coincidence that cities are more unaffordable, unhealthy and design mostly passive and inert, walled off in modern day Church-like universities. It’s time to make new design organizations and respond to big issues by reconnecting design, buildings, industry and cities.