Is Architecture dying?

Does Architecture need to start from the beginning?

Is there a disconnect between architecture and the people?

Should architecture go back to its Purest Form just like Le Corbusier said it should?

After reading Bjarke Ingels "YES is MORE" and Le Corbusier " Towards an Architecture"

I began to wonder is architecture really dying in today's society.

Ingels makes a lot of good points, about his pragmatic utopia approach which are very similar to Le Corbusier’s Toward an Architecture.

Pragmatic utopia Or in the small but very fertile overlap between the two. A pragmatic utopian architecture that takes on the creation of socially, economically and environmentally perfect places as a practical objective.”

To sum Le Corbusier’s principles, he believed that architecture is dying. He compared it to engineering, which he thinks is thriving and continued to say that architecture is dying because it is no longer needed like engineering is. He goes on to say that to fix this issue, architecture needs to start from the beginning. Architecture needs to affect the emotions of the people so that they can be a part of the architecture and so that its purest form can resonate in people and thrive, live engineering.

To start, Ingels and Le Corbusier both think that there needs to be change in architecture because whatever is happening is not working. They both think that architecture has lost its true purpose and goal for society. But Ingels is of a strong opinion against LESS IS MORE and believes in the overlapping of the two opposing extremes.

Ingels and Le Corbusier have few similarities, and several differences, one in particular being that, while Ingels believes architecture should be an ever evolving element in our day to day lives, forming to the needs of society, and environments, Le Corbusier insists that architecture is the very image of man creating his own universe, leading us to understand that while Ingels would prefer to adapt to the environment, Le Corbusier would rather CREATE an environment.

I believe that they may both be correct, as architects we are responsible both for adapting to the surroundings, incorporating the environments around us to co-exist in a sort of harmony, and also create something new, molding these environments to properly fulfill the needs we have.

An outstanding example of the combination of Ingels and Le Corbusier principles can be seen in The Danish Maritime Museum which shows that both architects principle could be correct, as not only did Ingels adapt the entire building to facilitate the obstacles given (and there were many of those) but also managed to create an entire new environment while doing so, just as Le Corbusier would have done.

I will conclude by saying when I really take a look at the architecture of today’s society. I don’t know if people in the architecture field really realize what has happened and what may continue to happen. I would definitely agree a bit more with Ingels because I personally don’t think that architecture is dying. However, I do think that something needs to be fixed because you do, in most cases, see the same type of buildings and designs everywhere you go.

What do you think ? Feel free to Comment below.