Postby I45Tex » 29 Mar 2017 11:21
This kind of debate is actually not about taste or tackiness or design fluency; architecture itself merely inherited the debate from the rest of the humanities, so it may not even be soluble within the precinct of Architecture.
The early modern ideal of constant historical progress came from a variety of thinkers who bought into it largely because they were profoundly uncomfortable with the clerics' monopoly on conscience. Moral philosophers wanted to redefine authority itself according to a practice of virtue where instead of being dictated to by it they could actually contribute to it. Therefore, they tried to tear down the idea of revealed (as in, divine revelation in origin) and timeless virtue, but substituting an alternate systematic rule and justifying it from new foundations wasn't as simple or as liberational as anticipated.
Some people in our time think they were wrong to even try; I tend to disagree, as freedom of conscience is not something we would want them or ourselves to do without; but what we've ended up with is a five-hundred-year slippery struggle between premodern conceptions of virtue (themselves subjected to change but invoking 'tradition' at every turn) and the woke people who believe, one way or another, that progress itself is the only virtue. Still others came along in the Twentieth Century, looked at the modern notion of progress, and fundamentally debunked it.
Some design professionals in the developed world have tried to hitch their wagon to saving the planet now, but most of them just don't love the LEED-AP label enough to make it stick. They really get more excited about inventing a cool new alphabet for every project they're commissioned (at least till they've established their cleverness, like Foster or Rogers, and can just crank out their branded aesthetic).
Many novices really think that if you don't push the envelopes in five new ways simultaneously until the roof leaks, you're not aiming as nobly high as their exploratory virtue would lead them to do. Interestingly, their own progressiveness is often how they justify to themselves the reality that the only way to get these built is to impress the rich and powerful with how glamorous you can make them look.
Anarchist architects like Colin Ward can honestly say that there is an alternative to the power grabs and power plays of high design, but they are not popularly known since they don't engage in self-glorification like the academic-industrial avant-garde do.