Statement 25
“Failed democracies, failed nations, failed banks, failed capitalism, failed socialism ... It is a great moment to feel the pulse of history! Some might see this as an opportunity to renew our faith in the social contract, in justice, law and fair play. But though Enlightenment ideals are not dead, they are hardly alive either. Making sense of this will be a global challenge for the coming generation of thinkers and politicians; perhaps architecture can have a voice too, for if there is one discipline that can best be identified with both the Enlightenment and its failure it is architecture. Its failure was made clear by Georg Friedrich Hegel who argued in the 1820s that architecture simply could not keep pace with the needs of the Spirit after the Middle Ages. Whether one agrees with him is irrelevant, for the point is that as a result of his position poetry, music, painting and the sciences were given importance in nineteenth- and twentieth century philosophy whereas architecture was left in a philosophical limbo from which it has never recovered. But it was, perhaps, a blessing in disguise. Mark Jarzombek "Architecture: A Failed Discipline," Volume 19, 2009, pp 42-45. P. 42
