Calling all architects to join the conversation! Rate and review your favorite design softwares and hardwares on Architizer\u2019s <\/i>Tech Directory<\/a><\/i><\/b>,\u00a0a new library of tech tools for designers.<\/i><\/p><\/p>\n Oscar Wilde famously argued that art is, by its nature, useless<\/a><\/span>. That is, if it is any good. In a letter to a fan named Bernulf Clegg (great name, by the way), Wilde argued, \u201cIf the contemplation of a work of art is followed by activity of any kind, the work is either of a very second-rate order or the spectator has failed to realize the complete artistic impression.\u201d For Wilde and others in the Aesthetic Movement, didacticism was the mark of the philistine. A great painting or symphony should not stir the observer to change their life; it should simply be.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n There is much to be said for Wilde\u2019s perspective. There is also, of course, much to be said against it<\/a>. For one, it is spectacularly inapplicable to architecture. In architecture, the inverse of Wilde\u2019s dictum is true. In order to be beautiful, a building must be useful. It also must, in its form, speak to its function, and to the needs of both those who will use it and the surrounding community<\/span>. Finally, a successful building must make some kind of sense within its visual context. It’s not enough to simply be.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n There are many ways for a building to speak to both its function and context. One does not need to reach for extremes, for instance, by eschewing all ornament and opting for pure ascetic functionalism of the Brutalist order. On the other hand, it is not a good idea for architects to pretend they are medieval craftsmen or Victorian stonemasons (or whatever) and hide all traces of modernity from their design in order to blend in with a historic environment. Indeed, in 2024, both approaches constitute a kind of inauthentic posturing, or <\/span>kitsch<\/span><\/i>, which the art critic Clement Greenberg defined brilliantly in 1939 as \u201cvicarious experience and faked sensations.\u201d\u00a0<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n The preeminent domain of kitsch, or \u201cvicarious experience and faked sensations,\u201d is of course social media. And indeed, buildings that were intended as social media hotspots are almost always kitsch. There is something off about these structures, some soul sucking quality that makes it impossible to admire them. I think this has to do with the nature of social media, which is not the real world but an insidiously absorptive simulacrum. When architects design for social media, they are privileging this realm of appearance over reality. The buildings might exist in the real world, but they belong to the machine.<\/span><\/p>\n