Modern architecture with its heavy use of bleached wood, glass and aluminum has robbed countless buildings of charm and turned entire buildings into soulless boxes where people only have a tentative relationship with the environment.
Architecture has a huge impact on the way people interact with their surroundings. The severity of the lines, soulless glass vistas all together reflect a sense of oppressiveness detachment, making one feel lonelier and almost afraid of interacting with the environment. The sense one gets at being in the building is that of the powerlessness and of the fact that the environment is controlled by same faceless czar. This dehumanizing architecture today has become the most felicitated form of architecture and countless new architects use concrete, glass and aluminum to carve out a new form of social death every day.
When I look at buildings today, I can’t imagine how these buildings will age. It is hard to imagine that the building is even inhabited by people today and that these people have personalities and that the building will allow space so that people can leave an imprint of their personalities on them. The little poster boards on which people will stick their family photos in these vacuous orifices are dwarfed and overwhelmed by the almost too bright sunlight shining on the aluminum bar through the glass wall.
These inert architectural spaces are here for a reason and that the rapid commercialization of the social spaces. When you come to really think of it – where do we interact now with people – in malls and in movie theaters and restaurants. The public, non-commercial physical space in which we can interact with other people is rapidly coming to an end. We must reclaim our space before it overwhelms us.