Examples of structure-destroying transformations in individual buildings

The lack of unfolding not only makes the building ugly; it also makes sure that it does not work.

There has been no smoothly flowing emergence of a whole. The building jumps, abruptly, suddenly, into existence, without sense, without merit, without opportunity for criticism, without opportunity for correction.

Many designs which we now consider “modern” have the character that they could not, under any circumstances, have arisen as a result of a structure-preserving, step-by-step process. They can be created when conceived on paper. They are conceptual. But in their abstractness, they are barren, not of flesh, and they could not possibly have been created as a result of an authentic process of unfolding.
What this means is not only that these buildings have the familiar ugliness of so much modern design. Most often, they also do not work. Being conceptual — not based on step-by-step application of practical reality — they do not fit practical human needs; they do not fit gradually and softly into the harmony of the world which envelops them. They stand, awkward, unrelated to all that is around them. And this is to be expected, simply because they have not been created by an unfolding process.
Inevitably, they do not work.

#book/The Nature of Order/2 The process of creating life/4 Structure-destroying transformations in modern society - the failure of unfolding#