Learning from Le Plessis-Robinson

Charles Siegel, writing for Planetizen, has a great article detailing the dramatic transformation of Le Plessis-Robinson, a small town just outside of Paris. It ends with this gem:

The history of Le Plessis-Robinson teaches us that nothing is as outdated as yesterday’s avant-garde. Its functionalist housing projects were cutting edge from the 1920s through the mid-century, and now we want to tear them down. In fifty years, today’s avant-gardist architecture will look just as outdated and even more grotesque; but traditional architecture and urbanism, designed at a human scale that has passed the test of time, will look as perennially attractive as ever.

Mr. Siegel provides a compelling argument supporting the importance of good architecture in a good urban environment. Great human places support thriving local economies.

See also my post, Monument Valley - the Failure of the Starchitects:

The architectural elite, it seems, have no concept of a background building - a building whose primary purpose is to elegantly provide for the needs of its occupants and to be an upstanding “citizen” of the urban environment…