The Stronger The Identity, The

The Institutions Are Working Better Now, The Banks Are Much More Functional. At This Time, 1997, There Were No Mobile Phones! It's A Whole Different Thing Now With Mobile Phones: Technology Has Created A Form Of Regulation, Because People Can Actually Talk To Each Other A Lot More.

Japan Lives With Drastic Segregation Between The Sublime, The Ugly, And The Utterly Without Qualities. Dominance Of The Last 2 Categories Makes Mere Presence Of The First Stunning: When Beauty 'happens', It Is Absolutely Surprising.

The Grid Makes The History Of Architecture And All Previous Lessons Of Urbanism Irrelevant. It Forces Manhattan's Builders To Develop A New System Of Formal Values, To Invent Strategies For The Distinction Of One Block From Another. The Grid's Two-dimensional Discipline Also Creates Undreamt-of Freedom For Three-dimensional Anarchy. The Grid Defines A New Balance Between Control And De-control In Which The City Can Be At The Same Time Ordered And Fluid, A Metropolis Of Rigid Chaos.

Architecture Is A Hazardous Mixture Of Omnipotence And Impotence. It Is By Definition A C H A O T I C A D V E N T U R E... In Other Words, The Utopian Enterprise.

Let's Put It This Way: One Can Be Happy Or Unhappy In A Building. But Some Buildings Make Us More Depressed Than Others.