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These are some of the important quotes argue against the current trend cities are transforming into modern monoculture:
"[Tragedy] I don't believe anyone will ever be able to make any city council understand that from an urbanistic point of view, the most attractive parts of the city are precisely those areas where nobody has ever done anything. I believe a city, by definition, wants to have something done in those areas. That is the tragedy." quote by Architect Rem Koolhaas & Designer Bruce Mau, published at S,M,L,XL
"The loss of Singapore's historic center foreshadows a disturbing global phenomenon. It is sad enough when a people and a city expunge their own cultural achievements, but in the twentieth century, throughout the world, where historic architecture in old cities is lost, it is frequently replaced with the new architecture of an international modern monoculture. Whether in northern or southern climates, in Asia, African, European, or American cultures, the generic buildings of modern development change little in response to their geographic and social surroundings. Just as American fast-food chains offer identical dishes, with the same names, in the same wrappers, by waiters in matching uniforms, so most of the new architecture of Singapore primarily reflects the economic formulas of modern speculative development." quote by Anthony Tung, published at Preserving the World's Great Cities. The destruction and renewal of the historic metropolis
From Louisana Manifesto, architect Jean Nouvel stated : "In 2005, more than ever, architecture is annihilating places, banalizing them, violating them. Sometimes it replaces the landscape, creates it in its own image, which is nothing but another way of effacting it. "........ "The global economy is accentuating the effects of the dominant architecture, the type that claims “we don’t need context”. And yet debate on this galloping frenzy does not exist: architectural criticism, invoking the limits of the discipline, is content with aesthetic and stylistic reflections devoid of any analysis of the real, and ignores the crucial historical clash that – more insistently every day – sets a global architecture against an architecture of situations, generic architecture against an architecture of specificity. Is our modernity today simply the direct descendant of the modernity of the 20th century, devoid of any spirit of criticism? Does it consist simply of parachuting solitary objects on to the face of the planet? Shouldn’t it rather be looking for reasons, correspondences, harmonies, differences in order to propose an ad-hoc architecture, here and now? " ......."In the name of the pleasure of living on this Earth, we must resist the urbanism of zones, networks and grids, the automatic rot that is obliterating the identity of the cities of all continents, in all climates, feeding on cloned offices, cloned dwellings, cloned shops, thirsting for the already thought, the already seen in order to avoid thinking and seeing."
"Distinctiveness is key, for although cities draw from each others' experiences the danger is that pioneering cities around the world quickly become textbook case studies for city officials. Cities then tend to adopt generic models of success without taking into account the local characteristic and conditions that contributed to those successes. The result is a homogeneous pastiche of buildings - aquariums, convention centres, museums, shops and restaurants - that prove to be remarkably similar the world over." Quoted from The Creative City: A Toolkit for Urban Innovators
"[Tragedy] I don't believe anyone will ever be able to make any city council understand that from an urbanistic point of view, the most attractive parts of the city are precisely those areas where nobody has ever done anything. I believe a city, by definition, wants to have something done in those areas. That is the tragedy." quote by Architect Rem Koolhaas & Designer Bruce Mau, published at S,M,L,XL
"The loss of Singapore's historic center foreshadows a disturbing global phenomenon. It is sad enough when a people and a city expunge their own cultural achievements, but in the twentieth century, throughout the world, where historic architecture in old cities is lost, it is frequently replaced with the new architecture of an international modern monoculture. Whether in northern or southern climates, in Asia, African, European, or American cultures, the generic buildings of modern development change little in response to their geographic and social surroundings. Just as American fast-food chains offer identical dishes, with the same names, in the same wrappers, by waiters in matching uniforms, so most of the new architecture of Singapore primarily reflects the economic formulas of modern speculative development." quote by Anthony Tung, published at Preserving the World's Great Cities. The destruction and renewal of the historic metropolis
From Louisana Manifesto, architect Jean Nouvel stated : "In 2005, more than ever, architecture is annihilating places, banalizing them, violating them. Sometimes it replaces the landscape, creates it in its own image, which is nothing but another way of effacting it. "........ "The global economy is accentuating the effects of the dominant architecture, the type that claims “we don’t need context”. And yet debate on this galloping frenzy does not exist: architectural criticism, invoking the limits of the discipline, is content with aesthetic and stylistic reflections devoid of any analysis of the real, and ignores the crucial historical clash that – more insistently every day – sets a global architecture against an architecture of situations, generic architecture against an architecture of specificity. Is our modernity today simply the direct descendant of the modernity of the 20th century, devoid of any spirit of criticism? Does it consist simply of parachuting solitary objects on to the face of the planet? Shouldn’t it rather be looking for reasons, correspondences, harmonies, differences in order to propose an ad-hoc architecture, here and now? " ......."In the name of the pleasure of living on this Earth, we must resist the urbanism of zones, networks and grids, the automatic rot that is obliterating the identity of the cities of all continents, in all climates, feeding on cloned offices, cloned dwellings, cloned shops, thirsting for the already thought, the already seen in order to avoid thinking and seeing."
"Distinctiveness is key, for although cities draw from each others' experiences the danger is that pioneering cities around the world quickly become textbook case studies for city officials. Cities then tend to adopt generic models of success without taking into account the local characteristic and conditions that contributed to those successes. The result is a homogeneous pastiche of buildings - aquariums, convention centres, museums, shops and restaurants - that prove to be remarkably similar the world over." Quoted from The Creative City: A Toolkit for Urban Innovators
