Submitted by Chris Segedy, Feb 28, 2007 13:50

Americans' rejection of high-rise living, in favor of single family construction, isn't a failure of modernism. A home can be as modern as a high-rise. This is a lifestyle choice, not an architectural choice. Yet, Modernism has failed to take hold in single family home construction, on a mass level. The perception that modern structures lack warmth, as well as domestic tradition, are probably two major reasons for this. The colonial "McMansion" seems to be the dominant form of architecture (if you can call it that) in home construction. Post-modernism has done none nothing to address what may have been lacking in modernism. Rather than finding contemporary ornamental forms, perhaps as Frank Lloyd Wright and Louis Sullivan did, Post-Modern architects continued to plunder architectural history for senseless stylistic references in a way that would make even the antagonist in the "Fountainhead" (Peter Keating) shudder. The rejection of Modernism by the public, is partially due to their own foolish sentimentality. Yet there is likely a way to capture some of what people love about older forms of architecture, in terms of texture and even ornament, without resorting to dishonest and unoriginal buildings.

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