Day 253: Losing something

Tokyo from Mori Tower, May 2007

"...we are easily and rightfully fascinated and inspired by innovation, seduced by aura and grace imparted by successful and daring formal propositions, and in this, in many ways, lies the real beauty and health in what we do. Yet there is a growing tendency to become overly mesmerized by these factors, a tendency to lose sight of the existential aspects of our relationship to the material and built environment. This loss of existential dimension can have no other effect than to impoverish our experience of the world, to obscure our natural instinct for freedom, even diminish the pleasure we are capable of taking in form...Modern society may be free of many older, systematic forms of political subjugation, much senseless religious and superstitious barbarism, and the random brutalities of chance, and it may be good to witness and celebrate the passing of these archaic forms into irretrievability, but that does not change the fact that every day and all around us, something is being lost." - Sanford Kwinter,"The Wiring and Waning of The World", from Far from Equilibrium Essays on Technology and Design Culture (see Day 2).