The Modern Community

The Modern Community. Part 1:

As opposed to the Romans, who believed that their good luck and success was a direct gift of the gods, the Modernists believed that they were the gods. Therefore, they had the ability and the right to change the built environment and therefore the cultural and social environment.

The Modernists believed that they were creating not only better environments, but that their architecture would inspire people and society to strive for greatness and perfection. This presumption has been maintained in contemporary community-based architecture despite periods of strife over the Modernist agenda.

Community architecture can be "the great equalizer." If you share nothing else from the experience of architecture, you can at least share the sense of awe (possibly insignificance... buildings of this scale can have that effect).

The step away from the modernist agenda seems to occur at the human scale. Where is the human scale? How does a person interact with the building at a scale that is not overwhelming and for which we have some sense of reference (be if your eye level or your hand or your stride)? The wide expanses of basically unbroken grass serve as public outdoor space and operate in a totally different way than the Italian piazzas. They are scarcly populated. They are not the result of a city density that demands the release of the pressure of so many people. The density is not there so the pressure is not there. Users are as likely to spend time in their own backyard. Why travel to a public outdoor space when you have them so close?