Dennis Eugene Rusk

Death of American Architecture Dennis Eugene Rusk

Publisher Marketing: American architecture is dying a slow, agonizing death, akin to a lingering disease that eats away at the human spirit. The individualist creative minds in American architecture flourished between the Great World Wars with Organic, Arts and Crafts, and Art Deco taking center stage. In our age of the microchip where access to unlimited knowledge is only a mouse click away, the mysteries of the universe are watered down with dangerously little real knowledge. The Internet has changed our way of learning and thinking. The death toll of the spirit of American architecture rings monotonously as artistic endeavors of architectural design melt into mediocrity. It is an age-old problem, as flashes of greatness have occurred during the history of architecture, only to be poorly imitated and rarely improved upon. Since Frank Lloyd Wright's death in 1959, America has lost one, two, or three generations of architects to the Great Pretenders and Imitators of Progressive Architecture. Ground in the grist mill of collective team teaching of Progressive academia is all expression of individual creativity; yet it takes but one individual to curb the tide of mediocrity in architecture, to express the freedom of creativity together with an enlightened educated society to appreciate the value of self-reliance. The spirit of American Organic Architecture may lie dormant, but hope springs eternal. The principles of American Organic Architecture can be resurrected with assiduous study of the principles of art, true historic scholarship, knowledge of relationship of natural and man-made environs, and the harmony of all the parts of the whole fitting together in the design continuum that celebrates the sovereignty and individuality of a free man.