apocalypse… later. how about some sincerity?

We face a future of obvious uncertainty.
As graduates during a recession, we look out upon a future limited by our loss of promised opportunities.
It is easy when times seem tough to despair. It is easy to see the faults in others or to lose confidence in our capabilities.
Throughout the most progressive academic discourse I see concern for the environment shape dreams into dystopias. I see social injustice perverted and extorted. I see the belief in change reserved for the apocalypse.

It seems as if all faith and hope in the humanity of today has been lost.

We may not stand at the most crucial turning point of architecture, but our time does have significance. Our generation is the first to deal with the digital dimension's influence on our social order, the wild abandon with which our cities sprawl, and the ability to both design and manufacture nearly all the forms of fancy.
Our actions, but more importantly our attitudes, towards these challenges will be the points of influence and critique of architecture to come.

A slump in building always coincides with the rise of ambition, dreams, and purpose. We decide, while we have the time to think, where the future of architecture is headed.
While future architecture's disapproval is inevitable, we (like parents every where) hope to impart some meaningful new knowledge, something important, that will stick.

It is therefore why we must push firmly for an architecture of hope, consideration, and good.

It is not the form, nor necessarily the initial concept, of much contemporary architecture I draw issue with. It is the cynicism, the harsh irony, the utter disregard for humanity and spirit that drive the discourse.
Though beautiful, it concerns me to see only dark, brooding images come from top universities; it concerns me to work on projects where the individual experience is never discussed; and it concerns me that intellect is now so closely aligned with sarcasm.

With the rise of postmodernism, we became fearful of sincerity, afraid our best intentions would be found so wrong, like the urban imaginings of the Modernist Utopians. But turning away from all forms of sincerity is not the only way to comment or critique contemporary society: fanciful does not have to be violent, beauty does not have to brutal, edgy does not have to be aggressive.