But don't forget that often times the grand structures we see today were built atop previous and smaller versions, which were built atop previous and smaller version, etc. It's turtles all the way down.
-tom On Thu, Apr 29, 2010 at 1:01 PM, Merle Lefkoff <me...@arspublica.org> wrote: > Having recently been in Abu Dhabi and Dubai and writing now from Istanbul, > I am inclined to agree with Pamela. Grand gestures, however, may well be > more short-lived within the contemporary economies. > > > Pamela McCorduck wrote: > >> >>> >>> Grandiosity of civilizations is easily observed but that same grandiosity >>> applies to Buildings architecture as well as death circuses. >>> The Human need for Grand Gestures may be at the root of civilization. >>> >> >> Jerry Sabloff, the president of the Santa Fe Institute, whose specialty is >> the archaeology (and thus the life) of everyday Mayan civilization, gave a >> little talk in late December to a small group where he mentioned in passing >> that the great architectural monuments of a civilization are nearly always >> erected early in that civilization's ascendancy--the Egyptian pyramids, the >> Mayan ziggurats, etc. >> >> I thought about this, both in connection with Hitlerian architecture >> (godawful but appears early in the Nazi ascendancy, and trails on into the >> 1960s--since I consider New York's Lincoln Center Albert Speer's last >> hurrah) and also in connection with the American skyscraper, which emerged >> in the very late 1800s with the invention of the elevator, and reached its >> heyday in the 1930s. Sabloff did not mention concomitant civil violence, and >> I don't have enough knowledge to propose a theory about it. >> >> The spectacle of architecture in the oil-rich states, such as Dubai, might >> be another example. >> ============================================================ >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org >> >> > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org > -- ========================================== J. T. Johnson Institute for Analytic Journalism -- Santa Fe, NM USA www.analyticjournalism.com 505.577.6482(c) 505.473.9646(h) http://www.jtjohnson.com t...@jtjohnson.com "Be Your Own Publisher" http://indiepubwest.com ==========================================
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