Staff and Future Editor
Architecture Magazine
1130 Connecticut Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20036

RE: The Last Editorial

Dear Staff and Future Editor:

First, have you asked yourselves just when the preservation movement came into being? Try this: at the realization that whatever was demolished would be replaced with something palpably inferior. There was some lag time, but it coincided with the advent of modernist architecture. For centuries, as buildings were replaced by others of equal or greater value, there was no problem and there was no need for the Preservation movement. Indeed, even the demolition of St. Peters in Rome was generally welcome, as the new St. Peters was expected to be better.

Second, have you asked yourself what actually occurs when there is no code? Do you really think that decent architecture emerges from the void? Do you imagine an outcome of streets lined with architecture by Steven Holl and Morphosis? Try a dose of reality. When there are no codes, the default setting in American architecture is kitsch. The reason that one has to worry about pickets is that designers mangle them. The New UrbanistsÕ codes are made necessary by architects, trained to be unable to learn from precedent, incapable of anything but caricature. This inability is the result of the loss of tradition, which modernism discards anew every 5 years, abetted by fashion mags such as yours.

Incidentally, since when has the spacing of wood pickets (which affects miles of streetscape) been any less important than the acid etching of a piece of glass in someoneÕs exquisite bathroom that you typically fawn over?

Finally, please allow me to correct Richard MoeÕs oddly unresearched suggestion that New Urbanists should find ways to work within existing communities. Fully one third of our firms work consists of inner-city revitalization projects, and most of our colleagues are equally active downtown.

Sincerely,

Andres Duany

P.S. By the way have you seen the new periodical Residential Architect now in its second issue? This one has quite a number of advertising pages and should be quite successful. It may be encroaching on your market because of your avoidance of the reality out there. The second issue is already more sophisticated than the first and closer to what a truly useful publication should be - free of kitsch but also free of elitism. Architects need to see buildings designed for customers and clients, not just for patrons.