{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"DESIGN NOW: Cultural Collisions","title":"“Style” In Architecture: Cultural Cosplay?","html":"<iframe width=\"100%\" height=\"180\" frameborder=\"no\" scrolling=\"no\" seamless src=\"https://share.transistor.fm/e/4ab0e4cc\"></iframe>","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":3301,"description":"7 AM, Saturday, May 2, 2026 WPKN 89.5 FM wpkn.org\nSince Profit tore down McKim Mead & White’s Pennsylvania Station in New York City more than 60 years ago, the “Historic Preservation” aesthetic mission has saved thousands of irreplacible buildings, and created a whole rationale of the future being in the past. Now the value of history has been co-opted in political aesthetics.\nAre there timeless truthes in aesthetics? Is “Classical Architecture” classic? Or is the aesthetic of the old a layer of cosmetics that cloke buildings in a skin of precedent? Is “Modern Architecture” just another superficial wash applied to construction? Do we rationalize the way buildings look to answer to “Progressive” or “Historic” preconceptions, no matter when and how a building is designed, made and participates in a community?\nWhat is history in architecture? Is time as constant a force in design as gravity? Or is “style” a convenient justification for arbitrary preferences? Why do we love some buildings and hate others? Art? Music? Why do we make aesthetic Bibles in “Canon” or Recipes of visual components that if “correctly” applied justify our love (or hate) of the buildings we judge? Are we now in a time of the cultural Blanding of architecture? High Modernism and High Classicism are often relegated to those who can afford their great costs in building. Instead the bland boxes all around us are cheap to make and grotesquely expensive to own.\nTwo extraordinary voices who understand time and aesthetics join DESIGN NOW! Elihu Rubin is the Henry Hart Rice Associate Professor of Architecture and Urban Studies at Yale. He is a faculty member at Yale School of Architecture. He has written  Insuring the City: The Prudential Center and the Postwar Urban Landscape and his current book project is “Ghost Town: The Urban History of an American Icon.” In Fall 2024, Rubin was the recipient of a MacDowell Fellowship. Christopher Wigren is Deputy Director of Preservation Connecticut, where he...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/szgB95-9kPVNh_zS6FHyChtAHi-IrV3nAnj1oRBKYT4/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS8xZTJi/ZGViZGJkYWZjYjJl/ZTg5YWRiNjljNWRj/ZTc3OS5qcGc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}