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The value of plenty

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 August 2008

Irénée Scalbert
Affiliation:
The Architectural Association School of Architecture, 36 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3ES, United Kingdom

Abstract

For the last 40 years, organic values have prevailed in Western architecture. The conflict in the 1950s between the organic and the typical with its ideology of mechanisation is currently being reenacted under the new categories of the generic and the specific. These two orders of value are assumed to be incompatible, even though both history and theory suggest otherwise. In this conflict, the organic has so far survived unscathed in spite of a growing interest in the typical, the status of which remains unclarified: should it be envisaged as a means to an aesthetic, as it is at present, or should it be a means to affluence?

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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

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