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I'm not sure I agree that modern architecture ruined social and architectural fabric of cities. Holding up vernacular architecture as some sort of beacon becaus

I'm not sure I agree that modern architecture ruined social and architectural fabric of cities. Holding up vernacular architecture as some sort of beacon because it's been in cities "for generations and centuries" is equivalent to not performing a change in say software, "because that's the we've always done it." Besides a few notable examples of poor execution (20 Fenchurch Street in London, Richards Medical Research Laboratories off the top of my head) can you point to an instance where a piece of modern architecture was detrimental to the cityscape it inhabited?

mannykannot 7y ago
You have drifted off-point here, which is the destruction of what is good for something mediocre or worse, as in the functionally and aesthetically disastrous destruction of Penn station in NYC (there are software analogies to be made here, if you think they are useful - e.g. Windows Vista.) I think there is a lot of value in bold new design, and it is worth taking risks, but it encourages two sorts of copycats: the developer who wants to make a statement on the cheap, which allegedly gave us the back side of the New York By Gehry, and the second-rate architect who wants to express himself rather than serve the community, which results in a rash of undistinguished architectural misdemeanors, rather than high-profile cases. Now that the high tide of dogmatic modernism seems to have passed, its excesses offers sites that can be redeveloped without losing anything of value.