"There is little doubt that we are in the midst of a revolution of a much more profound and fundamental nature than the social and political revolutions of the last half century"
About this Quote
“Revolution” here isn’t a rallying cry; it’s a professional warning shot. Arthur Erickson, an architect who spent his career translating big societal moods into concrete and glass, is pointing at a shift that politics can’t quite legislate and social movements can’t fully name. By calling it “more profound and fundamental” than recent social and political upheavals, he’s implying that those headline revolutions were surface turbulence compared to what was reordering the base layer: how we live, work, move, consume energy, and imagine the future.
The intent is strategic. Erickson is staking a claim for architecture’s relevance at moments when it’s easy to treat buildings as mere backdrops. If the real revolution is infrastructural and systemic, then design becomes a form of governance by other means: cities encode values, distribute comfort, enforce inequality, and set the daily terms of civic life. His phrasing quietly demotes ideology and elevates material conditions. The subtext: you can win elections and still lose the century if the built environment, technology, and ecological limits are moving faster than your institutions.
Context matters. Erickson’s lifetime spans postwar modernism’s confidence, the late-20th-century explosion of global capital, and the growing realization that environmental constraints aren’t a “cause” but a boundary condition. Read through that lens, “revolution” sounds like modernization tipping into something harsher: climate, computation, and urbanization remaking the ground rules. He’s not romanticizing change; he’s insisting we notice where power has migrated - from parliaments and protests to systems, networks, and the long shadows cast by what we build.
The intent is strategic. Erickson is staking a claim for architecture’s relevance at moments when it’s easy to treat buildings as mere backdrops. If the real revolution is infrastructural and systemic, then design becomes a form of governance by other means: cities encode values, distribute comfort, enforce inequality, and set the daily terms of civic life. His phrasing quietly demotes ideology and elevates material conditions. The subtext: you can win elections and still lose the century if the built environment, technology, and ecological limits are moving faster than your institutions.
Context matters. Erickson’s lifetime spans postwar modernism’s confidence, the late-20th-century explosion of global capital, and the growing realization that environmental constraints aren’t a “cause” but a boundary condition. Read through that lens, “revolution” sounds like modernization tipping into something harsher: climate, computation, and urbanization remaking the ground rules. He’s not romanticizing change; he’s insisting we notice where power has migrated - from parliaments and protests to systems, networks, and the long shadows cast by what we build.
Quote Details
| Topic | Change |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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