Mother

Architecture used to be the mother of all arts, since a building can be a work of art and  a home for all other forms of art as well. Churches were the best examples until God died. In the last 40 years many of them were changed into shopping malls and multi-purpose facilities. Nowadays only capitalists are rich enough to beautify utilities in the shape of banks, palaces and museums. Only a few privileged architects get the opportunity to identify themselves unselfishly with spatial dreams. The rest of them hardly get a chance to do more than piling up prefab walls and floors.

At their best they succeed in raising scary powertowers in presumptuous cities. Even in more humble surroundings their creative inclinations are suffocated by regulations, rules and standarts of safety and profit. Rationalisation, reduction and simplification became leading qualities of modern building. No wonder that idealistic students with high ambitions became cynical professionals without a conscience.
However undeniable all these negative developements may be, they cannot justify a general rejection of modern architecture as a whole, the way Spuybroek rejects 'modern' art of the 20th century as a whole.  In the careers of even the most unscrupulous designers of social housing projects that had to be demolished less than half a century after delivery, exceptions can be discovered to their favour. And to maintain hope for the recovery of the profession as such. A whore can still give birth to healthy and talented children.