The Emergence of a Paradigm Shift

How the Architectural Uprising Movement is aligned with the Quest for New Traditional Architecture

Bloomberg CityLab recently published a large article on Architectural Uprising, a movement which started as Facebook groups in the Nordic countries around 2014-15, and is now exploding across the globe, giving a voice to a large and growing number of people, who are (and have been for quite a while) fed up with the uglification of built environments everywhere.

The Problem?

What has been mainstream, mainly developer driven neo-modern(ist) revival architecture and urbanism for decades, has shown its failures all over the world. Critical voices have existed all along, protesting its dogmatic credo, but remained in the margins of professional discourse. But what is different now, is the Social Media Era. It is possible to reach thousands of people in a blink of an eye, find like-minded networks across countries and cultures.

And it is not possible for the architecture profession to stay in the ivory towers anymore.

Feedback from mainstream architectural profession

In the beginning of the Architectural Uprising, reactions from architects were basically two-fold.

There were those who refused to have any discussion with non-architects about architecture. The condescending message was, that only an architect is (and should be) allowed and able to have a worthy opinion on architecture.

On the other hand, there were architects who, in private discussions, admitted that they agree with the Architectural Uprising, but they felt that to design anything other than the currently accepted dogma, would be a professional suicide.

In this respect a lot has happened already: now there is a growing number of architects joining and openly supporting the Architectural Uprising Movement.

All along, there have also been architects that have managed to gain education and looked for resources on traditional/classical traditions of architecture and urbanism on their own and made a career of it. Their work has been published in the Movement's groups - spreading in different social media platforms. Work that seemed to be ignored by the modern(ist) architectural establishment & media.

It has become clear that although the disappointment towards modern(ist) architecture and its contemporary revival styles was vast, there seemed to be a solution: the new classical architects were on the same side as the Movement. Publishing their work has reached tremendous positive reactions.

Future challenges and opportunities

The Movement has already changed the discourse on architecture and urbanism in the Nordic countries. New countries are joining, and more and more local groups are also being founded. Currently, +30 countries and +300.000 members in different social media platforms have joined the Movement.

Architecture students are increasingly concerned about the sustainability issues arising during our fossil era and requesting better tools to tackle them. Traditional architecture and urbanism offer sources of wisdom, applicable pre- and post-fossil era.

In the future, the challenge and opportunity will be to win as many architects and people in building companies, as well as civil servants in the planning occupations, to choose the Movement's side. Also, changes in the educational systems are needed, no less than a paradigm shift. That's how outdated belief systems are replaced when new information is found, at least in scientific communities.

Welcome the union of grass-root bottom-up people's movement and professional traditional architects' community!

This article has been originally published in the first edition of the Classic Planning Herald, a magazine dedicated to the discourse within the New Traditional Architecture community.