I came across this note in the NYT by chance in a google search. Thoughts anyone?
To the Editor:
Christopher Hawthorne asserts that individual geniuses like Frank Lloyd Wright are being replaced by ”collectives” — teams that advocate group design and compromise [''Goodbye 'Fountainhead,' Hello Kibbutz,'' April 27]. As Ayn Rand has demonstrated, however, a collective of mediocrities cannot match the achievements of a single genius. Could Fallingwater have been designed by a committee? The surge toward collectivism in architecture may explain why so many buildings today are trite, disintegrated and/or just plain ugly.
EDWIN A. LOCKE
Westlake Village, Calif.
MS
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The conclusion misses the point entirely. Collectivism is not yet applied to a design process (and for sure not on architectural scale). Designers have only begun to think about it. Buildings might be “ugly” (whatever that means) not because they are designed by collective intelligence, but because they aren’t.