Idea of Time, Part III: A New Challenge

The relationship between humans and time is most clearly manifested in creative fields, such as architecture. Architecture, as long as it retains its artistic qualities, today seems destined to reproduce a world that is not adapted to human comfort and contradicts natural human feelings and expectations. The modern artist must be cold, as they express a world as cold as steel and glass, representing an era whose strictness leaves less room for self-expression.

Modern high-rise architecture, featuring sleek concrete and glass, blending minimalism with urban living.

Let’s compare it with the 13th century. In the age of Gothic cathedrals, the lines of architecture, despite their functionality, served a unified artistic purpose, pointing towards the heavens, to God, to a goal beyond this world. The walls were designed to let light pass through for the magic of stained-glass depictions of saints. But glass today? Modern glass walls are transparent and lack mystery, steel frames are rigid and uninfluenced by any spiritual considerations. This very creative energy of our world—the world in which we live and work, a world of science and technology, speed and danger, hard struggle and the absence of guarantees for the individual—is what modern architecture glorifies. There are attempts to stylize traditional architecture, but they often appear as kitsch or crude theatrical sets, asserting that stability and peace in our world are no longer possible.