Great architects are not democratic, they’re authoritarian. They exert themselves in a such insensitive way to their surrounding Perhaps that’s why Chandigarh failed, Brasilia failed, and Koolhaas’s Seattle Public Library also doesn’t do very well. Not to forget the EMP Building, also in Seattle, which performs very poorly and does not fit its urban context. It’s easy to sense and feel if one architecture piece is ‘democratic’ or ‘authoritarian’. Just sense it, and feel it, particularly through the scale of the architecture and the circulation path. In my opinion, the Esplanade is one example of an authoritarian architecture, where the scale of the space is never right, and I felt forced to walk within its specified pedestrian path. It is not a compelling piece of architecture. Hence, does ‘iconic’ have to be ‘authoritarian’? And does architecture reflect a (conscious / unconscious) political intention behind it?
