21st Century Fabric and Urbanism

This session engages equally weighted experts in an open discussion among peers. International architects, they share how they have generated measurable and predictable outcomes in their work. Their shared mission is the making of Good Places, “kalotopias” as opposed to “dystopias”. The best places benefit the public as they interact with the man-made world. The importance of a holistic understanding of the mind, spirit, and physical self is emphasized, as well as the benefits of multidisciplinary collaboration. Phil Esocoff (Washington DC), John Simpson (London) and Raymond Loïc Chan (Paris) discuss and compare the poetics of fabric in the service of community building—making beautiful and meaningful places and spaces. The New Traditional Urbanism and Architecture based on a craft-economy, backed by long-term, millennial experience, are the only coherent theory and practice of environmental action to this day. They are the only serious countermodel to suburbia and motopia. They're an essential part of a reconstruction project of a human scale democracy, economy and built environment. The many architects and craftsmen who practice them around the world despite their modernist architectural education, against overwhelming peer pressure, against bureaucratic and academic sabotage, are sustained by wide public support and market demand. Architects and planners are faced with an existential choice to either serve a totalitarian dystopia or to plan and build the Common Good.