Augury

For awhile now it’s been obvious that Michael Blowhard has been very endeared with YouTube, but I learned today from this post that he’s finally actually joined it and started adding his own videos. Good for him.

Here’s a classy video he made on architecture.

Although I think I’d prefer narration to on-screen text, I really enjoy the immediacy that video brings to architectural criticism. Michael sums up the foundation of my stance on architecture in this post:

Architecture is perennially important because, unlike poems and songs, most acts of architecture are substantial public acts. What damage is really done if a poet writes yet another bad modernist poem? Yet bad buildings and developments don’t just come and go. They can degrade shared environments, and damage the lives of thousands of people in practical and immediate ways. And they stick around.

Perfect, perfect. Here’s hoping that Michael turns his own thoughts on architecture (another recent post on the subjecthere) into a documentary series or the like. Three to six videos, ten minutes each, narrated by Michael Blowhard. I would love to see it — I would love to make such a series myself if I had a camera. Get people interested in architecture, encourage them to get involved and not to passively accept the rise of “kitchen appliance” buildings.