Michael Diamant: Design Champion.
Since my teens I felt confused that the architecture and urban planning of yesteryear is so great while that of today is so ugly and alienating. Had something happened to our hands? Since I am not good at drawing, I could not become the architect that I wanted to be and therefore studied social planning at Stockholm University. While my daytime job is in another field I now passionately advocate for new traditional architecture and classical city planning through social media. It has been a great success so far, but it will take years and even decades before we can reach the splendour of the pre-modernist era.
This photo was taken in Riga, Latvia, a city I have visited more than ten times. Its’ street plan and architecture are, like so many 19th and early 20th century city centres, close to perfection. Sightlines, boulevards, cosy streets and imaginative Art Nouveau architecture makes one marvel at what creative beauty the human mind can come up with. But as with all cities of today, an overwhelming majority of new constructions are both ugly and create dead urban spaces. We are truly barbarians inhabiting the remains of a superior civilisation!
My advocacy continues and with all the global connections being formed I am positive that classical architecture and planning again will be the norm in the future. Maybe I will witness my beloved Riga get new layers of human genius, different but equally beautiful as past styles set in equally new thriving, cosy neighbourhoods.
