French Architecture and the Hazards of Globalization

A commenter says that French intellectualism is worthless because it’s applied to abstract bullshit like literature and philosophy, whereas they should be talking about engineering. I guess the commenter is some STEM guy. I’m not sure what to say about this except that French science and engineering looks pretty damn good for a long time now. Marie Curie? The Salk vaccine?

On another point, he says that French culture is disappearing.

I don’t agree that French culture is disappearing. It’s nothing at all like America. I have seen Internet travelogues of people driving through France all the way to Paris.

That’s a real country. Real architecture. An architecture steeped in history and culture. No tract homes or strip malls. Even when they got to Paris, I was stunned. They were in Versailles, and it could have been 1790 looking at the buildings.

When France starts looking like America with strip malls and tract homes, when French buildings look exactly like American buildings, France will be dead. It will just another America.

Travelogue: The Ardennes, between France and Belgium. Check out the countryside, towns and cites. A real country looks like this!

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0 thoughts on “French Architecture and the Hazards of Globalization”

    1. If they have to make the tract homes in the style of traditional French architecture, then I would not oppose that. I just looked through a travelogue through Paris and most of it appeared to still have traditional architecture. Although I was not sure about those glassy new skyscrapers. Does that look like Paris or any old big city.

      We do have some real cities in the US. San Francisco is a real city!

      1. San Francisco is great. The sense of neighborhood there is remarkable. Travel 400 miles to the south however and you find one large amorphous blob of a characterless city in which people differentiate themselves with cars!

  1. I don’t mind strip malls and trailer parks so much. If trailer trash and ghetto trash could produce something worthy from of their miserable experience I could respect them too. I have bigger issues with suburbia.

    I think generic American culture is deteriorating is is because of lack of originality and independent experiences.

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