A really interesting interview of Andrew Gould by Jonathan Pageau

The whole thing is interesting but the last ten minutes when they discuss a beer shop which Andrew designed are especially interesting.

The part which really caught my attention was when Andrew explained how it was he came to design the building the way he did—the owner gave him carte blanche to design something beautiful because, owning a number of other properties in the area, he wanted to try to raise the standard in the neighborhood.

This touches a really interesting point, both about architecture but about the wider social phenomenon of imitation. People like excellence and will try to imitate it. But the phenomenon requires someone who is willing to be better than he needs to be. People who merely get along don’t inspire anyone. There’s a curious problem embedded in that—once the person who was better than he has to be inspires others, the standard will be raised and he will not be only as good as he needs to be to keep up with the people he inspired. There is, however, also a countervailing force of people wanting to be more lax than they are; these two forces form a cyclical pattern of improvement and degradation which is readily observable in history. (How the strict Victorian period followed the lax Georgian period, only to be followed by the lax roaring twenties, for example.)