Georg Simmel, in the role of cultural critic, noted that “in periods of social complexity and an extensive division of labor, the accomplishments of culture come to constitute an autonomous realm.” As the pace of cultural production accelerates, it becomes detached from its own capacity to be “a general means for the cultivation of many individual souls.”
“Things,” Simmel claimed, “are becoming more and more cultivated, while men are less able to gain from the perfection of objects a perfection of the subjective life.” This is the conundrum for the contemporary practice of architecture and design.
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