I'm often called an old-fashioned modernist. But the modernists

Host: The city was a forest of glass and steel, each tower catching the last embers of sunset like burning ideals that refused to die. The streets below pulsed with neon arteries, and the faint roar of traffic echoed like an ancient heartbeat, mechanical but strangely human.

From high above, on the half-finished floor of a skyscraper, two figures stood near the edge, the skyline stretching behind them like a canvas smeared with both hope and decay.

Jack leaned against a concrete pillar, his hands in the pockets of his worn jacket, his eyes scanning the horizon with that familiar mixture of wonder and disbelief. Jeeny stood beside him, her hair catching the wind, her gaze fixed not on the buildings—but the space between them, where the sky still breathed through the architecture.

Below them, a crane moved like a slow mechanical beast, carrying beams across the void. Above, the first stars flickered timidly, like forgotten dreams of creation.

Jeeny: “Thom Mayne once said, ‘I’m often called an old-fashioned modernist. But the modernists had the absurd idea that architecture could heal the world. That’s impossible. And today nobody expects architects to have these grand visions any more.’”
Her voice carried softly through the wind, touched by both admiration and melancholy. “He’s right, you know. Once upon a time, people thought design could save humanity. Now we just design to keep it from falling apart.”

Jack: “That’s because people realized walls don’t heal wounds.”
He lit a cigarette, the flame flickering in the breeze. “The modernists wanted to play God, Jeeny. Le Corbusier, Gropius—they thought geometry could redeem chaos. But you can’t build salvation out of steel beams.”

Host: The city lights below began to flicker on, one by one, as if the world itself were waking up under a different kind of heaven—artificial, restless, beautiful in its exhaustion.

Jeeny: “But isn’t that what makes it beautiful? That they even tried? Architecture is more than concrete—it’s a form of hope made visible. The modernists were naïve, yes—but maybe their naivety was their genius. They believed in something bigger than themselves.”

Jack: “Belief is the first stage of disillusionment. Look around. Half these buildings were designed to inspire, now they just trap people in cubicles with better lighting. Architecture didn’t heal the world—it institutionalized it.”

Jeeny: “That’s not architecture’s fault, Jack. It’s what we turned it into. Every time we built higher, we forgot why we were building in the first place.”

Jack: “You sound like a preacher in an architect’s coat.”

Jeeny: “And you sound like a cynic who’s afraid to look up.”

Host: The wind swept through the unfinished floor, rattling scaffolds and loose sheets of metal. Somewhere below, a car horn echoed through the concrete canyon, its sound lonely and defiant.

Jack: “You know what architecture really is now? Branding. Cities fighting over skylines like kids with shiny toys. Once, the architect was a philosopher. Now he’s just another salesman with a better vocabulary.”

Jeeny: “You underestimate the soul of the craft. Even in this world, every blueprint starts with a question: What does it mean to belong? That’s not commerce—that’s existential.”

Jack: “Belonging doesn’t come from buildings. It comes from people. You can wrap loneliness in glass and call it design, but it’s still loneliness.”

Jeeny: “And yet people keep building, Jack. They keep drawing, sketching, shaping. That’s not capitalism—it’s instinct. To make shelter is to make meaning.”

Jack: “Meaning’s overrated. Shelter’s all we really need.”

Jeeny: “If that were true, caves would’ve been enough.”

Host: The pause that followed was like an architectural silence—not empty, but full of intent. The wind had calmed, and in its absence, the faint hum of the city rose like a distant chorale.

Jeeny: “Do you know why I still love Mayne’s words? Because he admits the dream was impossible, but he never stopped dreaming. He calls himself an ‘old-fashioned modernist,’ and that’s a confession of faith in a world that’s forgotten how to believe.”

Jack: “Faith in what? In buildings?”

Jeeny: “No. In possibility.”

Jack: “Possibility doesn’t pay rent.”

Jeeny: “Neither does despair.”

Jack: “Touché.”

Host: Jeeny smiled, faintly, that kind of smile that bends sadness into beauty. The neon from below reflected in her eyes, giving them the shimmer of another skyline—one built not of glass, but of ideas.

Jeeny: “You know, architecture used to be a kind of language. Every column, every arch—it said something about what we valued. Cathedrals spoke of God, palaces of power, factories of progress. Now?”

Jack: “Now it just says, ‘Wi-Fi available.’”

Jeeny: “Exactly. We’ve stopped talking to the world through our buildings. We only talk to ourselves.”

Jack: “Maybe because we stopped knowing what to say.”

Host: A gust of wind caught Jeeny’s scarf, pulling it across her face like a fleeting veil. She reached for it, laughing softly, and for that moment, her laughter was the only sound in the steel skeleton of the tower.

Jack: “So tell me, Jeeny, if architecture can’t heal the world, what can?”

Jeeny: “Maybe the world doesn’t need healing. Maybe it just needs understanding. The modernists built to fix humanity. Maybe we just need to build to remember it.”

Jack: “Remember what?”

Jeeny: “That imperfection is the only structure that never collapses.”

Host: The rain began to fall—light at first, then heavier, the drops tapping against metal beams like fingers on piano keys. The city below shimmered under the downpour, and for a moment, every reflection looked like another world trying to reach this one.

Jack: “You make it sound like art.”

Jeeny: “It is art. Architecture is just poetry in materials. Every building is a prayer we whisper into the sky, hoping something listens.”

Jack: “And the sky never answers.”

Jeeny: “Maybe the silence is the answer.”

Host: The storm began to pass, leaving behind the smell of wet concrete and ozone. The horizon was beginning to blush with dawn—a faint line of gold cutting through the charcoal clouds.

Jack took a last drag of his cigarette and flicked it into the darkness below.

Jack: “Maybe Thom Mayne was right. The dream of healing the world through design was absurd. But maybe absurdity is the only thing that’s ever built anything worth standing under.”

Jeeny: “Exactly. Because even if architecture can’t heal the world—it can still remind it to feel. That’s enough.”

Jack: “You think these skyscrapers feel anything?”

Jeeny: “Not yet. But we do. And as long as we feel—there’s still architecture.”

Host: The camera would pull back, drifting away from the half-built tower, the figures small now, but radiant against the dawn. The city below gleamed, imperfect and alive—a mosaic of humanity’s contradictions.

And in that rising light, Thom Mayne’s words seemed to echo through the concrete and glass, finding new meaning in the quiet space between ambition and surrender:

“The modernists had the absurd idea that architecture could heal the world… and maybe that’s why we still build.”

For what is a building, after all—
if not a fragile attempt
to give form to hope
in a world that keeps trying to collapse.