The New Minimalist Architecture

There is something magnificent lately being, or having been, achieved in the art of building houses for people to live in, of correct minimal visual/optical effects and amenities--"infinity" swimming pools, vast windows, plexiglass balcony railings, cantilevered stairs, sarcophagean bathtubs, and many, lavishly appointed bathrooms. Not to say that the amenities are visual/optical effects, but such is the rococo raptus of these, that one who is even a little bit French is put on the defensive, and wonders, despite oneself, if such splendors can leave any room for mere corporeal humanity. They do. Finally. After 10 or 12,000 years of getting it mostly wrong, and only occasionally--as in the "Gold" and "Silver" Pavilions of Kyoto, or the Minoan palace of ancient Knossos, and perhaps in the general outlay of Tenochtitlán as Cortez found it--even ever getting the concept right.