Oh my, I loved, LOVED this piece! So much so that it has brought tears to my eyes. I will try to articulate why... Although I am not an architect, both of my parents are, so I think I have grown up with deep appreciation for architecture, and beauty. This is something I haven't been able to explain well to my daughters, who are growing up in Montreal - a city (excuse the fans) I don't find particularly inspiring in terms of architecture and beauty. My daughters don't understand why I find the view from my window onto a busy, noisy, grey and dirty avenue so depressing - especially during those long winter months. Snow is lovely in the country where it stays white, but on this busy street it becomes grey so soon. When I visited my hometown Budapest after the pandemic, I practically had an orgasm each time I saw a stunning gate (and there are many stunning gates in Budapest...). My mother laughed at my enthusiasm, but there I was, in tears over all this beauty I missed so much while in Montreal. Going back to Montreal I had a tough conversation with my daughters about how I needed to spend significantly more time in Europe if I were to keep sane and happy in the deprivation that is Montreal (sorry again, to all the fans). My apartment in Montreal is very small by North American standards, but spacious enough by European standards. I have everything that I need and it's easy to keep clean. We have no room for clutter. It's the zen mythos-logos oasis I have created in the uninspiring logos that is my adoptive city, while I dream of beautiful gates and architecture, a city rich in history and beauty, like Budapest, like Rome... Thank you for writing this beautiful piece that I will now share widely with everyone who asks me why do I not like Montreal... Now I'll be able to say, I need a little more mythos, please. And my I add, that illustration about the average size home in the US is chilling...
Dear Imola - I’m so glad you enjoyed and were moved by this piece. It’s a treat to hear from readers, especially the specifics you’re offered. It took me years to diagnose why I was so unhappy in my first jobs as an architect— it was because logos ran rampant. Now that I understand it a bit better, it helps cushion the blow. Ugliness is dispiriting though, isn’t it?
How beautiful, Julie. Your students are so lucky to have a teacher with this outlook. Architecture doesn't tend to be much of a subject in my life except when I'm in Russia, where my father walks me around pointing out the varieties of periods and how the architecture represents them. It's always interesting.
I recently read something in passing about the use of slave labor in transporting materials for the Pantheon, and have wondered about the role of slavery in so many of these buildings. (It always trips me up a bit reading that some emperor or another built something when at most they would have ordered or designed it.) Which doesn't, I hope, take away from the incredible effect it has and the marvel of its design. I've only been to Rome once and was pretty awestruck.
This dance of mythos and logos, so perfectly applied here. Thank you.
That’s such a good point, Antonia. The emperor Agrippa’s name is right there in the pediment. It’s a good thing that in the U.S. there’s lately been some acknowledgment that slave labor helped to build monuments like the Capitol and campuses like Georgetown University.
I wish I could remember where I read a paper that talked about this, but alas. Can’t remember everything!
Yeah, it’s always interesting to think about that perspective now. Wait a second — WHO built this?!
And still, so beautiful. Which is inspiring on its own because we can still build beautiful things without involving oppression. Why not? (I think there was a Doctor Who episode kind of about this. Not a building but something else. In any case, about people thinking they needed oppression to reach a goal, and finally learning their goal was more achievable without the oppression.)
So cool! Leave it to a TV show to address a complex topic in a compelling way. I'm aware that Georgetown offers reparations by admitting and paying for students who are descendants of those enslaved people (they have to have proof, but maybe there's a process to help them?).
What a great question. I rewatched the original series some years ago. The gender/women dynamics are truly awful, but they tackled a lot of other issues, if not always with subtlety, like in Let That Be Your Last Battlefield.
Lovely. And I can't help thinking about all the new Brutalist buildings being built in my community which invoke a Soviet-style mythology; and what it says about the vision of the future.
It's as if the Soviet era never ended. Skiddings Owen & Merrill still cranking these designs out for small cities in the Midwest. While I am thrilled to finally expand and renovate our public library in Appleton WI, it's such an unattractive building. Fits in with the rest of them they've built in spurts; 70s, 90s, and again the past ten years.
Wow, reading that “the sun does not realize how wonderful it is until after a room is made" I looked up across my own living room at the setting sun streaming through western facing windows, making emphatic shadows on my dining table and chairs and the rug underneath, and thought, "Oh my god, how breathtakingly beautiful this is." Thank you for drawing my attention to the here and now.
Great essay with wonderful references. The Pantheon is indeed "awe" inspiring.
I would offer that the increase in house size also has to do with another myth, the American myth of independence, the self-made man... where "going it alone" is deemed more valuable than community and "more" is better than quality. Along with some myths around wealth. It is no longer acceptable for a family to share a bathroom, unless you are "poor". Everyone needs their own space. Everyone "deserves" their own space, their own room and bathroom, yes? Frugality was once deemed the moral good (Adlai Stevenson's presidential campaign in the 50's that used the hole in his shoe as a symbol for hard work and frugality). Today there is an underlying ethos that only suckers work hard and everyone is a star. Therefore, we "deserve" bigger houses and more toys and no longer need to acknowledge the social contracts of caring about others, the use of the commons, the destruction of resources, and so on. Myth is always changing and myth is always the underlying current of our lives. As Jung said (paraphrasing): we just need to discover what that myth is.
Julie, your description of watching the shaft of light beneath the oculus on the marble floor, of how it showed you the truth of our planet’s constant traveling brought me into that space with you. Thank you for that.
And thank you for continuing to keep the flame of mythos burning for your students, for us all.
Oh this is ecstatic Julie! Thank you for straddling the known and unknown Julie and extending your hand to guide us into a greater appreciation and awareness of this dance.
“I imagine myself moving through time and space in a thin zone between the known and the numinous. This is the dance of mythos and logos. It’s a dance I need, a dance I long for, whether I’m aware of it or not. When I embrace it, it saves me.
Awww! Thanks so much, Camilla! I reading thru it again this morning, it starts a bit slowly, but once I get to the architecture, it does get going. . . . Where’s a good editor when I need one? 😂
Wonderful post. Thanks Julie for sharing your insights and shedding your light on this fascinating topic. Karen Armstrong's brilliant book is one of my favourite explorations of myth too.
Your title instantly caught my eye, since I 'invented' a new myth approx. a year ago. After discovering that there is no myth about Mythos himself to be found in the ancient Greek archives, I thought, 'How can that be? Every man, woman, and their dog has their personal myth about them...'
This glaring gap needed to be filled. I'm so glad you picked up on that too.
You might enjoy reading the wordcast I published on this theme, beginning of October last year, and I'm certainly curious to know what you make of it.
Oooo! That sounds wonderful. Thanks - will definitely check it out. Mythos is such a great support. We've been ruthlessly downsizing lately and I stubbornly approached the sorting with slow deliberation. And there's a fairy tale for that! Three that I can think of -- Psyche and Eros is one, and Vasilisa the Beautiful, not to mention good old Cinderella.
The mythos and logos dichotomy echoes the themes explored in my series, ‘Secrets from my twilight zone,’ which was inspired by Rod Serling’s ‘The Twilight Zone.’ Serling often delved into the tension between rational thought and the power of myth, exploring how humans navigate the interplay between logic and imagination in the face of the unknown.
Thanks for reading, Jeff. Glad you enjoyed it. My profs in undergrad and grad were pretty snobby about Alexander, which in itself is interesting to reflect on. They thought he was too loosey-goosey, is my best guess. Not rationally theoretical enough. Hmmmm. 🤔 Not that I buy that now, and I do appreciate his appeal to folks beyond our discipline. Sarah Susanka, of the “Not So Big House,” is another one who had / has huge influence.
Growing up in New York City in the 60s and 70s, I was appalled by the office buildings that were thrown up during that time. I used to walk a lot and passing those structures left me feeling sad. And then something happened in the 80s where there was more of a detailed approach to high-rise office buildings. They were created with marble fades and attention to design and detail. After that, it shifted to glass towers, which can be and on many occasions nice to look at. Especially when you blend architectural elements into the design such as a twisted shape.
What I recall, Levittown was not structured to be attractive, but rather inexpensive and affordable and for the masses. I actually knew someone who grew up in one of those houses. And unfortunately, the construction materials were cheap and not meant to last.
I do hope the trend of beautifully crafted buildings continues, especially with an attention to the environment. I love seeing rooftop gardens and living walls. These elements marry nature and mythos with logos.
Thanks for these thoughtful observations. It is astounding how ugly those 60s and 70s buildings were. It's what happens when you throw out the whole history of architecture, dismiss it as irrelevant, and invent your own language from thin air. There's a good book called "The Decorated Diagram," by Klaus Herdeg, in which he convincingly blames Walter Gropius and the Harvard Graduate School of Design for those years.
Love this: "Shaw says, 'Myth is the power of a place, speaking.' We belong to places, not the other way around." Some uncanny echoes of what I wrote about today, too.
Given the sacrifices that logos requires, one might also say that the argument for mythos is the more rational one. I remain amazed that you are able to sustain this vision within academe where the cheapest forms of logos (brand messages, academic assessment, etc) prevail. Keep fighting that good fight!
Thanks, Joshua. And for inviting me to write for Inner Life. This is a subject close to my heart. I might even say that dance of reason and intuition is what animates my life. As for academia's many (many) failings, I take inspiration from my husband, who is a master compartmentalizer. I focus on how much I love my colleagues and the students, and of course architecture (and my health insurance plan), then do what I can to slather all my interactions with mythos. 😂
That said, assessment has amped up considerably in the past couple of years, as we prepare for the onslaught of accreditation after a quiet 8-year hiatus. We've been pushed into some blatant "teaching to the test" that the younger me would've resisted mightily, thereby causing myself much misery. Now, I can see how some of it does improve things, while the rest goes in the category of unavoidable nonsense not worth getting worked up about.
Oh my, I loved, LOVED this piece! So much so that it has brought tears to my eyes. I will try to articulate why... Although I am not an architect, both of my parents are, so I think I have grown up with deep appreciation for architecture, and beauty. This is something I haven't been able to explain well to my daughters, who are growing up in Montreal - a city (excuse the fans) I don't find particularly inspiring in terms of architecture and beauty. My daughters don't understand why I find the view from my window onto a busy, noisy, grey and dirty avenue so depressing - especially during those long winter months. Snow is lovely in the country where it stays white, but on this busy street it becomes grey so soon. When I visited my hometown Budapest after the pandemic, I practically had an orgasm each time I saw a stunning gate (and there are many stunning gates in Budapest...). My mother laughed at my enthusiasm, but there I was, in tears over all this beauty I missed so much while in Montreal. Going back to Montreal I had a tough conversation with my daughters about how I needed to spend significantly more time in Europe if I were to keep sane and happy in the deprivation that is Montreal (sorry again, to all the fans). My apartment in Montreal is very small by North American standards, but spacious enough by European standards. I have everything that I need and it's easy to keep clean. We have no room for clutter. It's the zen mythos-logos oasis I have created in the uninspiring logos that is my adoptive city, while I dream of beautiful gates and architecture, a city rich in history and beauty, like Budapest, like Rome... Thank you for writing this beautiful piece that I will now share widely with everyone who asks me why do I not like Montreal... Now I'll be able to say, I need a little more mythos, please. And my I add, that illustration about the average size home in the US is chilling...
Dear Imola - I’m so glad you enjoyed and were moved by this piece. It’s a treat to hear from readers, especially the specifics you’re offered. It took me years to diagnose why I was so unhappy in my first jobs as an architect— it was because logos ran rampant. Now that I understand it a bit better, it helps cushion the blow. Ugliness is dispiriting though, isn’t it?
So dispiriting! The older I get the more I am desperate for the kind of beauty and meaning you outlined here. So appreciate this essay!!
How beautiful, Julie. Your students are so lucky to have a teacher with this outlook. Architecture doesn't tend to be much of a subject in my life except when I'm in Russia, where my father walks me around pointing out the varieties of periods and how the architecture represents them. It's always interesting.
I recently read something in passing about the use of slave labor in transporting materials for the Pantheon, and have wondered about the role of slavery in so many of these buildings. (It always trips me up a bit reading that some emperor or another built something when at most they would have ordered or designed it.) Which doesn't, I hope, take away from the incredible effect it has and the marvel of its design. I've only been to Rome once and was pretty awestruck.
This dance of mythos and logos, so perfectly applied here. Thank you.
That’s such a good point, Antonia. The emperor Agrippa’s name is right there in the pediment. It’s a good thing that in the U.S. there’s lately been some acknowledgment that slave labor helped to build monuments like the Capitol and campuses like Georgetown University.
I wish I could remember where I read a paper that talked about this, but alas. Can’t remember everything!
Yeah, it’s always interesting to think about that perspective now. Wait a second — WHO built this?!
And still, so beautiful. Which is inspiring on its own because we can still build beautiful things without involving oppression. Why not? (I think there was a Doctor Who episode kind of about this. Not a building but something else. In any case, about people thinking they needed oppression to reach a goal, and finally learning their goal was more achievable without the oppression.)
So cool! Leave it to a TV show to address a complex topic in a compelling way. I'm aware that Georgetown offers reparations by admitting and paying for students who are descendants of those enslaved people (they have to have proof, but maybe there's a process to help them?).
I hope so!
Sci fi is wonderful for tackling those kinds of questions :)
Yes! I wonder if the 1960s Star Trek was the first? Would be fun to see a history of that.
What a great question. I rewatched the original series some years ago. The gender/women dynamics are truly awful, but they tackled a lot of other issues, if not always with subtlety, like in Let That Be Your Last Battlefield.
Lovely. And I can't help thinking about all the new Brutalist buildings being built in my community which invoke a Soviet-style mythology; and what it says about the vision of the future.
I will never understand the appeal (??) of Brutalism.
It's as if the Soviet era never ended. Skiddings Owen & Merrill still cranking these designs out for small cities in the Midwest. While I am thrilled to finally expand and renovate our public library in Appleton WI, it's such an unattractive building. Fits in with the rest of them they've built in spurts; 70s, 90s, and again the past ten years.
Wow, reading that “the sun does not realize how wonderful it is until after a room is made" I looked up across my own living room at the setting sun streaming through western facing windows, making emphatic shadows on my dining table and chairs and the rug underneath, and thought, "Oh my god, how breathtakingly beautiful this is." Thank you for drawing my attention to the here and now.
Oh how delightful! I can picture it! Lou Kahn was quite a poet.
Great essay with wonderful references. The Pantheon is indeed "awe" inspiring.
I would offer that the increase in house size also has to do with another myth, the American myth of independence, the self-made man... where "going it alone" is deemed more valuable than community and "more" is better than quality. Along with some myths around wealth. It is no longer acceptable for a family to share a bathroom, unless you are "poor". Everyone needs their own space. Everyone "deserves" their own space, their own room and bathroom, yes? Frugality was once deemed the moral good (Adlai Stevenson's presidential campaign in the 50's that used the hole in his shoe as a symbol for hard work and frugality). Today there is an underlying ethos that only suckers work hard and everyone is a star. Therefore, we "deserve" bigger houses and more toys and no longer need to acknowledge the social contracts of caring about others, the use of the commons, the destruction of resources, and so on. Myth is always changing and myth is always the underlying current of our lives. As Jung said (paraphrasing): we just need to discover what that myth is.
Yes, I agree with all this. Quantity over quality. Individual over community. We know better.
Julie, your description of watching the shaft of light beneath the oculus on the marble floor, of how it showed you the truth of our planet’s constant traveling brought me into that space with you. Thank you for that.
And thank you for continuing to keep the flame of mythos burning for your students, for us all.
Thanks for reading, Holly. I count that noticing as one of the highlights of my life. I’m touched that my words could evoke that moment for you.
Oh this is ecstatic Julie! Thank you for straddling the known and unknown Julie and extending your hand to guide us into a greater appreciation and awareness of this dance.
“I imagine myself moving through time and space in a thin zone between the known and the numinous. This is the dance of mythos and logos. It’s a dance I need, a dance I long for, whether I’m aware of it or not. When I embrace it, it saves me.
Thanks for reading, Kimberly. I love how sitting down to try and capture a memory or a feeling in words can open the door to insights like this.
"As an architecture teacher, I will always keep the eternal flame of mythos lit." Brava, Julie✨🌟💖🙏🕊️
I love this piece so much!
Awww! Thanks so much, Camilla! I reading thru it again this morning, it starts a bit slowly, but once I get to the architecture, it does get going. . . . Where’s a good editor when I need one? 😂
Please invite that Inner Critic to go sit on the couch😁
it's a great piece!
Thank you!! Needed that.
Wonderful post. Thanks Julie for sharing your insights and shedding your light on this fascinating topic. Karen Armstrong's brilliant book is one of my favourite explorations of myth too.
Your title instantly caught my eye, since I 'invented' a new myth approx. a year ago. After discovering that there is no myth about Mythos himself to be found in the ancient Greek archives, I thought, 'How can that be? Every man, woman, and their dog has their personal myth about them...'
This glaring gap needed to be filled. I'm so glad you picked up on that too.
You might enjoy reading the wordcast I published on this theme, beginning of October last year, and I'm certainly curious to know what you make of it.
https://veronikabondsymbiopaedia.substack.com/p/the-myth-of-mythos
Oooo! That sounds wonderful. Thanks - will definitely check it out. Mythos is such a great support. We've been ruthlessly downsizing lately and I stubbornly approached the sorting with slow deliberation. And there's a fairy tale for that! Three that I can think of -- Psyche and Eros is one, and Vasilisa the Beautiful, not to mention good old Cinderella.
The mythos and logos dichotomy echoes the themes explored in my series, ‘Secrets from my twilight zone,’ which was inspired by Rod Serling’s ‘The Twilight Zone.’ Serling often delved into the tension between rational thought and the power of myth, exploring how humans navigate the interplay between logic and imagination in the face of the unknown.
Love that show. Thanks for the reminder. "Black Mirror" tapped a bit of that energy, with some success.
Julie, I enjoyed this piece. A little surprised at not finding Christopher Alexander in there!
I'm sorry we didn't get to know each other better in the RMI days.
Jeff
Thanks for reading, Jeff. Glad you enjoyed it. My profs in undergrad and grad were pretty snobby about Alexander, which in itself is interesting to reflect on. They thought he was too loosey-goosey, is my best guess. Not rationally theoretical enough. Hmmmm. 🤔 Not that I buy that now, and I do appreciate his appeal to folks beyond our discipline. Sarah Susanka, of the “Not So Big House,” is another one who had / has huge influence.
Growing up in New York City in the 60s and 70s, I was appalled by the office buildings that were thrown up during that time. I used to walk a lot and passing those structures left me feeling sad. And then something happened in the 80s where there was more of a detailed approach to high-rise office buildings. They were created with marble fades and attention to design and detail. After that, it shifted to glass towers, which can be and on many occasions nice to look at. Especially when you blend architectural elements into the design such as a twisted shape.
What I recall, Levittown was not structured to be attractive, but rather inexpensive and affordable and for the masses. I actually knew someone who grew up in one of those houses. And unfortunately, the construction materials were cheap and not meant to last.
I do hope the trend of beautifully crafted buildings continues, especially with an attention to the environment. I love seeing rooftop gardens and living walls. These elements marry nature and mythos with logos.
Thanks for these thoughtful observations. It is astounding how ugly those 60s and 70s buildings were. It's what happens when you throw out the whole history of architecture, dismiss it as irrelevant, and invent your own language from thin air. There's a good book called "The Decorated Diagram," by Klaus Herdeg, in which he convincingly blames Walter Gropius and the Harvard Graduate School of Design for those years.
Love this: "Shaw says, 'Myth is the power of a place, speaking.' We belong to places, not the other way around." Some uncanny echoes of what I wrote about today, too.
Given the sacrifices that logos requires, one might also say that the argument for mythos is the more rational one. I remain amazed that you are able to sustain this vision within academe where the cheapest forms of logos (brand messages, academic assessment, etc) prevail. Keep fighting that good fight!
Thanks, Joshua. And for inviting me to write for Inner Life. This is a subject close to my heart. I might even say that dance of reason and intuition is what animates my life. As for academia's many (many) failings, I take inspiration from my husband, who is a master compartmentalizer. I focus on how much I love my colleagues and the students, and of course architecture (and my health insurance plan), then do what I can to slather all my interactions with mythos. 😂
That said, assessment has amped up considerably in the past couple of years, as we prepare for the onslaught of accreditation after a quiet 8-year hiatus. We've been pushed into some blatant "teaching to the test" that the younger me would've resisted mightily, thereby causing myself much misery. Now, I can see how some of it does improve things, while the rest goes in the category of unavoidable nonsense not worth getting worked up about.