Rebuilding Virtue: We Need an Architecture Revival

“Beauty will save the world.” With this declaration, Prince Myshkin in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Idiot affirms his belief in the triumph of the transcendent principles of truth, beauty, and goodness. Despite the ugliness too often seen in the world and the moral corruption that corrupts the minds and acts of men, the belief that beauty is a path to salvation persists. Yet we need not look farther than outside our windows at the ugliness on display in our modern buildings, where beauty and classical technique have been abandoned in favor of utility and cost efficiency. The modern West has become plagued by relativism, nihilism, and the rejection of tradition. The increasing disbelief in objective moral norms and the widespread acceptance of the futility of existence beg for the revival of virtue in individuals and communities. But first, we need an image of the divine—an image of the beautiful.