It is a telling indication of the nature of much recent theory that architects outside elite Western intellectual circles, those most directly concerned with the true “marginalized” who are the Third World, seem to have little time for nihilistic posturing. In many cases, the intellectual attachment to the marginalized individual is no more than an expedient measure that dovetails with today’s fashion in academia and visual aesthetics. Within consumption-driven Western society, claims that recent avant-garde architectural theory embodies the essential societal characteristics of our age are at best culturally naive or presumptuous, at worst self-delusion or deceit.
— Bruce Thomas, in “Culture, Merchandise, or Just Light Entertainment? New Architecture at the Millennium,” Journal of Arch. Ed., after discussing Lebbeus Woods, Daniel Libeskind, Michel Foucault, Peter Eisenman, Charles Jencks, … (aka those within “elite Western intellectual circles.”)
