Is Better Materials Always Better?

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I don't actually believe that better materials are always better. All the malls i like, like the one i talk about in my second chapter, north park, has polished concrete floors and white brick walls. And it's so much nicer than these kind of alienating, super shiny, super hard marble spaces. So i think really, in all tecture, it's all in the way you deploy the materials. It's not about the expense of the material. The other part of your question, i agree all those things should be public goods,. But it is not doing it in new york city, where there are no benches in min station. I think most critics like, we

Alexandra Lange is a design critic whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, and many other publications. Her new book is Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall.

“I really like to write about things that I can hold and experience. I'm not that interested in biography, but I am very interested in the biography of an object. ... Like I feel about the objects, I think, how most people feel about people. So what I'm always trying to do is communicate that enthusiasm and that understanding to my reader, because these objects really have a lot of speaking to do.”

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