“In an age of ugliness, a work of beauty is an act of defiance.”

I recently discovered an amazing website called Architectural Revival. It is on Facebook, and is associated with ArchitectureMMXII, which recently felt the whip of publicity when one of its videos was adopted by the UKIP party (Uni- ted Kingdom Independence Party) in Britain, which led the successful Brexit campaign. Or maybe merely a supporter of UKIP. There was some back and forth on the TradArch list over how much the UKIP connection matters. It matters far less than the truths so eloquently expressed.

In trying to get to the bottom of who was responsible for what and when, I stumbled upon the Architectural Revival site on Facebook. Click on it above and you will find yourself in the middle of a slideshow that strings photos of beautiful places, slides that juxtapose beautiful and ugly places (that is, tra- ditional and modernist places), and inspired mottos, such as the one above, that crisply voice the common-sense arguments for tradition and against modernism, especially in the design of our cities and towns. I have found myself clicking endlessly from slide to slide over several days and have to force myself to halt my progression through this digital hall of divinity because I have other things I must do. It’s almost like the famous potato chip ad – bet you can’t eat just one!