Nature’s Revenge

“We don’t have a consensus iconography anymore,” lamented James Wines, founder of SITE, at his first-ever lecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. “What we have instead is a slab of concrete and public fountains.” Wines’s lecture offered a sweeping overview of his career and showcased a vast array of SITE projects from the past several decades. The presentation reflected Wines’s humorous attitude towards architecture and revolved around his long-standing disdain for architectural excess, particularly in the form of high-rises and the sprawling emptiness of public space in US urban centers. He is poking the eye of the architectural establishment that has denied him an audience for far too long.