"Design is not making beauty, beauty emerges from selection, affinities, integration, love." Louis Kahn

 (BAK arquitectos applies its rules of minimal design to a home in a coniferous forest above the waterfront of Mar Azul in Argentina. The form of the home is a product of the rules of construction with cement, a material Latin American architects use in the best possible way, integrating it with nature. From: Floornature.com)

It is all but a certainty that economic expansion and the belief in a forever linear/exponential growth is the biggest problem facing humanity - when the shock will be horrific when it all comes undone.  The prediction?  Hard to see with the recent fiasco of a post empire American government system and it's failed capitalism (it became infected with crony socialism), that is content on still delivering "bread and circuses" till it ends.  The time line could be short if we factor in "Seneca cliff theory".  Point is, living beyond our capacity in all respects has influenced an idea of 'design' that is excessive in it's failure.  I noted China, as the biggest problem in this sense (buildings), with ghost cities and porous glass and steel structured littered across their country.   The final blow to complacency, laziness and cronyism with building structure will be global warming.

What I do detect emerging, at this point subtle, is an attack on the design of excessiveness and it's glorified tediums that are way past their expiry dates.  A building, as mentioned previously, should be a testament to out live man.  The concrete and steel, the ancient monuments made out of stone built by our ancestors - still standing, still relevant.  Is the basis to revere the true power of our environment - which isn't us.  Humans are vapors, that last in short and long time frames.  But a building, art, writing lasts forever.  It's immortal.  In saying that, it's refreshing to see Brutalism architecture return, in sporadic doses, modern and update designs are creating an appeal -  that has sustainability and respect of the environment, for the sake of our own survival.