A. Rappaport   Architecture and ‘planetary claustrophobia’.  1. It is hardly necessary to demonstrate, that at the beginning of the 21st century architecture has shed any indication or pursuit of the future, we live by our heritage, and it will soon expire. But without a future there will be no present. The era of science fiction utopias has gone. The study of history only looks back. I propose a kind of insight into the future, even though not a very optimistic one. 2. I intend../MORE

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A. Rappaport   Architecture and ‘planetary claustrophobia’.  1. It is hardly necessary to demonstrate, that at the beginning of the 21st century architecture has shed any indication or pursuit of the future, we live by our heritage, and it will soon expire. But without a future there will be no present. The era of science fiction utopias has gone. The study of history only looks back. I propose a kind of insight into the future, even though not a very optimistic one. 2. I intend to propose that the new stimulus of architectural thought is globalization. In itself this thesis seems banal. Attempts at overcoming the leveling influence of world design on architecture have previously been made. Twenty years ago I pointed this out in my article ‘ Does architecture have a future?’. Now I have uncovered some encouraging lines of argument, in relation to the problem of overcoming (as one of the spheres of value formation) ‘planetary claustrophobia’ in architecture. 3. By planetary claustrophobia I mean the hypothesis according to which the second stage of globalization (the first ended with the Neolithic period) is when humans have not only assimilated all of the planet’s landmass, but also apprehended the finite nature of the earth and its territory as a living space for the all of the foreseeable future. The possibility of cosmic emigration is an illusion – stimulated by the momentum of the nomadic expansion of settlements. 4. One possible result of this awareness can turn out to be the depressive state of ‘inescapability’ as of the limitation of the earth’s area. But this very illusion of the capability of escape was of paramount sign