Beaux arts-modernism-post-modernism- minimalism-graphicism (as this is how I see the latest trend to add graphics in interiors and on exteriors.) “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction” is Newton’s third law of motion and seems to work equally well for the waves of which design moves. Monetary value for the designer thus is in being able to surf these waves, like Philip Johnson did during his long career. (According to Johnson architects are high-class whores.)

Others seem to have to be patient like the self proclaimed “architect of the American dream” Morris Lapidus, who in the 50’s and 60’s designed hotels that were described as “the nation’s grossest national product”, “superschlock” or “pornography of architecture”. Despite the flaming words of the critics Lapidus had many large commissions, mainly hotels. Like Johnson, Lapidus lived long, he died in 2001 at the age of 98. In the final years of his life, during the post-modern period, his eclectic buildings started to get a lot of attention, finally Lapidus’s momentum came. A lesson in the value of design: Morris Lapidus made a fortune designing hotels for the glamorous, but he seemed to long for peer recognition for which he had to wait very long indeed.