Although projects by OMA and BIG have come close, we're still a way off realising "sublime" architecture through generic forms, says Aaron Betsky in this Opinion column.

Can the absolutely normal and everyday be beautiful" Two recent books claim it can be. They take standard, interchangeable building blocks of the kind we see everyday ? suburban houses, office buildings, and apartment blocks ? to construct a human-made landscape they hope will evoke a sense of wonder.
One of the two, The Generic Sublime, by Ciro Najle, uses computer technology to develop landscapes unfolding into structures of a huge scale.
The other, Atlas of Another America, by Keith Krumwiede, starts from suburban house plans and combines them into mythical subdivisions. If in the end it is hard to believe in either Najle's or Krumwiede's proposals, that does not make them any less compelling. Najle's thesis, developed through several years of teaching studios at Harvard's GSD, is an ambitious one, and one that he sees as continuing the work of the Beast Master of Banality, Rem Koolhaas. Najle says:
Skyscraper collectives, tower agglomerations, high-rise housing, mixed-use developments, luxury condominiums, airport hubs, suburban office enclaves, industrial and technology parks, hotel complexes and resorts, conference and financial centres, entertainment venues, gated communities, theme parks, branded cities, new central districts and satellite cities: what is the latent potential of extr...