Talking Architecture: Is 'style' a dirty word?

Architecture may be the most public of all the arts yet is the least publicly discussed. Talking Architecture is a series of public conversations about some of architecture's key questions: Is beauty necessary? What is architecture for? Involving architects, artists, clients and lovers of architecture, Talking Architecture will open a public dialogue about how people can and should shape their shared built world.

For thousands of years, capturing public attention has been part of architecture's job. It has long been deployed to glamorise, dignify and sell an organisation, product or idea. Public and civic architecture once strived for public symbolism, but modernism rejected all that, making 'style' a dirty word — until postmodernism attempted to rehabilitate it. So where does that leave architecture now? What should people think about decoration, metaphor, allusion, gimmickry? Is all architectural braggadocio something to despise? Or is it, in enriching people's lives and culture, a thing to admire?

Moderated by Elizabeth Farrelly, the Talking Architecture series has been curated by Sonia Blasco Lázaro and Ed Lippmann, with the support of Porcelanosa and Vitrocsa.