Architecture and design-Does everything need to look new?

I've been looking at design a lot lately, not just graphic design and what I've noticed is that it is all very pretty even the stuff that is trying to be edgy has some thing that makes me think there's something beautiful in it. Maybe it's just that I try and find something beautiful or interesting in everything, but it also makes me wonder if it's going to look good in a couple of years. There are many things that I look at and think, "wow, that's so 90s". Usually that's not a good thing.

Then again there is a lot of architecture at the moment that looks like it i could have been designed by Mies Van Der Rohe or Frank Lloyd Wright, In the photographs there a couple of things I notice. The colours are brighter now than they were in the 1940s and in Meis Van Der Rohe's case his design is very industrial, using glass and steel. In Frank Lloyd Wright's designs there are more natural materials like stone used with the boxy style of Van Der Rohe. The use of box shapes like in Wright's and Van Der Rohe's work is taken further by putting more boxes together, so the houses looks kind of like a toy blocks.

Mies Van Der Rohe's The Farnsworth House image from http://www.designboom.com/portrait/mies/farnsworth.html

Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin West, image from http://www.franklloydwright.org/fllwf_web_091104/Home.html

In architecture at the moment, like in Van Der Rohe's work there is a lot of playing with different materials and textures, juxtaposing modern with traditional to create something new and unique. The same can be said for all other forms of design. Technology is developing so fast that the designer either has to be up with the newest of everything or start going back to their roots, where design started.

Images by Eric Sierins Monument. 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61

Sources:

Drew, Philip. (February/March 2009). House of calm. Monument. 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61
Frank Lloyd Wright's taliesin west. (n.d.) Retrieved on May 29, 2010 from http://www.franklloydwright.org/fllwf_web_091104/Home.html
The farnsworth house. (n.d.) Retrieved on May 29, 2010 from http://www.designboom.com/portrait/mies/farnsworth.html