From James Gardner’s article on architect Zaha Hadid in the July 24 New York Sun:
Should you wish to annoy contemporary architects–and why not?–here is a word you will want to incorporate into your active vocabulary: ‘Euclidean.’ They hate that. What, you might ask, can they possibly have against the Alexandrian geometrist Euclid, author of one of the noblest books ever written? Well, in the humbug of contemporary architectural discourse, to describe someone or something as ‘non-Euclidean’–which essentially means using curves, rather than angles, especially the supremely evil right angle–suggests that that person embraces the feminine as opposed to the patriarchy, multi-culti as opposed to Western colonialism, intuitions and feelings as opposed to overweening rationalism.
Now no architect, not even David Childs of SOM, will come right out and admit to being Euclidean for the same reason that few people eagerly embrace labels like imperialist or racist….