Matters of truth permeate public discourse, yet what the word itself denotes remains unstable, and the connection of truth utterances to the real is always at issue. This is a truism, but the contours of our fascination with truth, fact, objectivity—and somewhat belatedly, authenticity—have evolved, in tandem with the social changes brought about by the growing consolidation of industrial capitalism and the corollary urbanization.
Deep in the period of American architectural history considered the halcyon days of High Modernism, Nov. 17, 1962, is when President John F. Kennedy dedicated Washington Dulles International Airport, which was designed by Finnish American architect Eero Saarinen and completed a year after his untimely death. Named for John Foster Dulles, former U.S.