Strolling across the streets in two completely different places – a small French town Roussillon and a big city of New York – Manhattan, one can wonder what is the beauty of each of these places? In the history of beauty described by Umberto Eco, the evolution of one's outlook on the matter of feeling beauty is tending from relatively narrow historical definition towards more varied contemporary trends.
Placing architecture in modern theory of art, which defines avant-garde as „beauty instigation”, one should ask himself whether architecture can be avant-garde instigating only by its originality and what is the „modern beauty” of urban space.
