Is it forbidden in America to celebrate islamic architecture? Islamic stone architecture is far advanced over roman, greek or native architecture this guy seems to propagate.
See for example the old stone bridge of Mostar (Stari Most), which had to to be rebuilt after the war, and they could only do it by finding old turkish craftsmen who were still able to build such a bridge, without steel. Modern architects all failed.
It's mostly unknown in the popular consciousness. To the extent Americans know or connect to anything about old world history and places, it's basically western Europe, which includes the Romans and Greeks due to the Renaissance. (I think it's kind of a fossilized older English conception of the world, but there's lots of factors.) Plenty of exceptions, of course, where people also belong to another culture, in whole or in part, or have developed an interest elsewhere, but in general anything east of Germany or south of the Mediterranean is basically unknown. (It's not surprising; people know their own culture and maybe something about nearby or widespread ones. And nothing else is particularly nearby in the Americas.)
So if you're going to talk to lay people about ancient structures, you're going to talk Rome, or maybe some cathedrals, because otherwise you're not talking about the mechanics of ancient structures, you're talking about appreciation of otherwise unknown architecture, and that's not the same thing.
MIT, where Ochsendorf is a professor, has the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture [1] (Harvard has a sister program [2]).
Stari Most is also a well-known tourist destination. Its destruction occurred during a war the US was involved in and its destruction, rebuilding, and symbolism in the war were widely reported in US media. [3] Today, it's popular on mainstream sites like reddit. [4]
Great to hear that they have special programs for that. Americans could learn a great deal from them.
Regarding the Stari Most reconstruction effort I can recommend an excellent documentary by Jasmila Žbanić "Builders diary", and there are numerous more TV movies about the technical challenges there.
See for example the old stone bridge of Mostar (Stari Most), which had to to be rebuilt after the war, and they could only do it by finding old turkish craftsmen who were still able to build such a bridge, without steel. Modern architects all failed.