At the beginning of the 1900s the quest for speed was still the (lost) challenge heralded by the futurists. It is now time we opposed this cult of speed, which is in Carl Honoré’s words “busy, controlling, aggressive, hurried, analytical, stressed, superficial, impatient.” We counter it with slow, which is “calm, careful, receptive, still, intuitive, unhurried, patient, reflective.” Yet it is not always necessarily “slow.” Indeed the paradox is that doing something slowly often means achieving results more quickly. If we were to replace “slow” with “quiet,” we would understand well why Honoré himself praised Carlo Petrini’s home of comune di Bra, with its tree-lined piazzas, “where the scent of lilac and lavender drifts through the air.”
— Frigerio Design Group, Slow Architecture