The temples of the periphery articulate a new post-anthropocenic civic strategy, they produce urbanity as well as absorb it from their immediate context. They attempt to organise the outer context’s overabundance of information in a crystalised architectural form. As a consequence, it is not always about beauty. Yet, at the same time, it is only about beauty – and sometimes even about the possibility of a contemporary monumentality. A new set of tools is required to straddle science and culture and mediate technical and social aspects of infrastructure. This design is defined by robust political agendas, strong territorial gestures, convincing contextual approaches, majestic formal strategies, sophisticated appropriations of architectural precedents, obstinate spatial tactics, simple organisational schemes, clear structural systems and banal technical details.