6 ms·

I probably can't convince you of anything, but there are definitely two sides to this story. You can choose to listen to Stevens Curl if you want to. You can ch

by theoh 7y ago

I probably can't convince you of anything, but there are definitely two sides to this story. You can choose to listen to Stevens Curl if you want to. You can choose to listen to Theodore Dalrymple as well. Like Stevens Curl he is a blowhard with very iffy politics. As a trained architectural historian (who has spent years in the UK) it's very clear to me where he is coming from, and it's not a rational place. HN is a terrible venue for discussions of architecture because it's full of people who think their own blinkered opinion is the law. Stevens Curl is just like that. Edit: even the conservative Spectator has Curl's digits: https://www.spectator.co.uk/2018/08/modernist-architecture-isnt-barbarous-but-the-blinkered-rejection-of-it-is/ https://www.spectator.co.uk/2018/08/modernist-architecture-i...

inflatableDodo 7y ago
>I probably can't convince you of anything You might be able to, but if you claim someone is making tedious old right wing arguments, when it according to the reviews he spends his time commenting on Corbusier's fascism and the Spectator lumps him in with Vonnegut, then I can't take your critique all that seriously. Do you think Vonnegut's architectural critiques are also tired right wing arguments?
- cfmcdonald 7y ago
  And Orwell, apparently he is now a right-winger too.
  - theoh 7y ago
    The point Bayley is making is that there is a motley crew of people of all political persuasions who think modernization in the 20th C was a disaster. The mechanization of war was the big shock. Obviously there is everything from e.g. socialist environmentalists on the left to the libertarian rejection of organized society on the right. There's a huge spectrum.
    - inflatableDodo 7y ago
      The way it played out in architecture has been pretty bad. Corbusier in particular should have just stuck to chairs. He was much better at chairs than he was at buildings. As far as this kind of thing goes, I love stuff by Altair Alto and Shigeru Ban, whereas I'd happily bury George Marsh under his own concrete. Norman foster I am 50/50 on. Some of his stuff I like, but the tulip and the gherkin are basically just giant tumescent cocks sprouting out of the centre of London.
- theoh 7y ago
  I'm not aware of anything that Vonnegut (jr.) wrote about architecture specifically, but that list of "other people unhappy with modernity" is supposed to be a miscellaneous grab-bag anyway. Curl's book is a mud-slinging rant which accuses modernist architects of being psychotic, deranged, obsessed with hygiene, inclined to erethism (I had to look it up) etc. The claim that Corbusier was a fascist is the least of it. In this sense Curl's argument is a bit like the claims that Corbusier was autistic https://www.citylab.com/design/2018/01/the-perils-of-diagnosing-modernists/551096/ https://www.citylab.com/design/2018/01/the-perils-of-diagnos... which aren't really taken seriously. The right-wing aspect of what Curl is saying is his alignment with traditional 'polite' architecture (built by and for the wealthy) and his total dismissal of the social collectivist agenda of much modernist architecture. Modernism, at its best, had a social conscience and tried to serve the people rather than cravenly serving capital. The opposition Curl is subscribing to essentially distinguishes between individualistic, traditional architecture (with ornament and ostentatious materials) and a collectivistic modernist architecture (inspired by vernacular building and modern machinery). This is exactly the kind of Manichean distinction that you will find in idealistic modernist manifestos. The difference is that Curl takes the side of capital, while the modernists would have taken the side of labour. The reality of architectural practice is much more complex than that. Positing that opposition as the historical, intellectual reality behind 20th C architecture just isn't a good premise. Curl (like David Watkin in "Morality and Architecture") is attacking a straw man. He's fighting a propaganda war that ended years ago. There's a ding-dong battle here between Curl (with his uncritical embrace of traditionalism) and Barnabas Calder (who himself is not exactly a hard-line socialist): https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/the-duel-has-modern-architecture-ruined-britain https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/the-duel-has-mod... Curl says things about architecture "generating hostile responses in humans" and it seems clear to me from experience that we are dealing with someone who is reaching for pseudoscientific language because their argument is weak. Nikos Salingaros is another prominent person who loves to science-up his reactionary ideas about architecture. The truth is that the modernists were acting out of an idealistic conviction that the machine age needed a machine architecture. Of course that wasn't a logical necessity: it was ideology, to some degree. But they were also responding as best they could to genuine changes in the circumstances in which they had to build (caused by modernization). It's possible for historians to discuss this period now without trying to start a fight or seeing the issues in black and white.

by theoh 7y ago

inflatableDodo 7y ago

>I probably can't convince you of anything You might be able to, but if you claim someone is making tedious old right wing arguments, when it according to the reviews he spends his time commenting on Corbusier's fascism and the Spectator lumps him in with Vonnegut, then I can't take your critique all that seriously. Do you think Vonnegut's architectural critiques are also tired right wing arguments?

cfmcdonald 7y ago
And Orwell, apparently he is now a right-winger too.
- theoh 7y ago
  The point Bayley is making is that there is a motley crew of people of all political persuasions who think modernization in the 20th C was a disaster. The mechanization of war was the big shock. Obviously there is everything from e.g. socialist environmentalists on the left to the libertarian rejection of organized society on the right. There's a huge spectrum.
  - inflatableDodo 7y ago
    The way it played out in architecture has been pretty bad. Corbusier in particular should have just stuck to chairs. He was much better at chairs than he was at buildings. As far as this kind of thing goes, I love stuff by Altair Alto and Shigeru Ban, whereas I'd happily bury George Marsh under his own concrete. Norman foster I am 50/50 on. Some of his stuff I like, but the tulip and the gherkin are basically just giant tumescent cocks sprouting out of the centre of London.
theoh 7y ago
I'm not aware of anything that Vonnegut (jr.) wrote about architecture specifically, but that list of "other people unhappy with modernity" is supposed to be a miscellaneous grab-bag anyway. Curl's book is a mud-slinging rant which accuses modernist architects of being psychotic, deranged, obsessed with hygiene, inclined to erethism (I had to look it up) etc. The claim that Corbusier was a fascist is the least of it. In this sense Curl's argument is a bit like the claims that Corbusier was autistic https://www.citylab.com/design/2018/01/the-perils-of-diagnosing-modernists/551096/ https://www.citylab.com/design/2018/01/the-perils-of-diagnos... which aren't really taken seriously. The right-wing aspect of what Curl is saying is his alignment with traditional 'polite' architecture (built by and for the wealthy) and his total dismissal of the social collectivist agenda of much modernist architecture. Modernism, at its best, had a social conscience and tried to serve the people rather than cravenly serving capital. The opposition Curl is subscribing to essentially distinguishes between individualistic, traditional architecture (with ornament and ostentatious materials) and a collectivistic modernist architecture (inspired by vernacular building and modern machinery). This is exactly the kind of Manichean distinction that you will find in idealistic modernist manifestos. The difference is that Curl takes the side of capital, while the modernists would have taken the side of labour. The reality of architectural practice is much more complex than that. Positing that opposition as the historical, intellectual reality behind 20th C architecture just isn't a good premise. Curl (like David Watkin in "Morality and Architecture") is attacking a straw man. He's fighting a propaganda war that ended years ago. There's a ding-dong battle here between Curl (with his uncritical embrace of traditionalism) and Barnabas Calder (who himself is not exactly a hard-line socialist): https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/the-duel-has-modern-architecture-ruined-britain https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/the-duel-has-mod... Curl says things about architecture "generating hostile responses in humans" and it seems clear to me from experience that we are dealing with someone who is reaching for pseudoscientific language because their argument is weak. Nikos Salingaros is another prominent person who loves to science-up his reactionary ideas about architecture. The truth is that the modernists were acting out of an idealistic conviction that the machine age needed a machine architecture. Of course that wasn't a logical necessity: it was ideology, to some degree. But they were also responding as best they could to genuine changes in the circumstances in which they had to build (caused by modernization). It's possible for historians to discuss this period now without trying to start a fight or seeing the issues in black and white.