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Architecture schmarchitecture Alice Bachini takes on the post-war modern(ist) architecture and a BBC Open University educational programme in one sweeping and scathing masterblog:
“But alas, somehow, the Great Vision of Modernism went wrong. Mr Doodah is now the only person living in the enormous freezing-cold ‘penthouses’ perched atop the huge ‘mega-centre’ designed for shops and offices that inexplicably refused to co-operate with his vision and move to DumDoodle in the darkest Hebridean Countryside. “It was designed as a Centre For Living,” he explained, “a complete, all-in-one place which you would never have to leave again! And look,” he says. “What do we have now instead of my miraculous ideas? Shopping malls. Who wants shopping malls, might I ask you? Honestly!” and he shook his head in disbelief and delusion.”
[…]
“And there we have it: modernism. Yet another tragic victim of the international capitalist conspiracy.
The End. A BBC Educational Production for the Open University.”
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But that begs the question — Modernism did not go wrong.
Perhaps no, but the BBC way of reporting on it did!
dPhilc: So you think that Council Block housing (that’s ‘Project’ Housing to our Yank cousins) actually works?
Council Estates… civil society-free crime zones, ugly, grimy & often economically empty by design due to ‘zoning’ regulations that have supplanted the market judgement of free capital owners. They are a place for people to sleep in between trips to the DHSS to collect their dole cheque whilst listlessly going though the motions of looking for employment.
Shopping malls… have private (therefore effective) security, provide employment to the lower ends of the socioeconomic scale and are packed full of shoppers generating a virtuous spiral of economic activity. Okay, so they are also sometimes ugly and tend to play muzak but hey, that’d life.
dPhilc:
The idea of architectural modernity was invented-stroke-discovered in the USA, and what was invented-discovered was of enduring value. In this sense you are totally right. But the modern “movement” in architecture, the ideas of Le Corbusier, the (architectural ideas of the) Bauhaus, etc. was, with only a few qualifications, pretty damned disastrous. The modern “movement”, which was what this BBC show focussed on, can be summarised as the expression in architectural terms of twentieth century totalitarianism, and it was as wrong-headed as totalitarianism of the regular kind, and for very similar philosophical reasons.
The tragedy would be, as I guess you agree, if conservative complaints about the modern movement in architecture kiboshed the whole idea of architectural modernity as such. (See: Prince of Wales.) But many such conservative complaints are right.
An analogous error in economics would be to observe the shambles of a factory in the USSR and to conclude from this that the whole idea of factories was mistaken.
Which kind of architectural modernity are you defending? The thing itself, which is, as you suggest, still going strong. Or the largely European and largely mistaken movement of architectural “theory” that rose and fell between about 1920 and 1970. If the former, I totally agree. If the latter, then get ready for a big fight!