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According to legend, St George, a Roman knight, freed a Libyan town from the attentions of a sea-dragon by killing it. Any public figure who has since dared face-down fierce vested interests or kill off harmful prevailing orthodoxies has similarly been branded a ‘dragon slayer’. This week, in honour of England’s patron saint, we’ve asked various of our contributors to nominate the contemporary tyranny they would put to the sword.
Should modernist architects be involved in the rebuilding of Notre Dame? Yes, absolutely they should… they’d make fantastic gargoyles. After all, no one does ugly better.
If you walk through a city – almost any city – and fix your eyes on the nastiest building in your field of vision, it’s almost certainly in the modernist style. The most beautiful building, on the other hand, probably isn’t – more likely it’s some gutsy survivor from an early age.
A word of warning, though: if you wish to maintain your cultural respectability, it is absolutely essential that you don’t say any of this out loud. If you must make a point about the deficiencies of the contemporary urban environment, then make sure that you blame the planners or motorists or just about anyone but the architects. After all, you wouldn’t want to end up like Sir Roger Scruton, would you?
The code of silence of the haute bourgeoisie has served the professions well, and the architects most of all. It’s why our politicians are so reluctant to talk about beauty – and why, when they occasionally do, they quickly lose their nerve. What the worship of ugliness can’t do, however, is make beautiful buildings disappear or stop the rest of us from gathering in their awesome presence. When our untutored eyes behold the greatness of Notre Dame and then flick to, say, the Pompidou Centre, the combined might of the cultural establishment cannot stop us from drawing the obvious conclusion.
Any other profession would be embarrassed to be overshadowed by the accomplishments of their forebears. Imagine if medical treatments had been more effective a hundred years ago? Today’s doctors would be mortified. Or what if the computers and mobile phones of the previous decade were considered to be faster and more fashionable than today’s gadgets? The alpha-geeks would blow a fuse.
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