Based: The Parthenon. Photo by Valery SharifulinTASS via Getty Images)
Architecture is an inherently political act, which is precisely why it is so contested. It is the grandest and most permanent marker of a civilisation, and the clearest and most dramatic expression of a society’s relationship to power. Consider, on the one hand, Trump’s executive order, one of the last of his administration, mandating neoclassicism as the house architectural style of the US federal government; on the other hand, see the New Statesman’s neurotic fear of classical architecture as a form of fascism wrought in stone. Architecture is not just the expression of our positive political values, but also of the pathologies and debilitating culture wars enfeebling our civilisation.
A recent episode at the birthplace of classical architecture, and of a self-consciously Western aesthetic tradition, the Parthenon, is instructive of where we find ourselves today, in politics as well as architecture. Taking advantage of the COVID epidemic, the Greek government recently installed a ramp for wheelchair access on the top of the sacred hill of the Acropolis, leading directly to the Parthenon.
Built in the archetypal material of modernity, concrete, it is a work of breathtaking ugliness. Being impermeable, unlike the stones and earth it replaced, as soon as the winter rains hit Athens the runoff flooded the sacred site for the first time ever recorded: the ideologically-asserted practicality of industrial modernity has once again shown itself impractical in reality, unsuited to both place and climate.
Yet leading up to the Acropolis, winding its way around the ancient hills of Athens, was an alternative vision of modernity, neglected, under-appreciated but far better suited to our current political moment. In the middle of the 20th century, the Greek architect Dimitris Pikionis was tasked with replacing the ugly asphalt road that led to the Acropolis. Hiring provincial stonemasons, accustomed to working in a vernacular style, and using as his materials marble blocks from 19th century buildings recently levelled to create the concrete cityscape of modern Athens, Pikionis fused his aesthetic interest in Modernist art with his appreciation of the old, the worn and characterful.
Irregular blocks of worn marble are held together with mortar ground down from the limestone hills of Attica; playful patterns radiate outwards, leading the eye here and there in a network of paths that look ancient, but are younger than the city’s modernist Hilton hotel, the first architectural expression of Greece’s headlong leap into postwar modernity.
Directly inspired by Pikionis’s paths, and his construction of timeless beauty from the literal wreckage of the near-past, the later architects Liane Lefaivre and Alexander Tzonis coined the phrase Critical Regionalism to describe what they saw as the route out for architecture from the impasse created by the modernist International Style. This was not purely an aesthetic choice, but an intentionally political one, characterising many of the arguments made by critics of capitalist liberalism. As Tzonis writes, “Globalisation has been ‘creative’ in the short term but in the long term it proved to be most ‘destructive’.”
He argues that in past three decades, and “fuelled by the mindless growth of cities, senseless gigantic construction of buildings, and disregard of ‘local knowledge’ of the natural, social, and cultural uniqueness and diversity of the regions — what we called ‘peaks and valleys’ — has been reduced to flatland by imposing ‘global’ design stereotypes”. This has spread today with “increasingly negative consequences in the ecology, economy, social ties, and quality of life, not only regional but global”. This is a clearly post-liberal argument applied to architecture, and the political implications of Critical Regionalism are surely worth teasing out.
In 1984, the British architectural critic Kenneth Frampton, citing Lefaivre and Tzonis, wrote the influential essay Towards a Critical Regionalism as a manifesto against the failures of the International Style, and an attempt to define its successor ideology. Frampton’s essay opens with a long quote from the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur, in which Ricoeur remarks that the “single world civilisation,” that of liberal capitalism, “exerts a sort of attrition or wearing away at the expense of the cultural resources which have made the great civilisations of the past.” The result is a universal “mediocre civilisation,”which presents developing nations with a great and essential problem: “is it necessary to jettison the old cultural past which has been the raison d’être of a nation?” Here is the paradox, for Ricoeur and for Frampton: “how to become modern and to return to sources; how to revive an old dormant civilisation and take part in universal civilisation?”
It is perhaps worth remarking here that Ricoeur, struggling to reconcile the opposing forces of tradition and universalism, was PhD supervisor to a young philosophy student called Emmanuel Macron, now the sole civilisational thinker among Western political leaders. Fusing Marxism and critical theory, Frampton develops Ricoeur’s thoughts to observe that the technological optimism of high Modernism crashed against the rocks of the Second World War, and the different, darker fusion of tradition and modernity that drove it.
Even as it conquered the world — and we can note here, as Frampton does not, that the International Style is more or less the architectural style of the American empire, spewing out identical embassies and Hiltons in every capital city on earth as America’s global reach expanded — high Modernism was already intellectually and aesthetically dead, its fusion of the political and the aesthetic already lifeless, even as it conquered the earth.
Yet Critical Regionalism, as outlined by Frampton, is not a retreat into the vernacular, which he expressly warns against as lazily reactionary, and carrying within it the incipient threat of totalitarianism. Frampton cautions against the “demagogic tendencies of Populism” in architecture, “the simple-minded attempts to revive the hypothetical forms of a lost vernacular.” Instead, he argues, the task for architects is to achieve a “self-conscious synthesis between universal civilisation and world culture.”
In practice, this means marrying the best of the vernacular tradition — a sensitive appreciation of place, climate and culture, the tactility and warmth of natural materials, a rootedness in the specifics of the local and a suspicion of the bland totalitarianism of modernism — with an awareness that we cannot undo the Modernist moment; we are moderns, and any attempt to undo this basic fact will result only in a feeble and debilitating pastiche.
At its worst, architectural post-modernism suffers from the baneful consequences of slapping a few vulgar tropes of the old world aesthetic onto a modernist worldview. The results are sometimes playful, always archly knowing, generally hideous. Yet the other Western attempt to go beyond high Modernism, the offerings of the celebrity architects, suffers from its own failings. Think of the hideous architecture of Dubai and other petrostates, or the ugly apartment buildings now disfiguring London, the expression in reinforced concrete, glass and plastic cladding of the values of the New Labour and Cameron years: the vainglorious self-indulgence of the celebrity architects like Libeskind or Foster. They are a curdled form of modernism that already looks like a relic of a past era, an expression of lust for money and status that will stand, for our descendants, as the architectural relics of financialised late capitalism.
The political implications are obvious. In architecture as well as politics, the self-conscious challengers to both Western political liberalism and the International Style tend towards a certain pseudo-Völkisch totalitarianism, impressive at its best if cold and oppressive. Think of Putin’s grand military cathedral, or of the anti-Western architectural experiments of Erdogan’s Turkey or Xi’s China. Even if we reject the dead ideology of the International Style and its attendant political philosophy of liberalism, these challengers are equally alien and hostile: Mongolia’s colossal Genghis Khan monument may be impressive, but we would not want it looming over Russell Square.
As an architectural trend, Critical Regionalism is, with a few exceptions, most alive in South India and South America, each fusing tradition and modernity in their own, culturally-specific ways. Among the best and most instructive of exceptions is the incredible work of the architect Peter Barber, busy building beautiful and practical social housing in London, traditional brick London terraces that are simultaneously playful, innovative and open to the stylings of the wider world.
There is surely a political lesson for us here, being displayed for us in brick and stone, mud and even concrete. The danger for political post-liberalism is that, like architectural post-modernism, it cannot ever truly escape modernity and the worldview it created. In seeking to escape modernity, the temptations of totalitarianism always lie, just over the horizon, as a warning. The challenge, in politics as well as architecture, is to avoid the twin pitfalls of empty, traditionalist kitsch and overreactive anti-liberalism.
Critical Regionalism is inherently post-liberal in its vision of the good; it is open to the world, not narrow and exclusive, yet rooted in the specifics of place and culture. Instead of defining itself by what it is not, and locking itself into a futile and mutually destructive cycle of opposition to liberalism, perhaps post-liberalism can be profitably reimagined as a form of political Critical Regionalism: alive and responsive to the values of community, tradition and localism, yet at the same time willing to take what is good from liberalism, what is genuinely superior to what came before it, and to reshape it to its own ends.
Citing the Polish philosopher Zygmant Bauman, Frampton observes that “tradition and innovation are mutually interdependent and while one cannot have a living tradition without innovation, one also cannot have significant innovation without tradition,” a political message buried within an aesthetic claim. Instead of seeking to revive Western civilisation from the spectacular and contested monuments of the distant past, perhaps we can take inspiration from the humble, homely paths that link then and now, smoothed and hallowed by use and time, and the undemonstrative love and appreciation of place and people that crafted them.
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Subscribe‘…see the New Statesman’s neurotic fear of classical architecture as a form of fascism wrought in stone.’
Where does the New Statesman reside? I can’t be sure, but I suspect it might be a Georgian terrace or some such in London. If they were true to their beliefs they would all write their endless nonsense from within the leaking cardboard of a 1960s secondary modern in Harlow or Huddersfield.
Actually, Standard House is an indifferent 20th century building, inserted in a largely Victorian/Georgian street.
But I take your point.
… they doubtless approved of the China government’s insolent demolition of the listed building directly – under so called diplomatic immunity – across the street from the RIBA and the grotesque Embassy rebuilding. God knows what the China Communist Party has in mind for the Royal Mint [sic] …
Time to re-read ” From Bauhaus to Our House”.
It’s on my bookshelf very dog eared and well read. RIP Tom Wolfe.
“In seeking to escape modernity, the temptations of totalitarianism always lie, just over the horizon, as a warning.”
“Critical Regionalism, as outlined by Frampton, is not a retreat into the vernacular which he expressly warns against as lazily reactionary and carrying within it the incipient threat of totalitarianism.”
Modernity, in art historical terms was late 19th century up to the post war period. Precisely the era of totalitarianism. Why would the desire to escape the inhuman, unliveable architecture of that dreadful aesthetic make one liable to be tempted by totalitarianism?
How can the desire to make things on a human scale, in a traditional way, using local materials have any inherent or intrinsic link to the desire to impose, from the top down and to act without humanity? This is plainly nonsense.
This whole article reads as if you have completely absorbed someone else’s ideas, and that these ideas you regurgitate are stunted because the people who thought of them originally are fearful of offending or more likely being laughed at, by their unimaginative, left wing colleagues, who trot out lazy references to right wing, nationalist dictators, precisely to avoid the fact that it was unyielding, expensive ‘pure white’ marble and machines for living and concrete brutalist modernism that was most beloved of the murderous totalitarians.
I agree with you, those two paragraphs made no sense to me, unless of course I adopt a Guardian mindset which views any kind of traditional value – beauty, the family, loyalty and patriotism, as potentially fascist, which is in sane.
“Traditional values”are not exclusive to non Guardian readers,neither are they potentially fascist .A foolish statement without any evidence.
Are you sure you have read my comment and understood it ?
For a start you have made the assumption I was talking about Guardian readers – wrong, some of them probably, but essentially I was talking about the strong tendency of the journalism found in the G newspaper itself to view traditional values (conservative) with suspicion, and cynically impute fascism where there is’nt any.
Never forget that The Guardian was founded on the ‘traditional values’ of Manchester cotton moguls whose profits were derived from slavery in the US and the misery of the working classes in the UK.
Unfortunately modern Manchester is now a dispiriting and ugly example of contemporary architecture at it’s worst.It has developed into a sprawling legoland of near identical blocks with zero aesthetic merit.
A new northern regionalism would an interesting idea.
I’m glad you mentioned the UK working classes however, as they were white you may well find yourself the object of some abuse from BLM who don’t like that sort of thing.
Why are traditional values conservative ? That is a new one on me.
Seriously ?
Well, social conservatives tend towards conserving what has worked well in the past (see OED), including institutions, customs and ways of life, which in turn is the definition of ‘tradition’.
Perhaps you are muddling the modern Conservative party with “conservative” with a small c, not the same thing anymore.
Seriously ? I am not a Guardian reader, but how do you exclude beauty, the family, loyalty and patriotism from its readers. Why are these traditional values & not modern
values. What tradition ? If you read any paper from the 1850’s, 1890’s – any period you like & you will see exactly the same sentiments about traditional values being forgotten. Yet they never are. Our traditional value is free speech & tolerance which are the bedrock of our democracy.
I suggest you read my reply to Jerry Whitcroft above, you’re going over the same ground.
Because totalitarianism usually starts with “you need to give me total power so I can destroy those worthless subhumans who are threatening our wholesome, heartwarming traditions!” The shoving people into concrete blocks comes later, when they no longer have to pretend to care about those cutesy values.
Oh, and because most of those oh-so-warm-and-fuzzy good old ways predate totalitarianism only in the sense that you didn’t need a name for a system wherein most people were treated like cattle with no rights or say back when that was the only system in existence. When people gush about pre-twentieth-century architecture, it’s a little too easy to imagine them also gushing about pre-twentieth-century political systems. Especially since a lot of them do.
Does that answer your question?
Yeah Stalin,Mao etc really wanted to preserve their traditions and were not mass murderers hell bent on bringing their revolution by hook or by crook. There are n number of examples of totalitarians who wanted to uproot traditions by violent force for their deluded utopian fantasies.
I have no idea what this has got to do with architecture, but do you have a single scintilla of evidence for that last statement? I haven’t heard of anyone wanting to reintroduce feudalism, or perhaps Classical slavery..
No government in pre-modern times had a fraction of the power or reach of modern States, so the term ‘totalitarianism’ is completely inappropriate.
Also, you display an amazingly simple-minded view of pre-modern (Western?) civilisation where morals and ethics, and the roles of different social groups were debated and contested.
There was of course huge poverty by today’s standards which was mainly a product of low productivity agricultural societies, where the vast majority were inevitably poor.
‘Worthless subhumans’ – if that iterm is being attributed to Christian societies the term is absolute nonsense, in fact the idea of every individual’s worth in the eyes of God derives directly from Christian tradition (and no, I am not a believer…..).
Just what I was thinking. This article is a learnt dance routine from the Postmodern School of Dance and Critical Theory. Of course architecture is political. The stones of great buildings are stained with the blood of civilizational conflict; beneath the flower-strewn meadows of every pastoral idyll are the broken bones of the defeated. (I once saw a human femur poking out of a pile of builders rubble in Cheapside!) No, architects are never ‘playing’ (postmodernism’s great deception) with style and vernacular. And building a concrete ramp for paraplegics to ‘access’ the Acropolis is an aggressive political intervention. I see little difference between the London Shard building – implying as it does that we are all lost fragments of once intact traditions and customs – with its menacing, dark glasses and overcoat-wearing guards, and Peter Barber’s deserted, air tight, 3-D printed social housing pods. Neither are ‘playing’. This article is the same old carefully framed globalist, neo-Marxist narrative dressed up as impartial academic-ish discussion.
Ask the public. Look at what they spend their own money on when they can and it is not the concrete blocks of flats built by fashionable architects for the politicians of the 1960s. The most valuable homes in most towns and cities in Britain are from earlier centuries, niot just earlier decades.
… exactly – like the China Communist Party’s London embassy, pre-demolition and their (sic) Royal Mint pre”
I am proud and grateful to say that I saw the London skyline before that stupid ferris wheel was installed.
Love the Eye, both to look at and to go on.
Which shows we all differ in our appreciations.
Don’t necessarily agree, but it made me larf.
… the permitted location of the un-ignorable Ferris Wheel so close to such a large and important cluster of historically important buildings and streetscape is almost marxist in it’s attempt to degrade the core into just another amusement, reduce the importance of it’s meaning in history, take a further step in the undermining of revered and nationally important institutions. Criticism by various international bodies ignored.
Oops. A very inward-looking and frankly arty-farty exposition of a rather sterile viewpoint. Okay, the contrast between classical Athens and Internationalist architecture will make one a little disappointed, but does the author not realise that for 500+ years, ‘progress’ or ‘civilisation’ just meant an identical Roman fort, forum and bath-house in every town and city from Carlisle to Syria, from the German forests to the deserts of Morocco. All identical. All an expression of political power and economic oppression, in a cruel empire built on slavery and military power.
And now somehow this becomes a ‘golden age’? He should try living in the past!
And concrete didn’t replace stone and earth. It replaced mainly timber and bricks. It’s one of the main reasons our roads don’t decay into swamps every winter and dust-bowls every summer.
Good grief!
Pot holes, very bad in some areas.
Surely the most cogent presentation of architecture as manifestation of political & philosophical outlook, is Ayn Rand’s “The Fountainhead”…!? Surprised to find no mention here of Howard Roarke and his views on the subject, for instance as follows:
“Rules?” said Roark. “Here are my rules: what can be done with one substance must never be done with another. No two materials are alike. No two sites on earth are alike. No two buildings have the same purpose. The purpose, the site, the material determine the shape. Nothing can be reasonable or beautiful unless it’s made by one central idea, and the idea sets every detail. A building is alive, like a man. Its integrity is to follow its own truth, its one single theme, and to serve its own single purpose. A man doesn’t borrow pieces of his body. A building doesn’t borrow hunks of its soul. Its maker gives it the soul and every wall, window and stairway to express it.”
The destruction of architecture is also of course political, and in the novel Roarke’s blowing-up of a social housing project that, having been initiated with best intent to serve the poor, has through mismanagement ballooned in cost and is destined to be let at extortionate prices defeating the point of its construction… is a stark manifestation of his politics as an architect.
And it is a great read.
I am so pleased that you posted this excerpt. Does anyone think that they can improve upon “Falling Water” ?
Flat roof in western Pennsylvania leaks, cantilevers structurally inadequate, doors, hallways, rooms too small, ceilings too low, surfaces cold, presentation: sophomoric, right angle shapes stacked in planar arrangement, … an unlivable, structural, aesthetic failure.
I rather liked the interior-but the flat roof…you’re right about that.
Oliver: I had the great fortune to work with the architect, Sir Philip Dowson. He had a memorable expression that ‘every building must have a thesis, and that every part of that building must be part of that thesis’. And he always started by exploring the unique synthesis of location, purpose and material.
There is the architecture of necessity, for people, that works, eg, Victorian terraces, 1930s suburbia, even the old Victorian courts; at the time of building they were needed, they may not have been ideal but people had solid walls, warmth, community and fresh air (apart from the pollution).
Then there is the architecture symbolising money and power, the Roman’s, William the Conquerer’s castles and cathedrals, the new London skyline from the 1990s onwards etc.
Two completely different forms of building, I just don’t see how you can discuss these as if they are the same thing politically. Different purpose, different politics. In fact applying political ideology to the necessary buildings for people to live in is what has caused so many problems since the Second World War, eg, brutalism, I refuse to give it a capital letter.
Mind you the model villages and garden cities in the UK have been reasonably successful, if you don’t mind losing more and more of our countryside.
Perhaps Peter Barber’s work is good, I don’t know, it depends what the people living in it think, never mind what anyone else thinks, sorry, but if it’s beautiful and playful but awful to live in it’s worthless.
Wonderfully said. Two completely different forms of building, for different purpose, different politics.
Architecture must always have in mind the people living in it. If you are not happy living inside a buliding it only means that it´s architecture is wrong.
Thanks.
It isn’t the blandness of modern architecture. It is ugly and not on a human scale. Not many years ago St Paul’s dominated the City of London skyline, now it is ugly and joyless. Compare this to the latest frescos revealed at Pompeii.
It has been a delight to see the architectural profession rushing to defend ugliness because Trump is for “beauty”.
Seriously though, style is value free but architecture isn’t. Necessarily architecture is about money and power, that couldn’t be otherwise since it takes both to put up buildings. It worries me therefore when I hear figures like Patrik Schumacher extolling the virtues and vigour of China and wanting to build in a way that expresses the ‘curated’ freedoms enjoyed in that country. Schumacher’s parametricism is, he claims, the new international style. Reading it in Ruskin’s Book of Art we have to ask what it tells us about our own times. It is, I’d suggest, less regimented that the 20th century but still boundaried and dictated by the wants and values of international capital. The subtile influence of architecture on our lives deserves more public scrutiny than it is getting.
‘It has been a delight to see the architectural profession rushing to defend ugliness because Trump is for “beauty”.’
I bow to no one in my support for Trump’s policy positions, but my understanding is that the buildings he has erected are rather vulgar and not characterised by ‘beauty’ in the sense that we would understand it.
At its most primal/basic level, architecture is about aesthetics. Modern architecture generally ignores this for many different reasons, but the end result is the same. The buildings look like crap.
It seems I might be in the minority in this regard, but I liked your article, it seems more human than most humans seem capable of.
I was lucky enough to spend time in one ex-communist country (Russia) and one currently communist (the PRC).
In both cases public architecture was focussed on grandeur and seeming permanence, to remind the public that the Party would reign forever. Stories of government buildings surviving earthquakes almost unscathed while nearby schools and hospitals collapsed causing multiple injuries or deaths serve to underline the point. In the communist mindset the individual is insignificant: only the Party matters.
To take a couple of examples the huge ‘Great Hall of the People’ in Beijing is a perfect oxymoron, while the ex-KGB headquarters in Lubyanka, Moscow, is architectural brutalism personified. Presumably the New Statesman would see things differently.
Not forgetting that the New Statesman did it’s illegitimate best to destroy the reputation of Sir Roger Scruton. It’s founders – the Webb’s – were devotees and apologists for the Soviet Union, even after Malcolm Muggeridge exposed the reality during his time there in the early 30’s. The chapter ‘Who Whom’ in his autobiography ‘Chronicles of Wasted Time is a very moving account of his awakening to the horrors of Communism.
Extraordinary article, the gist of which is that architecture isn’t an art form. Why would that be ? Why should an artist copy the past. Shouldn’t art challenge ? How often do we come to admire & cherish art which, when first made, received the same reaction as this article. I deeply admire classical architecture but find little in architecture as boring as new buildings in a classical style.
“Built in the archetypal material of modernity, concrete “¦”
I understand that the Romans made extensive use of concrete albeit normally faced with stone or brick whereas the post war Brutalist styles use exposed concrete. Although Roman concrete used different components, claiming concrete as a modern substance doesn’t seem right. Also not many societies still commission raw concrete Brutalist buildings.
Macron was not a PhD student of Ricoeur. He made some proof reading for one of Ricoeur’s books. Later he claimed to write a PhD thesis under the supervision of Etienne Balibar but there’s no trace to find. The only thing Macron really made in philosophy is a DEA (something like a M.A.) at Nanterre university. Aris Roussinos, please stop glorifying Macron.
How interesting to hear that the modern Greeks have desecrated the Acropolis!
Weren’t these the very same people who were recently clamouring for the return of the so-called Elgin Marbles?
… # XXXVII is most certainly not going back …
( the Elgin Marbles – also referred to as the so-called Parthenon Marbles ) .
The desecration was yet another example of the power flexing of the aggressive disabled, demanding-no matter the cost, changes to anything and everything, in order to be accommodated.
…and, in connexion with Trump and his architectural thrust, we should not forget the scandalous affair of the Bonwit Teller panels – and the manner in which he resolved the affair. My grandfather was incandescent over this.
TRUMP! Incredible…I am always astounded at the ability of TDS sufferers to find ways to parachute him into discussions.
Pragmatism v legacy
Region, tradition, climate, local materials, function are secondary factors at best. Art attempts above all to express the spirit of the age. The age from Descartes and Newton to Einstein, an age of logic and science, achieved its masterpiece in Eiffel’s spire. A profoundly malign spirituality. With Hiroshima, it became another god that failed. And we are now in the age of Heidegger, desperately in need of meaning while overwhelmed with “noise”.
Trump weighed in on this issue this past Fall, issuing an edit of sorts that going forward, government buildings should be in a more traditional vein rather than the Soviet-style blocks
“Soviet-style” is a misnomer. I think the US was first, with its “tenement blocks”, with what eventuated in bureaucratic housing ; and, Trump’s father mined a motherload. And if BBC contemporary urban mystery series are at all representative, London ranks right up there with the most squalid.
Sorry to be herdish, but this article is tosh. Roussinos seems to be competing in the bore stakes with Janan Ganesh. For what it’s worth, I like buildings like the British Library on Euston Road, and most things Danish.
There seems to be a common pose of influential people involving almost a knee-jerk sneering disregard for popular taste and tradition, with a purposely opaque and exclusionary language used to justify the imposition of particular styles on the public. We can see this also in much conceptual art, where it causes little damage, which is very different from the impact of buildings on the places we live and work in. Look at the way the word ‘pastiche’ is endlessly used pejoratively, though almost all architecture until modern times was referential to the past. Some architects are guilty of this attitude, though it must also be said that many bad buildings are thrown up for essentially short term financial reasons.
There is no direct correlation between architectural style and political systems in modern times. Classical style architecture has been used by Fascist, Communist, Liberal Democratic societies all. Buildings built for big and important government or commercial institutions of course also tend to inevitably be big, and it can be difficult to avoid bombast and their domination of city areas.
Interesting article, maybe another area where higher education needs to be changed for architects and sponsors.
Wouldn’t a squad of liveried bearers of sedan chairs have been a cheaper and jollier way of helping people get to the top of the Acropolis?
If we look at construction up to about the 1830s in the UK , there was an influence of Greece with it tradition of balance, harmony and proportion. Marxists tend to hate classical traditions as they do not believe in balance or proportion, hence the mass murder.
Greece considered the human body as the basis of beauty. If we examine blocks of flats once they exceed 5 to 6 stories they tower over people who are are reduced to ants and lose their individuality.
There is autocracy or individualism. Everything for the state, everything within the state and nothing against the state can apply to any dictatorship be it communist, religious, fascist, nazi or corporatist.
The Geogian terraces of islington provide high density housing which is elegant, graceful and sought after. After the 1830s is much of the grace, elegance and refinement of western Christian Civilisation is lost and this can be seen in the rise of marxism, nazism, fascism and corporatism( shopping malls ).
Modern architects who follow the brutal tradition ignore the fact that that what looks good works well of which the Spitfire Mark IX using the Merlin 61 Engine is perhaps the most elegant, refined and gracefull machine ever produced. The Merlin engines were very smooth running yet could take the most incredible punishment and still work and the Spitfire were so so perfectly designed that pilots were able to glide it in to land when the engine finally failed. If one examines the great engineers of the 18th and 19 th centuries, Brindley, Smeaton, Rennie, Telford and The Brunels and Gilbert White -Severn Bridge what looks good works well applies to construction as well.
The problem is that western education can mass produce quantity but not quality and certainly not genius. Why classical Greece, The Renaissance and the British enlightenment post 1660 arose is a mystery and so is the creation of a genius but the production of mediocrity is not. To produce that which is refined,elegant and graceful yet rugged, robust and resilient is the mark of the genius of which architects producing brutal buildings which soon decayed, obviously, are not.
The problem with modern architecture is too much education. In an attempt to validate their control over our built environments they’ve come up with ridiculous theories and strange anti-asthetics, just to fill up years of expensive education. The result is that nothing makes sense, everything looks the same and it’s all strangely unfriendly.
Of course, the same basic story is true of many of our “professions”. Journalism, for instance, is rapidly heading down the same sinkhole.