Left vs. modern architecture!

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Peter Cook and Colin Fournier’s Kunsthaus in Austria. (e-architect)

Why You Hate Contemporary Architecture,” by Nathan J. Robinson and Brianna Rennix, is a long essay in the leftwing journal Current Affairs. The authors are its editor-in-chief and its senior editor, respectively. They omit the other typical synonym for ugly buildings (“modern architecture”) for reasons no doubt embedded in deep philosophy, and some of their economic and political assertions are on the dodgy side. But all hail Current Affairs for publishing this article, which places the case before an audience about which the phrase “preaching to the choir” certainly does not apply, and for running which they say they have been criticized.

In short, “Why You Hate” almost qualifies as a point-by-point summary of my own long list of themes in the discourse against modern architecture. From the above photo atop their article to virtually every example they use and almost every point they make, I have beaten them to it in many a blog post from the nine years of Architecture Here and There or column from my 25 years as the Providence Journal’s weekly architecture critic. It was really quite amazing to read through it. It is lushly illustrated, and the writing is elegant and delightfully unaffected.

For example, toward the end they offer pointers for overcoming some of the taboos that inhibit our thinking about architecture today. Points 4 and 5 are most pleasingly stated:

4. THE FEAR OF SYMMETRY The tendency toward discord has to end. Symmetry is nice. Multiple overlapping symmetries can be dazzling. A building doesn’t need to be lopsided. You can line the windows up. It’s okay. It will look better. Don’t worry. We won’t tell your professor.

5. THE FEAR OF LOOKING FOOLISH The people who most loudly disdain traditional architecture are those most concerned to convince others of their own intellectual seriousness. Designing a comforting, pleasing, and, yes, nostalgic space is simply not smart enough. People are afraid to say that they don’t “get” a building or find it ugly. It sounds childlike to say you wish it was a pastel color or you wish the two sides matched or you wish it didn’t look like it hated you. But it should be okay to say those things. Buildings shouldn’t hate you. They probably shouldn’t be weird-looking and they shouldn’t grate on the eyeballs. They should be comforting and attractive, because we have to live in them.

There is no reason that architecture should be a partisan issue. Both liberals and conservatives should appreciate traditional architecture, as they do preservation, and both liberals and conservatives have every reason to dislike modern architecture. The essay quotes the famous reply of Christopher Alexander, in a 1982 debate with Peter Eisenman, who admitted that he’d never visited the Chartres cathedral:

“I have gone to Chartres a number of times to eat in the restaurant across the street — had a 1934 red Mersault wine, which was exquisite — I never went into the cathedral. The cathedral was done en passant. Once you’ve seen one Gothic cathedral, you have seen them all.” Alexander replied: “I find that incomprehensible. I find it very irresponsible. I find it nutty. I feel sorry for the man. I also feel incredibly angry because he is fucking up the world.”

So true.

They come this close to making a serious intellectual mistake in the following passage, but I am assuming what they really mean is not to copy the past directly but to evolve traditional architecture of the past into something in the future that uses continuity to respect the traditions of the past. Here is that passage, in which they seem to suggest that designers of new traditional buildings are not already doing what the two editors want:

Memory and continuity are not mere nostalgia. Of course, tradition has gotten a bad reputation, simply because most “neo-traditional” architecture is so bad and Disneylike. Recreations and pastiches are not the solution, and the mindless conservative love for everything Greek, Roman, and Victorian is a mistake. The point is not to just mindlessly love old things; that gets you McMansions. Rather, instead of recreating the exact look of traditional architecture, one should be trying to recreate the feeling that these old buildings give their viewers. Don’t build a plastic version of Venice. Build a city with canals and footbridges and ornate pastel houses dangling above the water, and give that city its own special identity. McMansions are an attempt to superficially remind people of beautiful things rather than doing the real work it takes to make something beautiful. ​But tradition is crucial, old things were generally better things, and if we abandon them we doom ourselves to creating mindless new shape after mindless new shape.

To the extent that imperfect traditional buildings “remind” people of beauty instead of building real beauty, that’s still better than creating purpose-built ugliness. The perfect should not be the enemy of the good. Many classicists think bad trad is a worse enemy of the classical revival than modern architecture. They are way wrong.

Likewise, they err toward the end in assuming that skyscrapers are bad because they are tall. Now, I’m not sure my feelings on skyscrapers are fully evolved at this point, but I am quite sure that skyscrapers are bad less because they are tall than because, these days, they are modernist, or contemporary, to use the essay’s word of choice.

At the end, that thought leads to this one:

But more than just abolishing skyscrapers, we must create a world of everyday wonder, a world in which every last thing is a beautiful thing. If this sounds impossible, it isn’t; for thousands of years, nearly every building humans made was beautiful. It is simply a matter of recovering old habits. We should ask ourselves: why is it that we can’t build another Prague or Florence? Why can’t we build like the ancient mosques in Persia or the temples in India? Well, there’s no reason why we can’t. There’s nothing stopping us except the prison of our ideas and our horrible economic system. We must break out of the prison and destroy the economic system.

Although I have my problems with capitalism as it functions today, I would not go that far. Thankfully, the problem of architecture is considerably less dire than that.

Still, the excellence embodied in their article far outweighs what is suspect. I am not aware of any other such comprehensive and engaging assault against modern architecture in a publication of the left. Congratulations, then, to Brianna Rennix and Nathan Robinson. Please enjoy their inspirational essay.

Here is the final illustration:

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About David Brussat


12 Responses to Left vs. modern architecture!

  1. John says:

    In the area of what we we nowadays call classical music, composers like per example Liszt and Beethoven, being revolutionaries of music, pushed the limits of their times, they pushed the limits of that what had solidified to a degree too great, that what was at risque to become stagnant. The thing is though that they managed to do this without throwing away tradition, without disrespect. They still composed for the people, at least for anyone interested out of heart felt interest, not for elites (the composer Liszt even transcribed a great of orchestral music to arrangements which could be played on a piano, in case of small cities and town who had no money for an orchestra).

    This revolutionary renewal is what the frauds of our times (twentieth and twenty-first century) are trying to simulate, as it affords them grandeur and fame, but they fail in essence, it is mere pomp and pretence without substance, without ground (tradition).
    I do believe that at least in some far future, when their power is broken, they will go down in history as the bunglers they really are, and the congregation of believers will dissolve when the glamorous air of pomp and pretence has dissolved.
    This issue of destructive revolutionary ‘renewal’ without ground in tradition, and without humanistic striving (humanistic progression) is the basic theme.


    • Your comparison of the revolutionary trends in classical music with modern architecture’s botched attempt to achieve similar results is right on target, John. The mods are certainly on drugs of some sort if they think this will cement their fame. They will go down in history as idiots who worked to destroy one of the few great pleasures of living that does not require independent wealth. Anybody can look at beautiful architecture, but the mods have withheld it for almost a century. The rich can afford to buy it or have it designed for them. The poor are out of luck. Way to go with the social agenda, boys!

      And thanks so much for the very kind words below!


  2. John says:

    These neo-modernists, you don’t suppose they are on some kind of drugs? It sure looks like it.
    Keep up the good work with the blog, if the effort does not bear fruit easily, it is always good to know that there are still sane and non compliant people around.


  3. Pingback: Hit every nail on the head | Architecture Here and There

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  5. Not an architect – but was looking at the images with my 12 year old. He had no values comment for either image. But liked the first one better.


  6. abars01 says:

    Gotta say, I don’t care for the manner in which advocacy for traditional architecture seems to have been cornered by the alt-right. The claim that modern architecture was invented by da Joos to destroy Western Civilization does nothing to counter the notion that traditional architecture is the preserve of Nazis. (Here’s looking at you, Architecture MMXII).

    Liked by 1 person

    • Advocacy for traditional architecture has not been cornered by the alt-right, or any particular end of the political spectrum. I’m sure some people do make that claim about modern architecture’s origins, but I’ve never come across it myself, so it cannot be that pervasive – at either end of the spectrum. Hitler “chose” classical architecture because in the mid ’30s it was the dominant style by far and had been for many hundreds of years. Modernism was still on the outside looking in. Those who make this assertion are positing a false choice for dishonest reasons.


    • Doc says:

      It wasn’t da j00s.. but it was communists..

      From ‘The Naked Communist’ 1959

      It is hilarious to me that Marxists think they are so intelligent yet they are not intelligent enough to realize Marxism does not work, will not work, and has destroyed every civilization that has attempted it.


  7. Nikos Salingaros says:


    I read the article by Brianna Rennix and Nathan J. Robinson, and they should be congratulated for doing an excellent job. Even though I personally try to keep politics out of my discourse, these authors carefully split the “good” Left from the “bad” Left in a way that most of my friends would agree with. It’s the “bad” Stalinist Left that gave us concrete block housing, and turned people into numbers. The good “humanist” Left promotes Peer-to-Peer Urbanism, with which I’m directly involved.

    They make a perceptive statement about why architectural progress has been stalled for decades: “There’s nothing stopping us except the prison of our ideas”. Ah, yes. Many others including myself have tackled this problem head-on, without much success. This ideological prison is one from which it is impossible to break out! For further thoughts, see my (rather unpopular) essays “On Cognitive Dissonance and The Architectural Canon”, and “Cognitive Dissonance and Non-adaptive Architecture”.

    Best wishes,

    Liked by 2 people

    • Agree 100 percent, Nikos. I try to keep politics out of my discourse, too, and recognize the two lefts. As for breaking out of prison, I think capitalism needs to be readjusted away from its current cronyism and back toward the market. Capitalism per se is not the problem. The biggest problem is ideological. Tough to break out of that but not impossible, in fact rather easy once the will is summoned up – no small task, that, of course.

      Liked by 2 people

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