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M A K ING DYSTOPI A
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
The Victorian Celebration of Death (Harlech: Heritage Ebooks 2015)
The Oxford Dictionary of Architecture (with Susan Wilson) (Oxford: Oxford
University Press 2015, 2016)
Funerary Monuments & Memorials in the Church of Ireland (Anglican) Cathedral of St
Patrick, Armagh (Whitstable: Historical Publications Ltd. 2013)
Georgian Architecture in the British Isles 1714–1830 (Swindon: English Heritage 2011)
Freemasonry & the Enlightenment: Architecture, Symbols, & Influences (London:
Historical Publications Ltd. 2011)
Spas,Wells, & Pleasure-Gardens of London (London: Historical Publications Ltd.
2010)
Victorian Architecture: Diversity & Invention (Reading: Spire Books Ltd. 2007)
The Egyptian Revival: Ancient Egypt as the Inspiration for Design Motifs in the West
(London & New York: Taylor & Francis Group 2005)
Classical Architecture: An Introduction to its Vocabulary and Essentials, with a Select
Glossary of Terms (London & New York: W.W. Norton 2003)
Piety Proclaimed: An Introduction to Places of Worship in Victorian England (London:
Historical Publications Ltd. 2002)
Kensal Green Cemetery:The Origins & Development of the General Cemetery of All
Souls, Kensal Green, London, 1824–2001 (edited, with various contributions from
other scholars) (Chichester: Phillimore & Co. Ltd. 2001)
The Honourable The Irish Society 1608–2000 and the Plantation of Ulster.The City of
London and the Colonisation of County Londonderry in the Province of Ulster in Ireland.
A History & Critique (Chichester: Phillimore & Co. Ltd. 2000)
Encyclopaedia of Architectural Terms (London: Donhead Publishing 1992)
The Londonderry Plantation 1609–1914:The History, Architecture, and Planning of the
Estates of the City of London and its Livery Companies in Ulster (Chichester:
Phillimore & Co. Ltd. 1986)
The Life and Work of Henry Roberts (1803–76), Architect:The Evangelical Conscience and
the Campaign for Model Housing and Healthy Nations (Chichester: Phillimore & Co.
Ltd. 1983)
A Celebration of Death. An Introduction to some of the buildings, monuments, and settings
of funerary architecture in the Western European tradition (London: Constable & Co.
Ltd. 1980)
The Erosion of Oxford (Oxford: Oxford Illustrated Press Ltd. 1977)
City of London Pubs: A Practical and Historical Guide (with Timothy M. Richards)
(Newton Abbot: David & Charles [Holdings] Ltd. 1973)
M A K ING
DYSTOPI A
T h e St r a nge R i se
a n d Su rv i va l of
A rc h i t e c t u r a l Ba r ba r i sm
JA M E S ST E V E N S C U R L
with a
Prolegomenon
by
Timothy Brittain-Catlin
1
1
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, ox2 6dp,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of
Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries
© James Stevens Curl 2018
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
First Edition published in 2018
Impression: 1
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You must not circulate this work in any other form
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Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
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Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and
for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials
contained in any third party website referenced in this work.
AdfG
Gratia, Musa, tibi: Nam tu solacia praebes
Tu curae requies, tu medicina venis . . .
PUBLIUS OVIDIUS NASO (43 bc-c.ad 17): Tristia iv x 117–18
Frontispiece They are Weighed in the Balance and Found Wanting: with respectful apolo-
gies to A.W.N. Pugin. An assortment of structures, including an International-Style
tower resembling a pile of sandwiches, a tortured piece of Deconstructivism, some
Blobism, pilotis, a sub-Corbusian block, and other familiar Modernist elements, is
weighed against a selection of Classical works of architecture by John Nash, Robert
Smirke, and others, and found unworthy
Contents
Prolegomenon ix
by Timothy Brittain-Catlin
Advance praise for Making Dystopia xiii
List of Plates xv
List of Figures xix
Preface & Acknowledgements xxi
Essence of the Argument; Afterword & Acknowledgements
I. Origins of a Catastrophe 1
Introduction: A Few Definitions; The Modern Movement; A Strange
Aberration; Pugin, the Ruskin Problem, Perils of Uncritical
Acceptance, & Some Perceptive Critics; Hermann Muthesius; Harry
Kessler, van de Velde, & Weimar; The Deutscher Werkbund; The
Werkbund Exhibition, Cologne, 1914; Epilogue
II. Makers of Mythologies & False Analogies 49
Introduction;Voysey as a Pevsnerian ‘Pioneer’; Further Objections to
the Pevsnerian Position; Baillie Scott;The Religious Factor; Unfortunate
Treatment of Berlage, Comper, & Dykes Bower
III. Modernism in Germany in the Aftermath of the 1914–18 War 87
Introduction: Expressionist Interlude; The Bauhaus at Weimar; The
Bauhaus at Dessau; A Department of Architecture at Dessau; Epilogue
IV. The International Style 1920s & 1930s 121
Introduction: The Transformation of Ludwig Mies; The
Weißenhofsiedlung, Stuttgart; The Strange Case of Erich Mendelsohn;
Later History of the Bauhaus at Dessau & Berlin; Epilogue
V. The International Style Truly International 171
Impresarios of the International Style; The Style Becomes Widely
Accepted Outside Germany: Czechoslovakia, The Soviet Union,
Hungary, Poland, Belgium, Brasil, Scandinavia, United States of America,
Switzerland, The Netherlands, Austria; France & ‘Le Corbusier’;
Fascist Italy & The International Style: A Problem for Apologists;
Early Modernism in England
viii Con t e n ts
Notes 389
Select Glossary 449
Bibliography 465
Publisher’s Acknowledgements 509
Index 511
Prolegomenon
greater than that of the designers they championed. There was a debate
some years ago about whether the then Lord Chancellor should have dec-
orated his rooms in the Palace of Westminster with revived Pugin wallpaper
at public expense: we all heard from prim commentators about the sup-
posed disgrace of ‘wasting public money’, but that Pugin was one of the
most creative designers Britain has ever seen, which in turn led to a flower-
ing of design and, not least, the employment of many talented craftsmen,
was something ignored. The argument often resurfaces when critics who
see themselves as ‘progressive’ or ‘left-wing’ discuss the future of abandoned
country houses; the impression is that they would rather see such buildings
burn down than be restored or recreated for other uses, no matter how rich
their history, or the fact that they often stand as the only records of the hard-
worked people who invested their life-skills in designing, constructing, and
decorating them. And this burning down of the house is what the
Catastrophe brought about.
The Catastrophe has had a major and long-lasting impact on the way in
which architecture is taught: one can still witness its terrible effects at first
hand. One phenomenon that never ceases to astonish is when students, not
even twenty years old, justify their design for a white-rendered block of a
building with long horizontal windows as ‘modern’ or even ‘contemporary’
when in fact it would have been familiar or even old-fashioned to their
great- or even great-great-grandparents. Far worse is the habit of using
affected, poisonous, bullying language at public critiques of student work,
which seems to have emerged from banter between tutors at the Architectural
Association and, earlier, at Harvard (Marcel Breuer finally walked out on his
mentor Walter Gropius after one of these).3 There may have been occasional
humour in some of these early performances, but, as the method filtered
down to reach every critique in every architectural school across the Western
world, their entertainment value somewhat palled. Thus it came about that,
for at least a couple of decades towards the end of the twentieth century,
discussion at critiques of students’ work focused more on whether the
young designer had fallen in line with the mesmeric appeal of their tutors’
current fashionable preoccupations—political, social, or whatever they
were—than on the construction, or tradition, or even simply the visual
appeal of the project in hand.
It was and it remains a mystery to me how this approach—the direct,
unadulterated progeny of the Catastrophe, completely unrelated to design,
to material, to spirit, to anything positive at all—has a useful rôle to play in
xii Prolegom e non
architectural education. The world has changed a lot since then, but this
particular mine of bombastic aggression has probably not yet been exhausted.
A short film posted to YouTube in August 2008 shows one of the world’s
most celebrated architects humiliatingly laying into a student’s work in a
way that viewers have described as rude, self-righteous, and narcissistic.4
Where did this nonsense come from?
This book offers a scholarly and passionate analysis of the whole unfor-
tunate and destructive process, written by a distinguished architectural his-
torian, one of the very few whose authority, accuracy, and incisiveness are
beyond question in every subject he addresses.
Timothy Brittain-Catlin
Broadstairs
Kent
Summer 2017
Advance praise for Making Dystopia
7.4b Space Left Over After Planning (SLOAP) at the mediaeval city-walls,
Canterbury (photograph of c.1968, © JSC)270
7.5a Vast blocks of flats from Sighthill Cemetery, Glasgow (photograph
of 1974, © JSC)273
7.5b Scottish Special Housing Association towers at Hutchesonstown area D,
Glasgow, from the Southern Necropolis (photograph of 1974, © JSC)274
7.6a Poulson’s dull office-slab at Cannon Street Station, London (photograph
of 1988, ref.no. DD001658, © Historic England Archive)280
7.6b The former City Terminus Hotel, Cannon Street Station, London
(London Metropolitan Archives, City of London. Collage:The London
Picture Archive No. 320138)281
7.7 Portico of the Pazzi Chapel, Santa Croce, Florence (Collection JSC)287
8.1 Ronan Point, Canning Town, London Borough of Newham, after its
partial collapse in 1968 (Photograph of 1968, ref. no. P_Z00450_004,©
Crown Copyright: Historic England Archive)295
8.2 School at Hunstanton, Norfolk, by the Smithsons (photograph
of 2017, © Mark Watson)298
8.3a Part of the Robin Hood Gardens housing-scheme, by the Smithsons
(photograph of 2017, © Geoff Brandwood)299
8.3b Part of the Robin Hood Gardens housing-scheme, by the Smithsons
(photograph of 2017, © Geoff Brandwood)300
8.4 Nautical allusions at the Centre Pompidou, Paris (photograph of 1983, © JSC ) 304
8.5 Exterior of Selfridge’s store, Birmingham (photograph of 2017, © Geoff
Brandwood)310
8.6 Centre Pompidou, Paris (photograph of 1983, © JSC)320
8.7 One of the ‘Crescents’ at Hulme, Manchester (photograph of 1995,
© MEN [Manchester Evening News] Media Archive)323
10.1 Typical bleak structures in Thamesmead (photograph of 2017, © Geoff
Brandwood)382
10.2 Knell for a Past, and Vision of a Barbarous Present and Future (from a
drawing of 2005, © JSC)388
List of Figures
probably the best and most succinct textbook on architecture ever pub-
lished, even though the author, in the Foreword to Pillar and Post, entitled
‘Order to View’, opens with a disclaimer: the ‘book is not a text-book’16 at
all. A great satirist, Lancaster knew exactly when something was both true
and untrue. He used irony (something clearly beyond the comprehension
of Le Corbusier and other Modernists) with devastating effect, at the same
time pointing out that everything built is architecture (in contrast to the
questionable and dogmatic positions adopted by Sigfried Giedion, Nikolaus
Pevsner, John Ruskin, and others). Moreover, Lancaster demystified archi-
tecture, and, by so doing, enabled everybody uncowed by the pretensions of
aggressive architectural critics to have opinions of their own about the sub-
ject. He deplored the establishment of critical ‘compounds’17 and obfusca-
tory ‘specialist’ language that excluded normal people from all debate about
their surroundings in daily life. He even had the temerity, having worked for
a time (from 1934) as an assistant editor at The Architectural Review, to refer
to the outpourings of certain enthusiasts of the Modern Movement as ‘that
Bauhaus balls’.18
In 1949, Lancaster brought out Drayneflete Revealed,19 in which he showed
that of all ideologies which threatened British urban and rural landscapes,
the most destructive was that of Corbusianity (ubiquitous worship of the
Swiss-French architect, C.-É. Jeanneret-Gris, who from c.1920 pretentiously
called himself ‘Le Corbusier’), as the hearts were torn out of countless towns
and cities in the dubious name of ‘progress’. People were condemned to an
unpleasant existence in badly designed and built high-rise blocks of flats and
to rat-runs of dark, smelly, threatening underpasses, leaving what was left of
the earth’s ruined surface to motor traffic. Drayneflete chronicled the historical
evolution and final wrecking of an English town from prehistoric times
to its terrible demise (‘The Drayneflete of Tomorrow’)20 as a Modernist
Dystopia dominated by roads and tower blocks on pilotis, with only four old
buildings ludicrously ‘preserved’ as ‘Cultural Monuments’ (one marooned
on a traffic roundabout) (Figure P.1). The Corbusian device of piloti (one
of several piers supporting a building above the ground), which elevated
the lowest floor to first-floor level, leaving an open area below, was widely
adopted, and resulted in countless unpleasant spaces.21 Drayneflete’s remain-
ing fabric was completely obliterated to create an inhumane environment
of empty, stupefying, memoryless banality, devoid of beauty or anything uplift-
ing to the spirit: its succinctly observed fate, as recorded by Lancaster in his
wonderful book, sums up what happened up to 1949 and was to happen in
xxiv Pr e face & Ack now le dge m e n ts
A B C D E F G H I J K
A B C D E
design tools and methods of fabrication. It has been claimed31 as the great
new ‘style’ (succeeding Modernism, Post-Modernism, Deconstructivism, and
Minimalism). It is supposed to have superior capacities to articulate pro-
grammatic complexity, enabling architecture to translate convoluted con-
temporary life processes in the global Post-Fordist (meaning mass-production,
presumably) network society. It is said to offer functional and formal heur-
istics based on a set of general abstract rules distilled from a very complex
ecosystem of sustained avant-garde design research.32
In the face of such ‘clarity’ of expression, it is little wonder ordinary
human beings hesitate to question the pretensions of the incomprehensible.
Obfuscatory language is an effective camouflage for a massive programme
to impose a new architectural style on a global scale. Parametricist architects
and their disciples seem to be oblivious as to the impact of what they are
doing or have done as they bask in the adulation of a handful of critics adept
in the fancy jargon of what has become a cult.33 The assumption by so-
called ‘star’ architects and their acolytes that only they have the right to insist
on the excellence of Modernist ‘icons’ must be challenged: they are wrong.
Only those persons who have to live in, use, or endure the sight of what
those ‘stars’ impose on the rest of us have the exclusive right to criticize, to
weigh in the balance, and decide. Architecture is ubiquitous. It is not a mys-
tery to be guarded and protected by the high-priests of obscure cults: it is
everywhere, and the public should be its judges, not a small coterie promoting
its own agenda.34
A lifetime studying architecture and looking at hundreds of villages, towns,
and cities has provided the essence for what lies within this volume. The
book attempts to explain how an extraordinary state of affairs occurred to
channel the noble art of architecture into stony paths beset with problems
over the last century or so. Much of this work, therefore, is based on per-
sonal observations made during travels looking (and drawing, because that
is the most effective way of really looking) at buildings in their contexts in
Europe and America; on careful perusals of original texts (as opposed to what
commentators have written about those texts); on painfully acquired know-
ledge of historic fabric (and the terminology associated with it,35 something
that is clearly lacking in contemporary ‘education’); and on quiet contem-
plation (often leading to great regret and sadness).
Several influential dramatis personae will appear: many of these took stances
that were inconsistent, demonstrably illogical, and frequently just plain
wrong. It is not just the theorists and practitioners who created difficulties
Pr e face & Ack now le dge m e n tsxxvii
for the historian. Apologists for certain almost deified Modernists constructed
mythologies and made connections with earlier architects and architecture
that are simply untenable once subjected to careful analysis.They fabricated
narratives that were swallowed whole by the gullible. I shall attempt, there-
fore, to point out some of the more glaring errors in widely accepted texts,
theories, and dogmas, though space precludes an analysis of every one of
them, as the ‘literature’ is so vast.
Reactions to certain writers, including Jane Jacobs’s critique of the dam-
age being done to American cities by Modernism,36 were examples of the
vindictiveness of believers in the cult. A title given to a review by Lewis
Mumford,37 of all people, was unquestionably sexist in tone (‘Mother Jacobs’
Home Remedies’38): this was all the more unpleasant because Mumford had
once written perceptively on Utopias,39 on the need for an indigenous
American architecture as an antidote to the puritanical, fanatical, and
political extremists of European Modernism,40 and (despite helping to
organize the exhibition International Style at the Museum of Modern Art
[MoMA], New York [1932]) on the dangers of that style, particularly the
dogmatic theories of ‘Le Corbusier’.
In the same year, however (1962), Mumford was to write an article entitled
‘The Case Against Modern Architecture’41 in which he questioned much, not
least a blind belief in mechanical progress as an end in itself. Nevertheless,
there was a cacophonous chorus of damnation of someone (especially a mere
woman, it would seem) with the temerity to question the professionals,
their entrenched beliefs, and (especially) the unholy mess they had managed
to make of countless places. Oddly, Mumford’s ‘Case Against Modern
Architecture’ came out in April 1962, and his unpleasant attack on Jane
Jacobs was published in December of that year: it is difficult to understand
what prompted such a thoroughgoing change of mind, and even more difficult
to avoid the suspicion that he may have been leant on. There were many
other predictable denunciations of Jacobs by Modernists42 who believed but
could not see: enthusiasts may pursue these dreary effusions if so inclined,
but an assurance that they were published will have to suffice here.
Another weapon, of course, is to damn by ignoring any criticism, which
was almost the fate of David Watkin’s Morality and Architecture,43 published
by Oxford University Press, until Denys Sutton printed an approving review
in Apollo (which he edited 1962–86), noting the ‘trouncing’ meted out to
the ‘collectivists’ who had ‘had their way far too long in intellectual circles’
thanks to a general and cowardly ‘appeasement of the Left’.44 Thereafter
xxviii Pr e face & Ack now le dge m e n ts
[2] Kasteentoistaja.
— Mistä?
— On, siitä asti kuin olin tuon pituinen, sanoi Margit ja piti kättään
jonkun verran lattiaa ylempänä.
— Ah Margit!
*****
"Suoraan sydämestä" seura oli koossa. Istuntoa pidettiin nyt
niinkuin ennen Gudmund mestarin tilavassa, somasti sisustetussa
maalarimajassa. Maalikupposet, siveltimet ja muut maalarinkalut oli
korjattu pois omaan kaappiinsa, jonka ovilautaan joku tuntematon
taiteilija edelliseltä vuosisadalta oli kuvannut Luukas evankelistan
paraillaan tekemässä pyhän neitsyen muotokuvaa. Toiseen isoon,
runsailla veistokuvilla koristettuun kaappiin oli mestari pannut ne
pergamentit, jotka hän viimeksi oli maalannut siellä ennestään
säilytettyjen lisäksi. Hän oli aina ollut ujo näyttämään teoksiaan; nyt
oli Lauri puheellansa "tuhrimisesta" saanut hänet kauhistumaan sitä.
— Minä en tiennyt, sanoi esimunkki, että syyt ovat niin tukevia tai
— olkoon minun kannaltani sanottuna — niin vietteleviä. Kuinka
niiden laita nyt lieneekään, niin en voi pelkäämättä odottaa sitä
aikaa, jolloin moni ja ehkäpä selvimmät päät juuri tuon selvyyden
takia tulevat suosimaan ja julistamaan tätä maailmankäsitystä ja
siten syntyy sota raamatun käsitystapaa vastaan. Ja tuo sota tulee
nähdäkseni käymään syviin syihin asti ja koskemaan korkeimpia
uskonnon kysymyksiä, semmoisia kuin kuolevaisten pelastusta ja
kuoleman kukistamista Herramme Jesuksen kautta. Tämä
pelastustyö on, sanoo Paavali, yliyltäinen merkitykseltään ja käsittää
itseensä sekä maanyliset että maanalaiset. Mutta jos nyt maa on
kiertotähti kiertotähtien joukossa, ja jos lienee olemassa, kuten
Svante veli äsken viittasi, lukemattomia aurinkokuntia, joilla myöskin
on kullakin omat kiertotähtensä, niin tästäpä liiankin usea meistä
johtanee sen päätelmän, että ihmisen Jesuksen kuolema tällä
tähtipallolla ei saata koskea noita monia äärettömässä maailman
avaruudessa asuvia kuolonalaisia sukukuntia, eipä olla niille
tunnettunakaan. Minua hirvittää tämmöinen mahdollisuus, mutta
lohdutan itseäni sillä tiedolla, että meidän kohtalomme on Sen
käsissä, joka johtaa meitä totuuteen ja on tienä siihen.