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Review:
This little book explodes the pretensions of the architectural avant-garde and describes the new humanistic architecture that is the alternative to modernism.
It includes hilarious descriptions of projects where the avant-gardists’ desire to be new and different at any cost have made them design buildings that are unlivable and that even cause vertigo. Though the avant-gardists’ novelties get all the attention from the press, this book also describes the architects who have been working for decades to create a human-scale neotraditional architecture.
Most important, this book shows that architecture reflects larger cultural issues. The last thing we need in our time is to ignore human values and to adopt every flashy technology imaginable, as the avant-gardists do. The central task of our time is the task of humanizing our technological economy, and that is why the new classicism is the architecture for our time.
FROM THE BACK COVER:
Modernism as the Status Quo
“During the 1950s, modernism was not only on the leading edge esthetically but also on the leading edge of social reform. By the 1970s, modernism was the status quo, and it was oppressive. The glass and steel high rises towering over the old downtowns of our cities looked cold and impersonal, like the technological economy that produced them.”
Traditionalism as Social Change
“Unlike the avant-gardists, the New Urbanists are part of a powerful movement to reform society. If their neotraditional neighborhoods are more livable than conventional automobile-dependent suburbs, that fact is a real challenge to General Motors, ExxonMobile, and Wal-Mart - while the self-consciously radical gestures of the avant-gardists do not challenge the modern economy at all.”
Avant-Gardism Versus Humanism
“The meaning of the fragmented and twisted forms of today’s avant-gardist architecture is this: whatever technology makes possible, we will do - even if it makes the building’s users feel uncomfortable and disoriented.”
This book may change the way you think about modern architecture - and about modern society.
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