2/ It takes a communist like @owenhatherley to point out that modernism done right works perfectly well. No soul rot required. Of course, he’s right for the wrong reasons. The Barbican works because the people who live there are good stock. The conservatives should know this.
Conservative slum romance: 1/ It is fashionable for conservatives to favour “nurture” over nature when it comes to modernist towerblocks, which are held to be causative of social decay. The ugliness rots the soul of the prole.
-
-
Show this thread
-
3/ The conservatives pretend that the slums were full of wonderful “community” and fellow feeling. Go and look at the blood from splattered bedbugs in the back to backs of Birmingham. Slums look “traditional” and ordered in retrospect. But they were as ugly as modernism.
Show this thread -
4/ And the slums were full of viciousness as much as the new modernist estates. The “solidarity” of the slum is romanticised. Indoor flush toilets in a modernist towerblock were a boon and improvement.
Show this thread -
5/ Conclusion: Modernist architecture is often ugly (it is sublime, not beautiful), but it does not form character as much as people suppose. Conservatives who say it does abandon the will or biology to make this analysis. They become utopians of “tradition”.
Show this thread
End of conversation
New conversation -
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.