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Lorianne_W · Joined: 24 Mar 2006 Posts: 2729

The Architect as Totalitarian
Le Corbusier’s baleful influence

http://www.city-journal.org/2009/19_4_otbie-le-corbusier.html
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I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free. __ Michelangelo

plaasjaapie · Joined: 19 Sep 2006 Posts: 9182

I always rather liked Corbu's work. Unlike Wright, a contemporary, he could at least make a building which stood up with a roof that didn't leak.
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Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason? Why if it prosper, none dare call it treason.
— Sir John Harrington

academie · Posted: Sat Nov 21, 2009 2:09 pm Post subject:

Interesting article, I thought.
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Lorianne_W · Joined: 24 Mar 2006 Posts: 2729

Corbu had lots of problems with leaky roofs.
_________________
I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free. __ Michelangelo

desertlily · Posted: Thu Nov 26, 2009 4:22 pm Post subject:

I used to really like some of Dalrymple's past political articles, but this one is really absurd. It makes me wonder what kind of personal rage has inspired him to express this kind of abstract rage against a man he never knew, and whose works he seems to need to disparage?

I've always admired Le Corbusier's work. This example of a World's Fair Pavilion he designed more than half a century ago, is ample proof of how much he has influenced all of the contemporary architects who followed him.

He was a creative genius, and therefore, an intellectual "totalitarian".....as all one-of-a-kind creators must be. Because if they were not.....they could never create what has never before been created by anyone else on earth.

plaasjaapie · Joined: 19 Sep 2006 Posts: 9182

hear! hear!
_________________
Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason? Why if it prosper, none dare call it treason.
— Sir John Harrington

Larry_Home · Posted: Fri Nov 27, 2009 3:43 am Post subject:

academie · Posted: Fri Nov 27, 2009 4:02 am Post subject:

You don't have to be totalitarian to create. (It shouldn't help much, either.)

After DL's and Larry's posts, I looked back into the article to see. Did Dalrymple have abstract rage, or concrete (pardon the pun) reasons?

plaasjaapie · Joined: 19 Sep 2006 Posts: 9182

I've always found it a peculiar form of intellectual cowardice to attack the work of a dead architect. Nobody had the nerve to criticize Corbu's work while he was alive. Ditto, Mies. Once they were safely buried, however, all manner of critics emerged saying things that would have landed them with libel suits had they been said during the lives of the architects they were slandering.
_________________
Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason? Why if it prosper, none dare call it treason.
— Sir John Harrington

Lorianne_W · Joined: 24 Mar 2006 Posts: 2729

I don't think it's true no one criticiized le Corbusier's work during his lifetime.

He did not fare well in competitions and had some rather well known clashes with French politicians over some of his more grandiose schemes, many of which never got off the ground (he had better luck in India and Brazil).

He was also criticized for his far left (totalitarian socialists) beliefs, which underpinned his architectural and city planning ideas.

I think it's safe to say he was controversial even in his own lifetime.

Jane Jacobs was a scathing critic of Corbu and his followers ... and her book Death and Life of Great American Cities was published 4 years before Corbu died.

Also, I don't see anything cowardly about critizing people or ideas of the past, be they architects/architecture or anything else.
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I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free. __ Michelangelo

plaasjaapie · Joined: 19 Sep 2006 Posts: 9182

Larry_Home · Posted: Thu Mar 11, 2010 6:33 am Post subject:

Revisiting Le Corbusier: Who actually cares whether he was criticized while living or later? He didn't actually build very much; he was a great drawer of utopian, centralized-planning, and indeed authoritarian megacity plans, almost none of which were ever built for very good reasons, two of which were expense and the hatefulness of the cities they would have produced. Brazilia was not Corbu designed but based on his principles ... EXCEPT that the outer edges of the city, the parts not designated for bureaucrats and elitests, were not part of the Plan.

I have done some reading about this fellow lately and find him despicable.

For those who think Dalrymple's criticism is overheated, I suggest reading Seing Like a State, by James C. Scott. It explains Theodore's reasoning in a great deal more detail, along with the criticisms later by Jane Jacobs and others. More importantly, it explains how his thinking fits into the High Modernist (what is now fashionably called postmodern) thought of the day, which is undeniably (and admittedly, in Corbu's case) authoritarian.

It's relevant now because we have people exactly like this running every branch of our federal government.
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The future ain't what it used to be. (Yogi Berra)

plaasjaapie · Joined: 19 Sep 2006 Posts: 9182