Brent Brolin assays The Failure of Modern Architecture.

The Failure of Modern Architecture By Brent C. Brolin Van Nostrand Reinhold, 128 pp., $11.95 “Revisionism” may be a dirty word in the Communist lexicon, but in architectural circles these days it’s the latest trend. For over half a century, architects have been mouthing the modernist, dicta -—“Form Follows Function,” “Less Is More,” “A House Is a Machine for Living.” Accordingly, they have encircled the globe with glass-and-concrete lookalikes that make downtown Nairobi hardly distinguishable from downtown Grand Rapids. Now reaction has finally set in. Nineteenth century buildings, which only five years ago were still classified as examples of urban blight fit for the slag heap, are once again

being admired, refurbished, photographed, and studied. Last year the Museum of Modern Art, the original champion of functionalism in this country, set its seal of approval on the new revisionism with a scholarly survey of the accomplishments of that fountainhead of nineteenth century eclecticism, the once unmentionable Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Brent C. Brolin’s book, a slashing indictment of modernist architecture and the assumptions underlying it, is another sympton of the trend.

RB

About the Author

Ruth Berenson

Featured Tags

Manage following

Architecture

Art

The Failure of Modern Architecture By Brent C. Brolin Van Nostrand Reinhold, 128 pp., $11.95 “Revisionism” may be a dirty word in the Communist lexicon, but in architectural circles these days it’s the latest trend. For over half a century, architects have been mouthing the modernist, dicta -—“Form Follows Function,” “Less Is More,” “A House Is a Machine for Living.” Accordingly, they have encircled the globe with glass-and-concrete lookalikes that make downtown Nairobi hardly distinguishable from downtown Grand Rapids. Now reaction has finally set in. Nineteenth century buildings, which only five years ago were still classified as examples of urban blight fit for the slag heap, are once again

being admired, refurbished, photographed, and studied. Last year the Museum of Modern Art, the original champion of functionalism in this country, set its seal of approval on the new revisionism with a scholarly survey of the accomplishments of that fountainhead of nineteenth century eclecticism, the once unmentionable Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Brent C. Brolin’s book, a slashing indictment of modernist architecture and the assumptions underlying it, is another sympton of the trend.