A Modernist architect skewers Modernism

Ever wondered why so much architecture nowadays – especially architecture that other architects rave about – looks as if it was designed by someone who’s got an inner ear balance disorder? Or what, really, is so bad about designing a building that pays homage to the past 2,000 years of architectural tradition?

Last June I had the opportunity to hear a devoted modernist architect, Dan Solomon, give a speech in which he skewered the modernist architectural movement in the United States and proposed a different way of looking at modern architecture, one that doesn’t jettison the past but builds on the best of the past.

Solomon is a founding member of the Congress for the New Urbanism. Yes, despite what some people may tell you, New Urbanism as an architectural and planning movement has plenty of room for modernist architects.

His talk was fascinating, and one I think many architects and others will enjoy reading, no matter what their position is on Modernism (though any architect who admits to not liking Modernism is usually subject to withering scorn, and Solomon explains why). And it explained to me why the Harvard School of Design (including its devotees on the New York Times’ architectural writing staff) holds such disproportionate sway over architectural thinking in America today.

Here’s the LINK. Warning – it’s long. And I don’t have the slides he showed. But with a long holiday weekend looming, it should keep you busy.

Here’s a sample – he’s characterizing the attitudes of many of today’s Modernist architects:

“ … Populist hostility to an abstract modernism is a philistine ignorance tobe ignored; references to vernacular building, the imperatives of place orclassicism are inadmissible, and dissonance, not harmony, is the order of the day.”

Happy reading.