Towards a New Architecture

worthless and even dangerous
• • • • • (bewertet mit 1 von 5 Punkten)

Alle meine Rezensionen ansehen Rezension bezieht sich auf: Towards a New Architecture (Taschenbuch) This is probably the stupidest book I've ever read. It amazes me that people still read it as if it has something worthwhile to offer. I read it 21 years ago when I was 17, and I filled the margins with harsh criticism. I looked at it again a couple years ago to see if I still agreed with those criticisms and I did. The book is a monument to illogic, and what's frightening is that it's been enormously influential. The basic thesis is this - airplanes, ships and grain silos look cool, so our buildings should look like them. If anyone tries to convince you that the message is deeper than that, don't be fooled. It's rubbish. Unfortunately it goes beyond buildings to urban planning. And it was very influential in this realm also. To devastating effect. This is probably a good point to refer anyone who's considering this book to Jane Jacobs' The Death and Life of Great American Cities, not only because of her specifics, but because of her method. Corbusier envisioned utopias and decided they were perfect models for a brave new world without any research or logical basis whatsoever. Jane Jacobs studied real cities, real neighborhoods and real people and came to conclusions from her observations of reality. Another book I'd recommend as an antidote to Towards a New Architecture is Christopher Alexander's A Pattern Language. I'm not a mindless devotee of Alexander - the book is a mixture of wisdom, common sense and nonsense. But it has real value, unlike Towards a New Architecture (except for it's historical importance), and my point here is Alexander's methodology. He and his colleagues did a lot of research and studied real situations in real places, from which they drew their conclusions. There's no question in my mind that Le Corbusier was a genius. I've been to Ronchamp and it's one of the most amazing places I've been on Earth. He was a great architect. But a theoretician? Forget it! Also, I think it was Lewis Mumford who referred to Corbusier as a "twisted genius." I have to agree with this assessment (and recommend another book - Le Corbusier and the Tragic View of Architecture, by Charles Jencks). Corbusier's philosophy was condescending and elitist, and his architecture was fundamentally anti-human. His multidudes of imitators foisted his brutal environmental image on the world, minus the genius. It's time we start treating this book as it deserves to be treated - as illogical, self-serving garbage that's been hugely influential in giving us a world that's full of mean, inhuman, unpleasant places.

Eine Rezension von Ein Kunde
vom 8. November 1999


Kundenrezensionen:

3.	worthless and even dangerous (die aktuell angezeigte Rezension)
2.	Wonderfully written and illistrated
1.	THE MASTER-PÝECE OF ARCHÝTECTURE

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