re: Where are these vanilla isis kids getting radicalized? Many have conservative parents

College professors and Facebook/twitter

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I read a really interesting take the other day on the way in which brutalist and postmodernist architecture is ideologically motivated. Essentially it serves to deny beauty to men and literally brutalizes the soul of man. Architecture used to turn cities into art and brought mans soul closer to god while also inspiring pride in ones nation

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I’ve read a lot about this (so sorry about the length of the reply), and this seems to be a popular take within certain circles, especially in the work of Sir Roger Scruton, who has some lovely writings on architecture. But what it misses is the context surrounding these movements, which like so much, has its origins in the fin de siecle period. Concurrently, you saw the breakdown of traditional forms in multiple disciplines, across Europe, moving from the belief that a new world was possible in the “Modernist” school, where nature was in part guided by man, to a view, especially after the wars, that was at the behest of ambiguity, complication, and uncertainty.

But these architects often saw their projects as part of larger potential projects, many of which were designed but never built. Thus you have patchwork attempts that feel out of place with regard to the surroundings, when the actual plan accounted for the eventual criticism. That funding for large projects eventually dried up, which gave way to the bland, repeatable architecture that defines much of America. But the intent to recreate the space was there, in the same way classical or neoclassical architects wanted to recreate space. For example, Louis Kahn’s plans for Philadelphia would have made it a singular city of artwork, as his goal was to make an organic city which balanced car traffic with foot traffic.

I think generally critics give brutalism and internationalism too much credit, as even classical architects working in the era would have run into the same funding problems. The brutalists wanted to expose quality made materials so that people could appreciate the invisible functions of modernity. And what they produced had clear influence from neoclassical movements, like Nordic classicism, which heavily influenced how modernism was approached in those countries.

The blame, for me, relies less on the architects, and more on the unwillingness to redo whole city blocks, many of which in American were destroyed during urban renewal, or were redone in a mishmash of styles anyway. The worst culprit has to be the McMansion, which is the culmination with the obsession of reproducibility over quality.

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Mandatory Thomas Sowell reading would cure it.