[PREV - NOWHERE_OIL]    [TOP]

NOWHERE_MODERN

                                           October 30, 2001
"The Geography of Nowhere" (1993)
by James Howard Kunstler:
                                               NOWHERE_MAN
   "Pretending to be places of enduring
   value, the American suburbs had
   proved to be made of nothing more
   lasting than parcels of real estate.
   It was a shame, because the reaction
   to the disillusion that followed was
   a far more fradulent and barbarous
   movement called Modernism, which
   dedicated itself to the worship of
   machines, to sweeping away all
   architectural history, all romantic
   impulses, and to jamming all human             A better anti-modernist
   aspiration into a plain box."  p. 57           rant delivered by
                                                  Kunstler (in the midst
                                                  of a long interview with
This kind of                                      Jane Jacobs):
rant can be                   JANE_JACOBS
entertaining                                        "Corbusier comes up with a
to read, but                                        cockamamie scheme for
does it                                             destroying the Right Bank
really sum up                                       of Paris, the Marais
the subject?                                        District. And the idea
                                                    immigrates to America
Are there                                           where it takes America by
no saving                                           storm. Meanwhile, in
graces for    How about the Guggenheim?             France every year
Modernism?    There form followed function,         Corbusier goes back to the
              and it really does function,          officials in Paris and
Nothing to    and it really has form...             says I have this wonderful
be learned                                          idea to destroy the Right
from it?                   (Or did,                 Bank and they laugh at
                           before they              him. For years -- decade
                           tacked a                 after decade -- they laugh
  A thought: letting       flush tank on            at him. They never do what
  the form flow from       the side of              he proposes. They do build
  the function may in      the bowl).               a lot of crappy stuff
  many cases be a                                   outside of the center of
  better idea than                                  Paris. But they never
  trying to force a                                 knock down the center of
  pre-conceived form.    When we                    Paris. In America we took
                         consciously                that idea and we just
                         choose an                  loved it. Why didn't we
  If the suburbs had     appearence we              laugh at it?"
  truly been built       often do a bad
  according to the       job.                              [ref]
  modernist spirit,
  rather than an               UNINTENDED
  attempt at building
  faux-countryside,             "If you can't think once,
  what would they                don't think twice."
  have been like?                  The Buzzcocks, "Sixteen Again"


                      No "Dairy
                      Barns", at
                      least.


--------
[NEXT - NEW_URBAN_HERESY]