Chasing the Perfect

My thoughts of a while back on Modernism in architecture and elsewhere, were rekindled today when Keith forwarded on an article by Natalia Ilyin from Adbusters.

In “The Birth of Modernism” Ilyin considers how the First World War impacted on the shape and style of Modernism. She makes a brief but strong case for how Modernism is an architectural style born out of fear rather than love – using the biography of Walter Gropius as evidence in proof.

The idea could certainly do with a lot more fleshing out, but that fleshing out would be a worthwhile project and I think that she is on the right track already. Apparently this article is excerpted from her book Chasing the Perfect: Thoughts on Design in Our Time (Bellerophon Publications, 2006) - so I guess it's fleshed out there. If I didn’t already have a modernist skyscraper of books beside my bed to read, this would surely be added to the reading list (I’m banking on downtime at Xmas as my only hope now of getting this pile under control).