To the editors:
This letter is intended to complement the review by Nikos Salingaros and the earlier letter by James Stevens Curl. By expanding on a number of topics mentioned in these articles the reader will better understand the subtitle of Curl’s magisterial book, Making Dystopia.1 The rise Curl alludes to is curious. architectural barbarism, better known as modern architecture, never made any sense, nor did it fulfill any need or provide any benefits. Stranger still is its survival, which was entirely dependent on entirely random and unpredictable happenings. In hindsight, architectural barbarism was advantageous to no one. That is, aside from the small group who promoted it; they called themselves modern architects.
Modern architecture started almost by chance in 1911 when a German businessman, Carl Benscheidt, decided to build a new plant for a business he was starting. The plant became known as the Fagus Factory. Benscheidt employed an experienced architect, Eduard Werner, who produced a perfectly satisfactory design that was used to construct the factory.2 Though most books and articles attribute the building’s design to Walter Gropius, all he did was redesign the facades, using as much glass as possible. This state of affairs brings to mind Raymond Loewy’s 1929 restyling of the Gestetner duplicating machine. Loewy’s contribution amounted to the addition of a streamlined new cover for the machine. The original apparatus was otherwise unaltered.
Whether Werner’s Fagus Factory restyled by Gropius was really the start of modern architecture is, of course, endlessly debatable. Nonetheless, many writers consider the Fagus Factory of great importance to the development of modern architecture. They describe it as “one of the truly seminal buildings of 20th century … decades ahead of its time,”3 “one of the key buildings in twentieth century architecture,”4 “the most advanced piece of architecture built before the war [WWI],”5 and “one of the most important industrial structures of modern architecture.”6 Gropius himself would “seize every opportunity to publicize the Fagus factory as a prime example of modern architecture.”7
But why did Benscheidt want his new factory restyled? Observing other recently constructed industrial buildings in America, Benscheidt realized that Werner’s facades were old-fashioned.8 When the building of the new factory was announced in the press, offers of design poured in, including one from Gropius. Benscheidt was interested in working with Gropius, but he made it clear that Werner was the architect and Gropius would only be redesigning the facades. Gropius redesigned the facades as glass walls because, as he claimed in a lecture in 1911, with increased daylight, workers would be more satisfied and would therefore increase production.9
Curl correctly states that the part of the Fagus Factory designed by Gropius would go on to have “enormous influence.”10 And the influence was entirely malign. Every aspect of Gropius’s product was to set in motion most of the failings of modern architecture. And these failings are numerous.
As Vernon Gibberd writes in the Architecture Source Book, “Gropius was among the first to define the functional aesthetic.”11 The functional or machine aesthetic placed great emphasis on buildings looking functional, but had to little say about whether the building itself should actually be functional in any practical sense. Having a functional external appearance became a central aspect of modern architecture. The assertion by Gropius that workers would be more satisfied and productive with more daylight was not based on anything other than his opinion. In the case of the Fagus Factory, the glazing was an enormous error. It was already well-known that putting people into glass boxes caused environmental problems: glare, heat loss, heat gain, and lack of sound insulation. To remedy this fundamental error, the bottom panels were quickly coated in opaque paint, and external shop awnings were hurriedly installed to deflect the blinding sunlight that poured through the glass.12
Gropius arranged for the construction site to be regularly photographed, which helped to ensure the canonization of his work.13 Later, in 1928, Benscheidt had the completed factory photographed by the well-known artist-photographer Albert Renger-Patzsch14 and compiled the photos in a book that was used extensively for publicity.15 The unsightly and hastily installed awnings were, of course, removed when the architectural photographs were taken.16
The architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner observed that an “exceedingly important quality of Gropius’s building is that, thanks to the large expanses of clear glass, the usual hard separation of exterior and interior is annihilated.”17 It is unclear whether Gropius meant to confuse the interior with the exterior of the building, but his annihilation of the separation between the two has caused numerous injuries to humans and kills millions of birds each year.18 In his book, Curl exposes the failings of Pevsner’s influential account of architectural history.19
Gropius, pioneer of many of the ills of modern architecture, became in 1919 the first director of the notorious Bauhaus. Notorious because, in spite of continuous fashionable hype, “training at the Bauhaus would mean that young people would become incompetent in every way,” as the contemporary artist and designer Max Thedy would complain.20 According to Heinrich Basedow, who briefly taught there, the institution did not seem to produce anything worthwhile.21 But that is not all. Gropius appointed Johannes Itten to teach the Vorskurs, the compulsory preliminary course, which he designed in such a way that many have perceived it as a brainwashing.22
After modernists took control in the late 1930s, the Vorskurs, in one form or another, became standard in schools of architecture. This had major ramifications. Schools of architecture turned into architectural Bauhauses, producing indoctrinated and incompetent graduates. They were, in effect, ideal candidates for recruitment to a sect, which is what modern architecture had become. As Peter Blake asserted in 1977, “Modern architecture is … quite clearly a religion as irrational as all others.” He referred to its practitioners as “the members of a sect.”23 Modern architects had detached themselves from the needs of the general public and designed purely for themselves.
The three towering figures of modern architecture, Gropius, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and Le Corbusier, all had links to far-right politics, with varying degrees of engagement. Le Corbusier was the most complicit of the trio. During the 1920s and 30s, he wrote numerous articles for far-right magazines,24 and counted among his close associates Pierre Winter, a doctor and hygienist who was deeply involved in French far-right politics and co-founded the Revolutionary Fascist Party.25 He was also an ardent admirer of the pioneering surgeon and Nobel laureate Alexis Carrel,26 an enthusiastic advocate for eugenics from the mid-1930s onwards. Le Corbusier did his best to become part of the Nazi puppet government of Marshal Philippe Pétain in Vichy.27 In hindsight, he was lucky to have escaped being branded as a collaborator.
In comparison to Le Corbusier, Gropius and Mies had less extensive ties to far-right politics. Despite the forced closure of the Bauhaus school after the Nazis came to power, both Gropius and Mies attempted to continue working, submitting entries in a 1933 architectural competition to design the new Reichsbank.28 As part of their submissions, sketches of proposed buildings were produced, replete with Nazi symbols. In August 1934, Mies was a signatory to a petition pledging allegiance to Hitler in the nationwide referendum that installed the Nazi leader as Führer and German head of state.29 His attempts to ingratiate himself with the regime also extended to signing letters “Heil Hitler!”30 Although Gropius was more circumspect than Mies, both still sought to pursue their professions under Nazi rule,31 even if that meant working with an authoritarian regime that had little, if any, interest in their work. Eventually, the pair realized that they had no professional future in Nazi Germany. Gropius emigrated in 1934, and Mies in 1937.
Early in their careers, Le Corbusier, Mies, and Gropius all worked for Peter Behrens, who was known to behave like a dictator in his office. Le Corbusier greatly admired this behavior, and in his own studio, every day just before his appearance, a cloud of panic hovered.32 According to Elaine Hochman, Mies exhibited “authoritarian instincts, single mindedness, and refusal to acknowledge the validity and diversity of human claims.”33 At Harvard, Gropius was for his students the master mold into which they had to pour their talents,34 and no criticism was tolerated, as city planner Martin Wagner was to discover.35
During the Second World War, a modernism versus anti-modernism battle was being fought out, not only in Nazi Germany, but also at architectural institutions in many countries. It is significant that when Gropius was appointed professor at Harvard, he replaced Jean-Jacques Haffner, who had been trained at the École des Beaux-Arts. By the end of the war, modernists were in positions of power in many architectural institutions, and non-modernists were gradually weeded out.
The ending of the war brought modern architects a huge bonus, because vast areas of war-damaged cities were to be rebuilt, and because the Cold War started. It is far from obvious why the Cold War would benefit modern architects. The Americans—for the United States was by then the dominant nation by far—realized there was also a cultural cold war. The Soviet Union, which had rejected modernism, seemed far better placed to win this war, for they could present culture based on time-honored values. And this culture included architecture. Taking the offensive, the Americans set up a front organization called the Congress for Cultural Freedom, covertly financed by the Central Intelligence Agency. Under its auspices, cultural events were promoted worldwide, concentrated on Europe and especially Germany. All manner of cultural activities were financed. To rebut the Soviet cultural stance, the central idea was to promote modernism in all its forms, especially in the visual arts and architecture. Driving this effort were the directors of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York.36
Modern art, especially abstract expressionism, was heavily marketed, as was the modern movement in architecture. Its protagonists, Gropius and Mies, were by now securely positioned in prestigious American academic appointments. To promote modern architecture, a touring exhibition overseen by MoMA and called “Built in USA: Post-War Architecture” was mounted in 1953. It featured examples of modern architecture from both American and European émigré architects.37 The next year, the US Foreign Buildings Office issued guidelines that its overseas buildings be built based on modern designs.38 Modern architecture was now government policy. As corporate America prospered in the post-war years, it patriotically also turned to modern architects for new buildings, especially for declamatory corporate headquarters. The most iconic of these was the thirty-eight-story, steel-and-glass skyscraper in Manhattan designed by Mies, completed in 1958 for Joseph E. Seagram & Sons Ltd.39 Modern architecture had won, and not only in the US.
In Europe, which had suffered widespread wartime destruction, thousands of sites were cleared for rebuilding. Here the response was more mixed. Emergent modern architects were given numerous opportunities, especially in the United Kingdom, but restoration also took place. Still, modernists tightened their grip on architectural institutions.
Modern architects refuse to recognize that they are a sect; they pose as ordinary professionals. But whilst a professional has a duty to its client, it also has a social responsibility to the public.40 It is clear that architects do not comply with this wider responsibility, as they persist in designing buildings widely disliked by the general public. Survey after survey has demonstrated the general public’s preference for non-modernist buildings, over modernist ones.41 This is not surprising. They are not supposed to like them. As the Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset pointed out in 1925, “Modern art … has the masses against it … since it is unpopular in essence; even more, it is anti-popular [emphasis added].”42
Their behavior as a sect is clearly shown in the case of Christopher Alexander. An Austrian-born British architect, he was appointed a full professor in 1963 at the age of 27, at the school of architecture at Berkeley, part of the prestigious University of California. He had already shown himself to be a brilliant mathematician and scientist. While studying mathematics at Cambridge University, he also was awarded a bachelor’s degree in architecture. In 1961, he went to Harvard, where he was given the first ever PhD in architecture and was elected to the Society of Fellows.43
One might have thought that having appointed someone with such an intellect, the Berkeley school of architecture would make full use of Alexander’s polymathic brilliance, but the opposite happened. Because he refused to espouse the sect’s mantras, he was more or less sidelined.44 This did not stop him from going on to produce an extraordinary body of work, which should have changed the course of architectural history and at the same time rid the world of modern architecture.
Alexander’s work is ruled by what he called a pattern language. This framework, which applies concepts from generative grammar to design, has been used with significant success in various fields, especially that of computing. The seminal book, A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction, co-written by Alexander and colleagues, was published in 1977 and still sells steadily. It has become a bible for non-modernist architects. In this book, Alexander applies pattern language to architecture and urbanism, at every scale: city, neighborhood, building, and room. He also presents a large portfolio of built projects, none of which grace the pages of architectural magazines, since the latter act almost exclusively as mouthpieces for the sect.
In spite of the enormous amount of work done by Alexander, Salingaros, Curl, and others, the sect remains firmly in control. This is evidenced by the numbers of dysfunctional modernist buildings that have now been given status as UNESCO World Heritage Sites.45
Cracks will only appear in the modernist monolith when someone is able to motivate the general population to protest against architectural barbarism so loudly that politicians will take notice. It is only politicians who have the power to defeat modern architecture. An architectural Greta Thunberg might help.
Malcolm Millais
Nikos Salingaros replies:
Malcolm Millais contributes useful background for the factors leading to modernism’s hegemony, not only in architecture and planning. This unpleasant history is usually hidden from architecture students so as not to ruin the promise made to them of a fairyland utopia when they join the cult. Today, it makes rather alarming reading. Millais is the author of two important books: Exploding the Myths of Modern Architecture and Le Corbusier, the Dishonest Architect.46 Together with Curl’s book Making Dystopia, these are required reading for whoever wishes to free themselves from a century of cultish propaganda.
Millais alludes to movie-script stories involving the US Central Intelligence Agency, the State Department, the Museum of Modern Art, the covert anti-Soviet organization Congress for Cultural Freedom, and direct links to the Nazi hierarchy and France’s Vichy puppet régime. All of these forces somehow aligned to promote nonadaptive modernist architecture, while making it appear that it was the people’s choice. It was not. And for conspiracy theorists, this material is documented, even if difficult to locate.47 What followed was equally murky, turning from depressing minimalism to psychologically disturbing deconstructivism.48
I think that Millais has too high an expectation from our society. Scientists have to trust verifiable truths, experimental demonstrations, and the use of logic in making decisions. These components form the basis of the scientific method. I have found in my investigations in architecture that this is a peculiar discipline, which does not work like science at all. It works more like a pseudo-religious cult.49 For this reason, I regret to say that no revelation, however despicable, about famous architects is going to make any difference to the way things are built today and in the future. The trinity of canonized architects—Walter Gropius, Le Corbusier, and Mies van der Rohe—is forever enshrined in the architectural pantheon. They are immune to any and all criticism.
Those three modernist pioneers set the stage for architecture in the twentieth century and beyond. Our society permits, and actually runs on, money-driven corporate manipulation to skillfully distance people from their own humanity. Propagandizing misleads people to deny the bodily nourishment they derive from special healing geometries in architecture. Society would otherwise have rejected many of the nonadaptive buildings erected during the past several decades. Abstract and illusory architectural images and words—i.e., logocentrism—determine a false reality, substituting for complex, sentient human nature. Students undergo this conditioning in architecture school. It severs their neurological connection to the real world.50
Extractive global interests that care little for human health and sensibilities dictate the shape of the contemporary built environment. This profit-driven system is allied with an ideological cult, as described in my original review of Curl’s book. The cult believes that liberation and spiritual enlightenment can be achieved only through a peculiar design style: an aesthetic that unfortunately negates human neurological responses. The cult itself is only tangentially linked to the vast money-making industry of global construction, since its benefits come in the form of academic prestige and choice faculty positions. Academia initiates young persons into the cult, who then supply the profession with cheap labor.51
How does an industry propped up by pseudoscience not only survive, but thrive for decades and entirely reshape the fabric of society? The answer lies in the advantages of a small power group. Our image of contemporary architecture is the product of information warfare, also known as perception management. Powerful architectural, building, and construction firms invest heavily in public relations, pursuing positive publicity from sympathetic critics and journalists.52 This power group carefully cultivates the notion that the nonadaptive buildings it sponsors represent progress.
Advertising and strategic marketing drive contemporary design through branding and image creation. Studies that reveal the energy benefits of adaptively designed environments are ignored,53 while the industry and media continue to push for energy-wasting industrial-modernist typologies. To quote author and New Urbanist James Howard Kunstler,
Modernism doesn’t care about truth and beauty; it cares about power, especially the power to coerce. Many people detect that dynamic, and that is one reason they loathe Modernist buildings. The main imperative of Modernism was to separate us from nature… The result of that was a denatured architecture of the machine and an animus against what it means to be human located in nature.54
Pseudoscience is being used constantly to bolster the same old cultic images from the 1920s—marketing a peculiar design style tied to an intolerant ideology. In the absence of logical clarity or experimental testing, spurious assertions are validated in architects’ eyes through uncritical repetition—that is, conformist bias or groupthink. What starts as some architect’s personal fantasy is repeated by the media until it eventually becomes narrative that dominates the profession. Accustomed to arguing without proof, architects engage in self-delusion, or just shameless deception, falsely claiming that scientific results support iconic buildings.
Human gullibility and a naive appeal to the authority of fashion enable this system to continue to generate nonadaptive architecture with impunity. Society trustingly expects that architects will self-regulate to ensure that their product is adaptive and healthy. This is only wishful thinking. The media believe the claims of architecture firms, taking them at their word and eagerly spreading promotional material that their hired public relations firms invent. The global building and construction industry is interested in profits and deflecting criticism. It does whatever is most convenient and profitable, and has no scruples about exploiting anything that serves the system’s best interests.
When pseudoscience allies itself with power, humankind suffers—for example, the tens of millions who starved to death because of Trofim Lysenko. Key players in the energy-consumption game have been successfully conditioned into adopting industrial-modernist design styles for our cities. They do so without critical analysis or thinking, ignoring scientific evidence. Major corporate and institutional clients sponsor fashionable but inhuman architecture to brand their supposedly progressive image, while architectural academics follow along in fawning admiration. A cultural conscience in today’s society that should have provided the antidote to this situation is unfortunately missing.
Millais concludes with an appreciation of the work of Christopher Alexander, with whom I have worked for decades. I was, in fact, one of the editors of Alexander’s four-volume book The Nature of Order.55 Millais points out that Alexander came at the right time in order to correct the misalignment in architecture after the Bauhaus. His brilliance was respected by the dominant architectural culture then. Alexander earned the first PhD in architecture ever given at Harvard University in 1963, and was awarded a gold medal for research by the American Institute of Architects in 1972. And yet, Alexander’s work was and remains marginalized, with the architectural mainstream actively hostile to it.
His A Pattern Language and The Nature of Order most definitely do not get taught in our architecture schools, except by lone instructors who risk their career prospects by doing so. Recent moves to revise architecture education, in both India and the US, point to the glaring omission of Alexander’s work—among other related missing disciplines such as biophilia, neuroarchitecture, and healing environments—from the architecture curriculum.56 Instead, students are indoctrinated into the same 1920s cult ideology of so-called modern images, and trained in marketing an extremely limited standardized product.57
I am inclined to interpret Alexander’s role in twentieth-century architectural culture as being based on a possibly humorous misunderstanding. His early work, inspired by his background in mathematics and physics, focused on developing a scientific approach to design.58 He was, after all, one of the pioneers in applying computers to design problems. This technological direction was misinterpreted by the modernist architectural establishment as a hopeful sign that Alexander was part of the club and would use his intellect to prop up modernist hegemony in architecture and planning.
I believe that the status quo was, and remains, so totally detached from adaptive architecture that it did not realize what Alexander was up to. The system was absorbed in its own power games and was complacent in its total dominance of both the profession and media thinking about architecture. It finally realized that Alexander’s work was aimed at undermining the system, not supporting it. After this wake-up call, which came surprisingly late, it turned against Alexander. Students in architecture schools were discouraged from studying his work, and instructors from teaching it. This prohibition still holds today.
Alexander himself also made an unforgivable error on his side by ignoring what the establishment was pursuing. As someone totally absorbed in his work of developing genuine architectural theory, he paid insufficient attention to what was being developed simultaneously by others, and which would replace hard-earned theoretical knowledge with nonsense. This disconnect becomes obvious during the famous debate that Alexander had with Peter Eisenman in 1982.59 Alexander revealed himself to be unaware of what the power system was turning toward, which was the frightening style of deconstructivist architecture. He was caught off guard by something he considered too bizarre to be ever realized: the move to implement nihilism in built form.
