At least so far as architecture and urban planning are concerned...

...words lose their meaning when formed to state:

"...people whose primary framework is modernism are by definition liberals.

The implication might then be that the big-box store is one of the triumphs of liberalism. Or it might be that the work of Gehry, Koolhaas and Hadid is "liberal." Such a statement, to me, is a complete degradation of language, completely arbitrary, and making "liberalism" anything you like or don't like.

The writer also says:

In post-war architecture, there are some splendid buildings, such as the Seagram Building in New York City, yet these buildings have broken with the Western Tradition. In the past, the Tradition went through all kinds of changes, for example, Victorian was succeeded by Beaux Arts which was succeeded by Art Deco. Yet each of these very different styles was, in its own way, based in and continuous with the Tradition. Modernist architecture breaks with the Tradition; it conveys nothing of the past.

True and that is because it is automobile-oriented. The stylistic differences (e.g. no columns) are not the critical elements which separate the modern from the traditional city. The big difference between the traditional city is that the modern one is built around the car. So if you want to call Henry Ford a liberal, go ahead. But at that point words really have no meaning.

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via  2 blowhards.

Comments

[Questioner]

Wait, wait. You're saying that modernism in architecture is cut off from tradition because it's car-centric? I hope I'm misunderstanding you, because that makes no sense. Wasn't the idea that we owe nothing to the past one of Modernism's central tenets? OK, that's a simplification of things, but I was under the impression that the broad Modernist movement, born in part out of horror at the inability of Western civilization with all its traditions to prevent the needless slaughter of millions in WWI, had the rejection of tradition as its very foundation. Surely the architectural modernists would have thumbed their noses at the received wisdom of their predecessors even if streetcars had stuck around, or if they had been designing around treadmills or pneumatic people-moving tubes or some such thing?

[Brian Miller]

I think David is more concerned about the modernist "city" than building design per se. And, I think he is dead on there. Even the weak, cost-cutting attempts to do "traditional" design today are cartoonish pastiche scaled to the speed of the automobile and the scale of modern automobile-dependent retailers. I suspect that a modernism that evolved around a traditional transportation network would be less universally pernicious? (I know there are counter-examples, but...).