On Corb

The Toronto Star seems to go out of its way to find terrible architecture columnists. There are two architecture schools in this city (the Daniels School at U of T and Ryerson University), Waterloo (my alma mater) send most of its graduates here - how hard can it be to find someone who knows something about architecture? Today they published this shit. I know a lot of architects who dislike Corb but none of them shit on him so thoughtlessly. Mallick is the author of two books, Pearls for Vinegar and Cake or Death, which apparently qualify her to take a dump on the most important architect of the last century. While I don't want to stop at ad hominem arguments, I don't want to dissect the article either. I'm afraid if I read it again some of it might become lodged in my head.

Corb did hate cities. He shared with the makers of the Hachette World Guide (or simply "the Blue Guide") a predisposition that Roland Barthes described;

"This old Alpine myth (since it dates back to the nineteenth century) which Gide rightly associated with the Helvetico-Protestant morality and which has always functioned as a hybrid coumpound of the cult of nature and puritanism (regeneration through clean air, moral ideas at the sight of mountain-tops, summit climbing as city virtue, etc)."

It would have been tragic if any of Corb's plans for Paris were realized. They weren't. Corb is definitely part of the reason the "tower in the park" became the dominant motif for such infamous projects as Pruitt-Igoe in Toledo and Cabrini Green in Chicago. The tower in the park, we now know, is a very bad idea. Not as bad as sticking hundreds of thousands of private McMansions out where they can only be reached by the highway. Mallick doesn't have a problem with that. She seems to see some virtue in faux-Victorian bric-a-brac pasted onto generic frames. Most people (and everyone who has been educated in design) despise the near-Tudor mansion with a three car garage fronting the street. Mallick prefers to attack the Corbusian "machines for living":

"stacked slots made of cheap thin materials, sans ornamentation, with flat roofs, without distinguishing features. It's a bank of safety deposit boxes, the back room of a shoe store."

It would be helpful if we knew what buildings she was referring to. It certainly can't be the five famous villas of his early career - absolutely gorgeous buildings that caused a radical change in how architects conceived residential design. Nor is it the famous Unité in Marseilles, which remains one of the best multi-residential buildings ever built. Nor is it the cabin he built for his wife (the so-called Cabanon). Nor is it the ecclesiastical buildings that he designed and built at the end of his career. It might be the worker's houses he designed in Pessac, buildings that were very poorly constructed (and poorly detailed) and have not aged well. Far more likely it is a general complaint against modernism aimed at its most famous practitioner without sufficient research, care, or any real interest other than making a bunch of architects very angry (and getting as close to one can to "sensational" while confining oneself to design).

Rather than give a detailed history of modern architecture, which has been done before (and better), I'd like to question the logic that argues we should drive in the most sophisticated vehicles engineering can provide, have access to more processing power in our phones than NASA used for the Apollo missions, and by integrated into a world-wide digital network 24/7 but still live in houses in no substantial way different from those our grandparents lived in (or wished they could afford). Doesn't that seem a little strange?

Take a walk through the most expensive and desirable neighbourhoods in your city. Doesn't it seem strange that people will spend millions of dollars on a house that is in no way better than something built 200 years ago? Faux-Tudor, Mediterranean modern, faux-Victorian. All copies of copies of copies.

Mallick is ignorant about architecture and that's not any kind of crime. Most people are. She might wish for architecture that was more carefully detailed and more ornamental. I hope that's not a crime, I want that too. But what is criminal (or more properly negligent) is she is thoughtless about something she presumes to write about. Here she is at her most simple-minded:

"The architects of the Bauhaus - and to be fair I should be blaming the monstrous Lubwig Mies van der Rohe because Mies ultimately did more damage than Le Corb - hated colour, detail, expense, moldings, fabrics and privacy. I love those things. So do "workers." So do rich people."

Never mind the Bauhaus' textile design program. Never mind the book on colour theory written by Bauhaus professor Johannes Itten (still one of the best). These are tired complaints. No one attacks modernism anymore. There has been no reason to since before I was born! It's been done - done better and done to fucking death.

Maybe Mallick can tear herself from her next cake-based bast-seller and visit one of Corb's works - like La Tourette. There, if she has the wit (something I profoundly doubt), she can see one of the great master-works of 20th century architecture. And maybe she will see the confluences between Medieval cathedrals and Corb's sombre, thoughtful, and moving use of light. Or maybe she will just see a building with no trim, fabric, or privacy.