I understand that the folks at CityLab don’t know that I exist and have never heard of RationalUrbanism, but it still feels as though they really are just trying to get my goat having published yet another tribute to an American modernist whose best works appear to, on their best day and in just the right light, amount to a flaming pile of shit.
This on the same week that, more close to home, the former Hampden County Hall of Justice:
Is having testing done to see if its killing the people who work there. Meanwhile the many decades older Richardson courthouse right next door keeps doing what it was built to do without any issues of the kind.
Modernist buildings don’t “building” so well. Andrés Duany says they’re trying to be sculptures; they don’t always do that well either, though I admit a weakness for this one.
I’ll give them this, the weaknesses of modernism help us to appreciate just how great our forefathers were at designing buildings that only killed us if they fell on top of us.