The centre for UK PSYOPS and subversion - MI6... What else could it be?
There are certainly exceptions; but most of the best buildings in the history of the world were built by members of "craft-guilds" (such as masons) - and without "architects".
And, for sure, over the past century since Art Deco; architecture has had a powerfully malign influence.
The deliberate anti-beautiful impulse of the past century of architects is evident from the difference between the housing of recent domestic buildings - which are merely practical-without-beauty*, and those that were architect-designed with big budgets.
(*Or, at least, houses were mostly functional; until the allegedly "anti-Carbon" and "environmental" regulations began to inflict complex, expensive, dysfunctionality on all construction work.)
Whereas the large, "showcase", private and public buildings - those that employ high-status architectural corporations or individuals; are anti-aesthetic, anti-human, anti-God monstrosities.
Such that the purposive, actively-evil turn of our civilization is advertised explicitly, unambiguously, indeed shamelessly - more by its architecture than by almost anything else.
As a young man I recall reading Spengler and his view of art and architechture in declining civilisations these detached from the living spirit that produced earlier forms of buildings and art. Souless functional structures devoid of meaning or beauty and so called :modern art. Odd, in my family we like the old "charming" downtowns that emanate a vibe. Housing and office subdivisions feel as souless and uninspring as a parking lot.
ReplyDelete@RC - "Housing and office subdivisions feel as souless and uninspring as a parking lot."
ReplyDeleteYes, and not by accident - but systematically and purposively thus, consistently imposed across several generations.
i like the mi6 building. it's a shame it houses such a terrible bureaucracy.
ReplyDelete@Laeth - Form and content are perfectly matched, IMO. First time I saw it across the Thames, the feeling it evoked was exactly consonant with what went on there.
ReplyDeleteAlmost pyramidal, like those Ministries in Orwell (the author, of course).
Delete@a-p - The relationship between geometry and goodness is not direct - such that I believe that ancient Egypt was a good civilization - overall and by intent, even though the pyramids are inhuman in form. But I think that the more obviously geometry obtrudes on us, the more likely that the motivation is evil - the cubes and rectangles of modernism are an example; and when moderns mimick pyramids or obelisks it is with a spirit of subversion, mockery, shock and awe.
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