This essay seems sort of half-baked, starting only in the 1980s; no discussion of modern European architectural cultural wars is complete without a nod to their origin as a reactionary statement: Rhymes with Yahtzee.
There’s a reason *Speer* became one of the most powerful men of the Reich. Neoclassical architecture had a very powerful pull on the half-assed Austrian landscape painter — Austere, grand in scope, cold and sterile in materials, columns, open spaces, marble everywhere.
When your ideology lays claim to being *the* inheritors and pinnacle of Western civilization, the final evolution of a 3000-year history of excellence, of course you’re going to gravitate towards those structures that ape Roman and Greek progenitors.
And the notion may be right wing now, but it was not even expressly right-wing uniformly through its history. The US — a distinct product of radical enlightenment thought — laid a similar claim to a shared cultural patrimony when it staked out DC. Have you actually ever *been* to Washington? Or seen what sort of architecture tue French were gravitating towards at the same time?
These grand, giant, traditional stone edifices have always been a cultural signifier, as much about the past as about a future. And when you are making a statement about your past, you are building for posterity, for timelessness.
(And honestly, the trend of giant class cubes are ugly as hell.).
Maybe this would hold for Western Europe where all architecture is a legacy of a society’s own civilization. In Central and Eastern Europe brutalist and then postmodern and neofuturistic architecture are seen as invasions of Soviet tyranny and Western globalist market expansionism, respectively, so people look to something they see as “theirs”.
A battleground for all decent Europeans. It’s a crime against humanity to remove old historical facades to make a ugly “modern” facade with “timeless design”. A big group of shitty architects are turning European cities into soul less concrete, glass and steel blocks. Fucking horrible.
It’s not only right-wingers who think architectural heritage ought to be preserved as much as possible.
There’s undeniably beauty on historic buildings, and I’m not even right-wing by any means.
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Why the fuck did this get downvoted
This essay seems sort of half-baked, starting only in the 1980s; no discussion of modern European architectural cultural wars is complete without a nod to their origin as a reactionary statement: Rhymes with Yahtzee.
There’s a reason *Speer* became one of the most powerful men of the Reich. Neoclassical architecture had a very powerful pull on the half-assed Austrian landscape painter — Austere, grand in scope, cold and sterile in materials, columns, open spaces, marble everywhere.
When your ideology lays claim to being *the* inheritors and pinnacle of Western civilization, the final evolution of a 3000-year history of excellence, of course you’re going to gravitate towards those structures that ape Roman and Greek progenitors.
And the notion may be right wing now, but it was not even expressly right-wing uniformly through its history. The US — a distinct product of radical enlightenment thought — laid a similar claim to a shared cultural patrimony when it staked out DC. Have you actually ever *been* to Washington? Or seen what sort of architecture tue French were gravitating towards at the same time?
These grand, giant, traditional stone edifices have always been a cultural signifier, as much about the past as about a future. And when you are making a statement about your past, you are building for posterity, for timelessness.
(And honestly, the trend of giant class cubes are ugly as hell.).
Maybe this would hold for Western Europe where all architecture is a legacy of a society’s own civilization. In Central and Eastern Europe brutalist and then postmodern and neofuturistic architecture are seen as invasions of Soviet tyranny and Western globalist market expansionism, respectively, so people look to something they see as “theirs”.
A battleground for all decent Europeans. It’s a crime against humanity to remove old historical facades to make a ugly “modern” facade with “timeless design”. A big group of shitty architects are turning European cities into soul less concrete, glass and steel blocks. Fucking horrible.
It’s not only right-wingers who think architectural heritage ought to be preserved as much as possible.
There’s undeniably beauty on historic buildings, and I’m not even right-wing by any means.