Modernist Architecture: Killer of Heritage
King Midas by Andrea Vaccaro, 1670
The story goes that Midas, the Vaseliphs of Phrygia (central Anatolia) was given a chance to have a wish granted to him via a servant of the God Dionysius, Midas, being a greedy King, wished to have everything he touched be turned to gold, after his wish was granted, he ran around his palace to turn everything into gold, after his fun was had, he would attempt to eat only to have the food turn to gold, his daughter walked in on the King crying solemnly, and when Midas touched his daughter, she turned into gold, killing her. Its modern equivalent is that of the Modernist Movement that kills our history, insults our traditions, erases our culture, and separates us from heritage.
The Modernist movement is a rejection of any architectural element that makes us who were are, according to the mentally ill pioneers of Modernist architecture, such as Walter Gropius, Le Corbuiser, and Adolf Loos, ornament is a crime, buildings must be like machines, we must strip down architecture to the bare minimal, the less decoration architecture has the more pure, decoration is a waste of material, money and labour, and so on with their idiotic lunacy, the Modernist movement spread tumorous (yes, it is that bad) ideology to a world that was never minimalist to begin with, not with nature, or biology, or architecture.
When we think of colonialism, we usually have the French, English, Spanish… Most of Western Europe come to mind. The colonizers had a habit of destroying a peoples’ heritage and replacing it with their own, only reflecting parts of the indigenous culture in architecture, the French and Spanish primarily attempted to export their ideals on the world, cities like Beirut, Algiers and Ho Chi Min City have the urbanism of Paris but the architecture was a blend, the same can be seen in the Spanish colonial cities.
Their architectural language was spread successfully because they worked relatively well in said cities, the climate in which the colonizer built was respected at least and many of the colonized adopted their methods after seeing its compatibility.
While the Europeans colonized most of the world, they were unsuccessful in irradicating the heritage of the many people they conquered and subdued, it is only after the World Wars, that our heritage was bulldozed for the flawed dogma of the Modernist movements from the West, entire cities with thousands of years of history was wiped out, why? Skyscrapers and the want to appease the west by looking progressive to them instead of actually sticking to what made us unique and gave us a sense of identity.
The way out of this mess is actually simple and also applies to the west, the rejection of the Modernist movement is the first step, Modernist architecture cant compete with traditional architecture on every matter, not on the climate, or sustainability, or mental health, or physical health and much more, once we remove the tumour, we can focus on the prevention and cure.
The public and private have a role to play, the public, such as governments, can have a transition period where they slowly introduce courses in traditional architecture for there to be choices, the government can also insist on only building beautifully, be it their offices, civic buildings like courthouses or even social housing, having schools where the traditional arts are reintroduced into the curriculum or maybe have systems for patronage of artists, song writers, poets, masons, tailors and so on. The government can do a ton and so can the private individual.
The private citizen can make petitions, conduct interviews, seek grants for research, sponsor an artist, work with a group to win design competitions, help with evolving our traditions forward and so on, I am not creative enough to think of more solutions but everyone has a role to play.
Don’t give up your heritage for a bunch of capitalistic pigs who want to see us erase our culture so their warped agenda of making us soulless brainless apes who are good consumers come to fruition.
