This page contains links to online reviews of and purchase sites for Making Dystopia: The Strange Rise and Survival of Architectural Barbarism, a history of modern architecture by architectural historian James Stevens Curl, author of more than 40 books about architecture, mainly in his native Britain, most of which have little to do with modern architecture. Making Dystopia was published by Oxford University Press in the fall of 2018 and is, from a traditionalist perspective, the most comprehensive description of its subject to date. It has borne the full brunt of attack by modernist critics in the U.K., where his antagonists are quick to regret that Stevens Curl has revived an anti-modernist crusade that they pretend to believe had concluded with Prince Charles’s “carbuncle” speech in 1984. The public has been skeptical of modern architecture since it first appeared in the early 20th century. Criticism of modern architecture has been constant since it took over the architectural establishment in the late 1940s; Dystopia is merely the latest major critique, though perhaps one that, with its sterling qualities, will succeed, where others have failed, to shift the opposition to modernism into high gear, leading to its replacement as the default style for most architecture today. This page is an effort to facilitate such a shift by collecting in one place widespread material about the book.
Professor Curl’s public lecture tour of the United States in May 2019:
May 8 – Philadelphia https://classicist-phila.org/
May 10 – Washington, DC http://www.classicist-washington.org/
May 13 – New Orleans http://classicist-nola.org/
May 14 – Denver http://classicist-rmc.org/
May 16 – Boston http://www.classicist-ne.org/
Links to purchase Making Dystopia from three top online sources:
Reviews of Making Dystopia:
- David Brussat, “James Stevens Curl Sacks Modern Architecture,” Traditional Building, Aug. 15, 2018
- Giovanna Costantini, “Review,” Leonardo Reviews, September 2018
- Theodore Dalrymple, “Architectural Dystopia,” New English Review, October 2018
- Theodore Dalrymple, “Eyesores Galore,” Taki’s Magazine, Oct. 13, 2018
- Nikos Salingaros, “Review,” ArchNet IJAR, Vol. 12, Issue 3, November 2018
- John Smylie, “Review,” International Network of Traditional Building, Architecture and Urbanism, November 2018
- Karen Latimer, “Review,” [Click green “Download” box; follow instruction.] The Journal of the Royal Society of Ulster Architects, November 2018
- David Brussat, Making Dystopia, Architecture Here and There, Nov. 2, 2018 (Occasional blogs on AHAT address Making Dystopia.)
- Anthony Daniels, “Authoritarianism in Cement and Steel,” Quadrant, Nov. 4, 2018
- Mark Alan Hewitt, “Was Modernism Really International? A New History Says No,” Common/Edge, Nov. 14, 2018
- Graham Cunningham, “The dystopia we made,” The New Criterion, December 2018
- Sir Roger Scruton, “Review,” New Design Ideas, Dec. 3, 2018
- Nikos Salingaros, “Review,” Traditional Building, Dec. 11, 2018
- Brian G. Scott, “Review,” ResearchGate, January 2019
- James Stevens Curl vs. Barnabas Calder “Online Debate & Survey,” Prospect, February 2019
- Witold Rybcznski, “Modernism and the Making of Dystopia,” Architect, Feb. 5, 2019
- Michael Mehaffy, “Emperor’s New Buildings,” The Public Square/CNU, Feb. 19, 2019
- Theodore Dalrymple, “Crimes in Concrete,” First Things, June 2019