Tag Archives: Making Dystopia

Rural life faces grim reaper

Posted on September 13, 2022 by David Brussat

The shadow darkening over pastures and woodlands, farm villages and hamlets probably threatens the rural style of life more in Britain than in America, where only a remnant of family farms, dairy or crops, survives in New England and the … Continue reading →

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Church beauty as it used to be

Posted on June 15, 2022 by David Brussat

Naturally, the beauty of churches has diminished along with the practice of religion in the West. And yet it is every day clearer and clearer that people want something to believe in, and too many end up believing in nothing, … Continue reading →

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The joy of hating modernism

Posted on May 15, 2022 by David Brussat

My favorite writer of all time is William Hazlitt, the British essayist of the early 19th century and contemporary of Charles Lamb and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He was considered a “good hater” (or maybe it was “a good damner”) and … Continue reading →

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“Dystopia” three years on

Posted on November 21, 2021 by David Brussat

Three years have passed since British architectural historian James Stevens Curl’s masterful Making Dystopia was published by Oxford University Press. Subtitled “The Strange Rise and Survival of Architectural Barbarism,” the book can only have been about modern architecture, perhaps the … Continue reading →

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Russia’s artful classicist – Da!

Posted on January 26, 2021 by David Brussat

Historian James Stevens Curl, the author of Making Dystopia (2018), the most comprehensive critical history of modern architecture, has sent me a marvelous video of the classical work of the Russian architect Mikhail Filippov. His work has been described as … Continue reading →

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Unify in the fight for beauty

Posted on February 11, 2020 by David Brussat

The draft executive order to encourage classical architecture for federal buildings in Washington and elsewhere has shifted the world of architecture on its axis. Patrick Webb, a teacher of ornamental plastering at the American College of Building Arts in Charleston, … Continue reading →

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A “cauldron of perversions”

Posted on November 1, 2019 by David Brussat

I did a double-take when I saw, in Metropolis, the article “Far From Being a Temple to Rationality, the Bauhaus Was a Cauldron of Perversions,” by Beatriz Colomina. Of course, I knew that already, having read “Making Dystopia,” James Stevens … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Architecture History | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Dalrymple: Curl’s ‘Dystopia’

Posted on June 11, 2019 by David Brussat

Theodore Dalrymple, the British prison doctor, psychiatrist and social critic, has written several reviews of James Stevens Curl’s book Making Dystopia, the most detailed and penetrating history of modern architecture written thus far. Each of Dalrymple’s several reviews seems intended … Continue reading →

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‘Spirit of the age’ bugaboo

Posted on May 29, 2019 by David Brussat

Among the most inane of modern architecture’s founding conceits is that buildings reflect the spirit of the age. If a building truly reflects the spirit of the age rather than, as most people would expect, its architect’s desire to express … Continue reading →

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A thrilling week of classicism

Posted on May 26, 2019 by David Brussat

I am still coming down from the high honor of attending the Arthur Ross Awards, of the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art, as guest of James Stevens Curl, author of Making Dystopia and, for that, winner of the 2019 … Continue reading →

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