Form Follows Fiasco: Why Modern Architecture Hasn't Worked by Peter Blake

by Peter Blake

Skillfully blending documentation and illustrations, and gradually sharpening polemic and humor, Blake calmly explodes the fantasies of modern dogma that most architects once accepted. Such truisms as 'form follows function', 'the open plan,' and 'purity of design' are exposed as volatile ideas. The intricately planned, artistically designed components of the Ideal City have divided urban areas into tidy ghettos of culture, education, business, residence...even pornography...alienating individuals and threatening not only the economic futures of our cities, but civilized aspects of life in the West as well.This book calls for the slaughtering of the sacred cows of the Modern Movement, for a moratorium on the destruction of existing buildings and historic landmarks, and for an end to the construction of skyscrapers, new highways in developed nations, and single-use zoning. Blake demands legislation to hold building industries responsible for performance of their products, and a restructuring for performance of their products, and a restructuring of architectural education into something more basic and more human.

Genres: Architecture, Design, Nonfiction, Cities, History

Paperback

First published January 1, 1977

Reviews

[Text Addict · Rating 4 out of 5]

Let's just say that this book confirmed all my prejudices against modern architecture and gave me a few new ones, too.

Yesterday I visited the "Oculus" at the World Trade Center in New York City, and I really really wish the designer of it had read, and taken to heart, the complaints and criticisms Blake made back in the 1970s.

It seems that Blake passed away in 2006, and I imagine that he remained disappointed (but probably not surprised) by the amount of inertia that Modernism continued, and continues, to have.

[Judy]

A critique of the failure of the modern architectural movement to address human reality. Modern technology has not delivered the quality of durable building materials that the building industry has promised. For example: the glass in glass skins has had problems, air movement around skyscrapers, people tend to congregate instead in "old" cities with streets, and lastly the dogma of the modernist movement that "form follows function" has not held up because modern form has been antifunctional.
Ortega and Gasset once wrote that "order is not a pressure which is imposed on society from without, but an equilibrium which is set up from within." p. 163
"The skyscraper is, quite obviously, the most visible symbol of the Modern Movement." p. 69 It rises above churches, temples, city halls, etc.

[Fábio Fonseca · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting view and explanation on how modern architecture functioned and on the way modernist ideals worked. But I was expecting a more profound writing on the way modern planning, inside the house, conditioned people on the way people live architecture.

[Chris Brimmer · Rating 5 out of 5]

excellent look at why buildings of high concept don't always work