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Living Machines: Bauhaus Architecture as Sexual Ideology
Following up his best selling books Degenerate Moderns and Dionysos Rising, E. Michael Jones completes the trilogy as he reveals in this book how modern architecture arose out of the disordered moral lives of its creators.
Beginning with the simultaneous collapse of both his marriage and the Austro-Hungarian empire, Walter Gropius formulated an architectural rhetoric that would speak to the needs of the newly emerging modern man. As a sexually liberated social monad, modern man would have no need for home or family, no need to be rooted in a particular time or place. He was to live henceforth in the "international style." Soon that deeply materialistic, sterile architectural vision would conquer the world.
From the suburbs of Moscow to the south side of Chicago, the new man would live in machines, "living machines", to use Gropius' words. Jones' book is an explanation of where that vision came from, where it led, and why it failed. Illustrated.
128 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 1995
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About the author
E. Michael Jones
69 books363 followersCatholic writer, former professor at Saint Mary's College in Indiana and the current editor of Culture Wars magazine.
E. Micheal Jones is controversial for his criticism against judaism.
E. Micheal Jones is controversial for his criticism against judaism.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
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August 4, 2011Bauhaus architecture can be seen in houses that have flat roofs, non load-bearing walls, and are raised above the earth. The nature of Bauhaus architecture is that of modern man: designed to be functional and nothing else. Not only in homes but in apartments as well. Bauhaus represents virtually every condominium, high-rise apartment, and college dorm in the world (is it any wonder that college dorm life is virtually synonymous with sexual orgy?).
Bauhaus architecture was the invention of Walter Gropius after the first world war. The goal of Bauhaus architecture is to design a building where man's ties to the ground and family are severed but at the same time he lives in close proximity with other people while never developing ties to these people (this is necessary for sexual liberation; p. 84). The college dorm gives one enough privacy for sexual escapades but enough proximity to other people to make the act possible. Dorms are simply cubes stacked one upon another. There is no soul there, nor can there be.
Bauhaus architecture is not merely meant to destroy the family, but to propogate an entirely new social order. It was to represent politics by design, or state socialism (107). The anti-Christian nature of Bauhaus is evident in the flat roof: a flat roof by definition is an imposition of ideology upon a reality (e.g., it will leak). But more importantly, a flat roof represents modern man's negation of God, and without God there is no future (102).
The alternative to Bauhaus, which Jones does not develop, is in the rich moral vision given us by Christianity. The Gothic cathedral, the meditarranean villa, and the Byzantium dome all represent a God who is not only truth and goodness, but beauty himself. The solution, Jones notes, is to go back to the fork in the road where we made the wrong turn and fix it (67).
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Jacob Aitken
Bauhaus architecture was the invention of Walter Gropius after the first world war. The goal of Bauhaus architecture is to design a building where man's ties to the ground and family are severed but at the same time he lives in close proximity with other people while never developing ties to these people (this is necessary for sexual liberation; p. 84). The college dorm gives one enough privacy for sexual escapades but enough proximity to other people to make the act possible. Dorms are simply cubes stacked one upon another. There is no soul there, nor can there be.
Bauhaus architecture is not merely meant to destroy the family, but to propogate an entirely new social order. It was to represent politics by design, or state socialism (107). The anti-Christian nature of Bauhaus is evident in the flat roof: a flat roof by definition is an imposition of ideology upon a reality (e.g., it will leak). But more importantly, a flat roof represents modern man's negation of God, and without God there is no future (102).
The alternative to Bauhaus, which Jones does not develop, is in the rich moral vision given us by Christianity. The Gothic cathedral, the meditarranean villa, and the Byzantium dome all represent a God who is not only truth and goodness, but beauty himself. The solution, Jones notes, is to go back to the fork in the road where we made the wrong turn and fix it (67).
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Jacob Aitken
January 4, 2009
Very good. the basic argument is that Bauhaus Architecure is a manifestation of a love of death and fornication
September 18, 2023
Super opinionated essay. The historical chapters are at least interesting but the rest of the book tries to make some dubious connections between the biographical and ideological aspects of Gropius' work. While it is true that Bauhaus tried to reconfigure the structure of familial relations by intervening in the built environment of the emerging industrial society, as the movement's own manifestos reveal, the central thesis of this book is that Gropius and his associates were basically immoral degenerates who wanted to force everyone into sexual socialism. It's a big jump that really bespeaks of the author's own ideology
Moreover, his present-day chapters about people living in housing projects are ludicrous, filled with racist and condescending comments about working class African Americans. Jones states over and over that the inhabitants of Bauhaus-style social housing are victims of socialism, while failing to address the underlying issues that produce poverty and alienation from community in the United States. It would seem it's all about the buildings.
Moreover, his present-day chapters about people living in housing projects are ludicrous, filled with racist and condescending comments about working class African Americans. Jones states over and over that the inhabitants of Bauhaus-style social housing are victims of socialism, while failing to address the underlying issues that produce poverty and alienation from community in the United States. It would seem it's all about the buildings.
April 21, 2019
An important book that explains the connection between Gropius’s sexual immorality, his vision for egalitarian architecture and housing and the lives of those who have suffered inhabiting it.
March 5, 2019
Ironically, while reading this book I was watching Gweneth Paltrow in a food travel show, Spain on the Road Again' with costar Mario Batali where she commented on Frank Gehry's Museum in Bilbo Spain. She says to Batali, 'it (the building) doesn't even serve as a building, it's art', which underscores exactly what Dr. Jones reveals in Living Machines. What was so funny was Gweneth got dolled up for the tour of the museum and was literally limping around in stiletto high heels, 'shoes' which didn't serve as shoes at all, but surely were some kind of art...
Now, Living Machines explains in the words of the architects themselves how the architects deliberately, knowingly, acted to design buildings to subvert the private family living space and subvert the spaces where we go to work and to church. Whether one lives in Gropius' projects on the South side of Chicago, worked in his model Bauhaus shoe factory in Germany, or lives in a luxury glass box apartment in Vancouver the intention of the architect is to control people by putting people in dangerously close proximity to one another to normalizing the loss of privacy in our (controlled) living spaces and also to normalize ones exposure to hazardous public (uncontrolled) spaces. The single family dwelling has deliberately been made unaffordable so people can be corralled into box-living like a prison cell called an apartment or a project on the South Side of Chicago. The end result is the same. Projects, dormitories, and apartment buildings are simply euphemisms for the same exact style of prison-like living imposed on the masses and the architects and social engineers are laughing all the way to the bank. When one learns of the architects hatred of the people they build their structures for one comes to realize the sociopathic and totalitarian nature of hacks like Ephraim Goldberg, aka Frank Gerhy, I.M. Pei and Peter Eisenman. These people are the architects of destruction of the family and our society and they profit greatly from their hatred of Logos, and hatred of humanity. Many might find Dr. Jones choice of words disturbing at times but realize his words come in response to the hatred and evil of the words written by the architects themselves and their biographers. This is an adult book for people that are in total command of their cognitive dissonance. Snowflakes who dare peruse these pages will melt immediately into a angry puddle of rage after learning what and who these men really are: Evil sexual deviant social engineers who hate the idea of community, marriage and family.
Now, Living Machines explains in the words of the architects themselves how the architects deliberately, knowingly, acted to design buildings to subvert the private family living space and subvert the spaces where we go to work and to church. Whether one lives in Gropius' projects on the South side of Chicago, worked in his model Bauhaus shoe factory in Germany, or lives in a luxury glass box apartment in Vancouver the intention of the architect is to control people by putting people in dangerously close proximity to one another to normalizing the loss of privacy in our (controlled) living spaces and also to normalize ones exposure to hazardous public (uncontrolled) spaces. The single family dwelling has deliberately been made unaffordable so people can be corralled into box-living like a prison cell called an apartment or a project on the South Side of Chicago. The end result is the same. Projects, dormitories, and apartment buildings are simply euphemisms for the same exact style of prison-like living imposed on the masses and the architects and social engineers are laughing all the way to the bank. When one learns of the architects hatred of the people they build their structures for one comes to realize the sociopathic and totalitarian nature of hacks like Ephraim Goldberg, aka Frank Gerhy, I.M. Pei and Peter Eisenman. These people are the architects of destruction of the family and our society and they profit greatly from their hatred of Logos, and hatred of humanity. Many might find Dr. Jones choice of words disturbing at times but realize his words come in response to the hatred and evil of the words written by the architects themselves and their biographers. This is an adult book for people that are in total command of their cognitive dissonance. Snowflakes who dare peruse these pages will melt immediately into a angry puddle of rage after learning what and who these men really are: Evil sexual deviant social engineers who hate the idea of community, marriage and family.
December 23, 2025
Plato believed that the order of the city was the order of the soul writ large. Man’s internal spiritual order, or disorder, is manifested in the political and cultural arrangement of his surroundings. In Living Machines, the final book in E. Michael Jones’ Degenerate Moderns trilogy, he shows this to be true for modern architecture as well.
“Anyone who has stood dumbfounded before the sterility and ugliness of many modern buildings must have wondered what conception of humanity inspired these structures.”
The inspiration was the factory. Walter Gropius, the founder of Bauhaus architecture, stated that “the house of the future is going to be produced like the Ford automobile;” turning the home into a “machine for living in.” This meant the “industrialization of the hearth;” heating piped into the complex, obviating the need for fireplaces.
The apartment replaced the home. The goal of the new architecture was to produce imitation factories which stood for the socialist rearrangement of social life, specifically as a way of subverting the family, making the individual the fundamental social unit.
This vision of communal living found its most complete expression in industrial-inspired city housing projects and university dormitory architecture.
Adding to the soullessness of the new cityscape, the flat roof became the socialists’ negation of God through the language of architecture. “The flat roof provides a direct and frontal confrontation with the heavens and not the rapprochement of the peaked roof–a rapprochement that reaches its pinnacle in the church steeple, which tapers off to nothing as its way of meeting the infinite.”
This transgressive denial of divine order in architecture generates ugly monstrosities, manifesting “a hatred of Logos in stone.”
The absence of Vitruvian symmetry, which had provided buildings with sacred proportions, strength and beauty derived from the body of man (the image of God), results in the paradoxical abolition of man from modern architectural design. Consequently, these projects become an attack on the nature of what man is, and man’s nature is the only reason any house gets built.
“Anyone who has stood dumbfounded before the sterility and ugliness of many modern buildings must have wondered what conception of humanity inspired these structures.”
The inspiration was the factory. Walter Gropius, the founder of Bauhaus architecture, stated that “the house of the future is going to be produced like the Ford automobile;” turning the home into a “machine for living in.” This meant the “industrialization of the hearth;” heating piped into the complex, obviating the need for fireplaces.
The apartment replaced the home. The goal of the new architecture was to produce imitation factories which stood for the socialist rearrangement of social life, specifically as a way of subverting the family, making the individual the fundamental social unit.
This vision of communal living found its most complete expression in industrial-inspired city housing projects and university dormitory architecture.
Adding to the soullessness of the new cityscape, the flat roof became the socialists’ negation of God through the language of architecture. “The flat roof provides a direct and frontal confrontation with the heavens and not the rapprochement of the peaked roof–a rapprochement that reaches its pinnacle in the church steeple, which tapers off to nothing as its way of meeting the infinite.”
This transgressive denial of divine order in architecture generates ugly monstrosities, manifesting “a hatred of Logos in stone.”
The absence of Vitruvian symmetry, which had provided buildings with sacred proportions, strength and beauty derived from the body of man (the image of God), results in the paradoxical abolition of man from modern architectural design. Consequently, these projects become an attack on the nature of what man is, and man’s nature is the only reason any house gets built.
September 10, 2023
Altogether quite solid exhibition of architectural critique mixed with historical narrative. I enjoy the dual timeline structure. Jones’s interest in the libidinal forces underlying grobius’s architectural ideology is very valuable but slightly less digestible due to the vine-boom worthy large spoonful of snark…
Oops, just googled him, he’s a raging Catholic antisemite! Which explains the snark and , when he allows himself, racism.
Ugh
Oops, just googled him, he’s a raging Catholic antisemite! Which explains the snark and , when he allows himself, racism.
Ugh
June 14, 2021
Unique thesis, creatively displayed. Jones' personal/theological angle is convincing. Writing can be repetitive, this is where it suffered most - tangents could be shortened.
November 2, 2022
Nazi scum with expertise in nothing.
February 7, 2024
Excellent book I highly recommend.
February 16, 2025
Great book, very helpful in practically defining and describing modern and postmodern architecture, and presents an interesting history of their origins.
March 3, 2015
Good on history; low on thesis. One of Jones's poorer works. Much better is From Bauhaus to Our House by Tom Wolfe
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews