April 30, 2007
Subtraction by Subtraction
Aesthetic and social causes, seemingly reinforcing one another, animated modernist architecture as it developed in the 1920s and 30s. Victorian architecture was rich in expensive ornamentation; its public buildings arose as imitations of Greek and Roman structures. Aesthetically, architectural modernism, like modernism more generally, was a revolt against Victorian forms and their art-deco successors. The “symbols, icons and forms of that world,” modernists argued, had lost their meaning with the decline of religious belief; it was the modernists’ job to “make it new.” In an effort both to break with the past and to provide the working classes with better living conditions, Glazer explains, the modernists insisted that buildings should be relentlessly functional and rational, accommodating specific needs. Architects should make no concessions to public taste—the public would need to learn what to like.
