"There is something genuinely daemonic about, to take one prominent example, the brutalist monstrosity that is the Barack Obama Presidential Center…"
. . . Once again am I reminded of the Mitchell & Webb “Are We the Baddies?” sketch, in which two beleaguered Nazi soldiers ponder whether they might in fact be the villains of the ongoing conflict. “Have you noticed that our caps actually have little pictures of skulls on them? … Their [the Allies] symbols are all quite nice! Stars, stripes, lions, sickles… You gotta say, it’s better than a skull. I mean, I really can’t think of anything worse, as a symbol, than a skull!” One can imagine a modernist or post-modernist architect contemplating why it is that their traditionalist counterparts have the Classical orders, or Gothic rib vaults, or the sustainable, natural, recyclable building materials of vernacular architectural styles, while they have hideous failures and blunders like the Obamalisk, the Buffalo City Court Building, Boston City Hall, Pruitt-Igoe, and Grenfell Tower, among so many others.
"That modernist architects never actually experience this moment of self-awareness would indicate that modernism, like other symptoms of leftism generally, may indeed be a biological phenomenon, the result of a smaller-than-normal or underdeveloped amygdala, and the attendant inability to experience a healthy disgust response. How else can we explain the decision on the part of the Obama Foundation, in conjunction with its hired architectural firm, to commission the Obamalisk on purpose? This is not a science fiction film, or a J.G. Ballard novel, but here we are, in real life, with the skyline of a great American city defaced by yet another brutalist monstrosity when we all know better by now, or should.
"Hence, my lack of concern over the renovation of the East Wing of the White House, and the drummed-up controversy it has engendered in the “popular” press. James C. McCrery II, the architect in charge of the upgrades, has a fine track record of designing traditionalist buildings that can be constructed on time, on budget, and to the satisfaction of his patrons. McRery has, during his career, done something vanishingly few fashionably modernist architects have ever accomplished in their lives, namely to design buildings of genuine aesthetic appeal, which people might actually want to look at or be in. These include the Renaissance Revival Cathedral of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus in Knoxville, Tennessee, tastefully clad in Indiana limestone and Roman-style bricks sourced from Ohio; the Renaissance-inspired St. Mary Help of Christians Catholic Church in Aiken, South Carolina, which won a John Russell Pope Award for its marvelous design (the pediment mosaic is a particular inspired touch); and the Gothic monastery currently being erected for the Carmelites of Wyoming near Meeteetse, with its limestone facades, delicate tracery, and soaring spires made possible (and affordable) by the use of innovative CNC fabrication on the part of the monks themselves." . . .More...
