Morality and architecture revisited - David Watkin

When Morality and Architecture was first published in 1977 it received passionate praise and equally passionate criticism; an editorial in Apollo, entitled The Time Bomb, claimed that it deserved to become a set book in art school and university art history departments, whilst the Times Literary Supplement savaged it as an example of that kind of vindictiveness of which only Christians seem capable.;In writing his polemic, David Watkin, a young don at Peterhouse, Cambridge, had the temerity to take on the entire modernist architectural establishment, then at the height of its power and throwing up brutal buildings in the hearts of our communities. Watkin showed how such an approach was rooted in a long theoretical tradition stretching back to Pugin, Viollet-le-Duc and Corbusier who claimed that their chosen style had to be truthful and rational, reflecting the needs of contemporary society. Any critic of such ethical, mechanical and populist fallacies was labelled anti-social and immoral.;The book rapidly became a cult text. And here it is again with, for the first time, the story of its impact. Only covertly did the giants of the architectural establishment, men like Sir John Summerson, Sir Denys Lasdun, Sir Ove Arup, Sir Karl Popper and Sir Ernst Gombrich, support the author. Watkin goes on to give an overview of what has happened since and summarizes the situation today, arguing that many of the old fallacies still persist. This return to the attack is a revelation for anyone concerned with the past, current and future direction of architecture.