From Slate: ‘In Aleppo, Syria, Mohamed Atta Thought He Could Build The Ideal Islamic City’

Full post here.

On what Mohammed Atta may have been looking for in the Bab-al Nasr district of Aleppo, Syria, as an architectectural student:

“Just a few paces into the labyrinth, the din of vehicular traffic is replaced by the banter of conversation in the marketplace. A brief stroll deeper, and the voices of men are replaced by the voices of boys chasing after a soccer ball in a courtyard as a hijab clad mother looks on from the window above”

Beauty, the past, meaning, religious purity…and perhaps confirmation of what he already believed:

““To Atta, the French planners’ imposition of modernist urbanism on this “Islamic-Oriental city” wasn’t just architecturally ugly—it undermined the traditional Islamic culture of the neighborhood. So did globalization, an economic force of impersonal, mechanistic transactionsthat bestows inordinate power on wealthy, non-Muslim countries“ 

“…restoring a supposed Middle Eastern golden age that existed before Western encroachment and secularization. Atta has written this arcadia into his thesis.”

…ideas that helped Atta lead, as Atta led himself, to New York on a path of extreme and radical violence, which is tough to discuss, let alone forgive.

Though I could still, aesthetically and politically, have some sympathy for Atta as our author informs us of his hometown:

“With the crumbling legacy of European imperialism and American-backed dictatorship written into its Paris-meets-Houston cityscape, Cairo is one of the world’s worst advertisements for East-West relations.”

As a matter of American foreign policy, we should keep religion out of the discussion.  But my guess is some of this issues raised here will be very important going forward.

See Also On This Site:  Christopher Caldwell points out that multiculturalism is an obviously insufficient set of ideas for dealing with the tensions between native Europeans and largely immigrant Muslims:  From The NY Times: Review Of Christopher Caldwell’s Book “Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West”

Are secular humanism and the kind of political freedoms we enjoy in the West incompatible with Islam?:  From YouTube: Roger Scruton On Religious Freedom, Islam & Atheism

 

A WSJ Interactive Map Of Ground Zero

Map here.

Which buildings could be built and when? A projection out into the future.

Personally, I’d like to see buildings that aren’t too abstract and symbolic; potentially a product of current ‘global-star,’ highly individualized, aesthetic architectural trends. The Goldman-Sachs and Deutsche Bank buildings seem pretty much in keeping with the New York skyline…though New Yorkers don’t spend too much time sitting around discussing the skyline.

It’s a hard road out of that day.

Related On This Site:  Roger Scruton In The City Journal: Cities For Living–Is Modernism Dead?…Jonathan Meades On Le Corbusier At The New Statesman…Brasilia: A Planned City

by noms78

Jonathan Meades On Le Corbusier At The New Statesman

Full post here.

Meades seems interested in defending Le Corbusier (wikipedia):

“He remains, more than 40 years after his death, the hate figure of tectonically blind anti-modernists,  the quality of his work is deeper than the current criticism surrounding him…

Perhaps Meades’s best defense is on aesthetic grounds:

“The problem is that both his detractors and his acolytes want to believe that his written manifestos, urbanistic visions, utopian ideologies and theories are compatible with his buildings.”

In other words, Le Corbusier made beautiful, aesthetically profound buildings and he stayed true to his art enough to outlast these critics.

Perhaps anti-modernist, anti-socialist tendencies do fuel some Roger Scruton’s criticism, but Meades’ tunnel vision doesn’t exactly convince.  I am a little wary of Le Corbusier’s idealism, and I don’t find the charge of aesthetic totalitarianism entirely untenable:

 

The fact that this debate is occuring in American right-wing and British left-wing magazines may be worthy of mention.

See Also:  Roger Scruton In The City Journal: Cities For Living–Is Modernism Dead?  Brasilia: A Planned City

 

Roger Scruton In The City Journal: Cities For Living–Is Modernism Dead?

Full article here.

Paris has something that Scruton admires.  It’s not just an aversion to central planning (and perhaps the political and social philosophies associated with it) that makes Paris special, but also a resistance to modernism, and even postmodernist architecture.  Visitors will:

“…quickly see that Paris is miraculous in no small measure because modern architects have not been able to get their hands on it.”

Modernism may even have a lot to do with a certain aesthetic totalitarianism, a desire to grant the architect the ability to see all in his vision, and plan other peoples’ lives accordingly.

“…a later generation rebelled against the totalitarian mind-set of the modernists, rejecting socialist planning, and with it the collectivist approach to urban renewal. They associated the alienating architecture of the postwar period with the statist politics of socialism, and for good reasons.”

In modernism’s place (souless airports, blank modern facades speaking only to themselves) Scruton suggests Leon Krier’s New Urbanism and a return to more Classical architecture. New England towns might not be a bad place to start, but also:

“The plan should conform to Krier’s “ten-minute rule,” meaning that it should be possible for any resident to walk within ten minutes to the places that are the real reason for his living among strangers.”

Well, minus the car anyways.  Are you persuaded?

First National Bank of Houlton, Maine

Some of Le Corbusier’s work here, examples of Modern Architecture here.

See Also: Brasilia: A Planned City and Review Of Britain’s “Lost Cities” In The Guardian

 

Review of Britain’s “Lost Cities” In The Guardian

There is a book by Englishman Gavin Stamp chronicling the change of 13 British cities from the 1930’s until now.  The Guardian reviews it.  In particular, Stamp argues that many plans to ”modernize” Britian were particulary short-sighted and wasteful.  

“Stamp’s thesis is familiar, but it has rarely been so combatively expressed.”

There really were some beautiful, grand old buildings; there’s even an American Chapter of the Victorian Society as well.   Too much preservationism, however,  can be a bad sign.  A little pride is good, ennui…maybe not so good.

“City after city was blighted with modernist buildings that, in an almost totalitarian way were obsessed with function and efficiency and often looked like multistorey car parks, even when they weren’t.“

Yes, some of the buildings are ugly, but I also smell a little Robert Moses-is-the-devil kind of thinking here. 

“The frontispiece of Stamp’s book shows Darley Street, Bradford, where the Kirkgate Market, with its welcoming human scale, was demolished in 1973…” “…Its replacement is a shopping mall of awesome brutalism.”

Awesome brutalism?

I just like the pictures.

See Also:  Roger Scruton In The City Journal: Cities For Living–Is Modernism Dead?