The Inhumanity of Modern Architecture

How raw geometry ruins the soul

Could you design something that combines the maximum amount of indecent exposure with the maximum amount of rectangles?

Many sexy adjectives have been used to describe modern architecture: sleek, minimalistic, breezy, bright, clean, sophisticated, simple, contemporary, etc. If you want to find a specimen in the wild, just look for any one of the collage of gray shapes that look like the offspring of a protractor set and an IKEA showroom. Particular features may include large windows, flat roofs, wide open spaces, and many wooden bowls filled with inedible citrus fruit.

If we were to distill the essence of the modern architecture movement, we might arrive at something like the prioritization of function over form. In other words, the primary aim of the modern architecturalist isn’t beauty but utility. What will this building do? What manner of entity will occupy it? These, and other “practical” questions, will determine how many lemons and rectangles will be needed.

The subjugation of form began to emerge at the dawn of the machine age which, understandably, many people were excited about. Industrialization allowed people to finally claw their way out of subsistence living into something more closely aligning with actual life. But the transition would also bring with it many new challenges and miseries. The problem wasn’t the machines. The problem isn’t the machines, or the smartphones, or the rectangles.

The problem is when we make one metric among many the main thing.

Machines — like hot fudge sundaes, digitalis, and Beretta 92’s — can be good things, provided they’re being used soberly. They turn bad when they become objects of worship. So machines, industry, and efficiency became bad when they became the measure for everything. Soon, the arches, gables, and gargoyles of the Victorian and Gothic Revival styles were rejected in favor of flat roofs, clean lines, and open floor plans. Natural materials such as stone and wood were replaced with steel, concrete block, and glass.

Such things just weren’t practical.

The manic efficiency of Le Corbusier

Le Corbusier (Charles-Édouard Jeanneret), one of the early champions of the modern architectural movement, was a warped genius of a man who became infatuated with the idea of “standardization.”

His vision was to create a kind of Homesense shrine across the landscape which would “contain only standard things created by industry in factories and mass-produced, objects truly of the style of today.” Cassandra O’Donnel notes, “His functionalist ideology also appeared in an emphasis on raw geometry and opposition to decoration of any sort, separating the architecture from any preexisting culture. In his view, a building must serve as a machine, built to fulfill its purpose in the most economical way possible. He wanted to bring the industrial revolution to architecture, mass-producing buildings, and later cities, like cars or light bulbs.”

His inspiration for homes and cities wouldn’t be derived from nature, but from man-made structures: “The promenade deck of an ocean liner . . . racing cars, aeroplanes, factories, and the huge concrete and steel arches of zeppelin hangars.” Corbusier wasn’t just indifferent towards “ornamentation” but positively hateful towards it. “Decorative art is antistandardizational” he would say. Most likely because he couldn’t think of a worse insult.

Ironically, in spite of his determination to create functional, humane spaces, people found them anything but. One architect, commenting on Le Corbusier’s vision of the ideal modern city stated, “His urban vision was authoritarian, inflexible and simplistic . . . inhuman and disorienting. The open spaces were inhospitable; the bureaucratically imposed plan was socially destructive.”

Now let’s think about this for a bit — what exactly is so inhuman about such spaces? I mean, there’s room to move, lots of light, and little to no chance of getting scurvy. What could go wrong?

We could go down many roads here but we’ll confine ourselves to two.

The raw deal of raw geometry

First, to insist on “raw geometry,” as a first principle is to ignore the fact that humans aren’t rawly geometric beings. Our bodies crawl, slither, crumple, or contort. We wail, grimace, and burst out laughing at inappropriate times. Or at least I do. Nor do we inhabit a rawly geometric world. Animals, trees — nature itself, although in many ways beautifully symmetrical — is far from just functional. There are arches and curves, there are many-webbed veins in leaves and tumultuous funnel clouds. An older architecture was unrepentantly gothic. The cathedral was, in some ways, an attempt to immitate the organic massivity of a forest canopy. The fact that parishioners felt small wasn’t a flaw but a feature.

Modern architecture would reject such spaces as inhospitable and impractical — the modern mind feared their complexity, gravity, and unpredictability. Modern architecture appeals to us for the same reason a dollhouse appeals to a little girls. It is small, compact, and accessible. It is manageable. It can be standardized.

Whatever else industrialization did, it also closed up the sky. It “shielded” us from God’s eternal nature and divine power, “freeing” us and damning us at the same time. Look at the modern city, almost pathological for its standardization. Part of this is practical, of course — you have to be efficient when you’re trying to pack that many people into a small space. But part of it is a spiritual reaction. It is an act of defiance. You can’t see stars when they’re drowned out by a million electric lights.

Towards a festal architecture

Second, as Josef Pieper argues, part of what it means to be human is to celebrate the feast; to be festive; to be ornamental. A feast goes beyond the functional three meals a day we need to survive. It is, for our purposes here, a decorative endeavor. It adorns our lives and reminds us that life is more than simply work and sleep. The feast is not superfluous. We need the feast, the painting, the symphony, the poem, the decoration, to remind ourselves, and the world around us, that we are more than machines.

Here I want to offer a brief comment on asceticism.

In response to the reckless indulgence of our culture, there has been a reaction in some circles towards a kind of stoic self-discipline. This is, in part, commendable. There is a place for discipline in the Scriptures — Paul beat his body and brought it into subjection. But one must also acknowledge that, as a whole, joviality reflects the Gospel far better than austerity does. You can’t read the Psalms, or about the OT feast days, or the tabernacle, or the temple, or the luscious images and metaphors in Revelation, and conclude that asceticism, as an end in itself, is closer to godliness than festivity.

Admittedly modernist architecture isn’t aiming at a particular spiritual principle, but the problem which emerges remains the same, and is of special import for Christians. When we insist on a modus operendi of simplicity and minimalism, we exclude the pomp and extravagance of the feast. Our impulse to decorate and ornament isn’t just not evil, or even simply an aesthetic preference. Rather, it is something inherent to the imago dei. To reject it isn’t holiness, but pride.

As it concerns architecture, there must be festal elements to architecture. There must be a winding staircase, a leaded window, a curved roof, or some decorative molding. There must be an gaudily ornate antique highback chair or a vast bathtub with shaggy, manticore legs. The row upon upon of subdivisions, where you can choose between exactly three different patterns above your garage, are not human places. If you don’t believe me try to walk through one. They are not interesting. They are purely functional. They are purely machine.

The impoverished, exposed, brutalist, and ultimately ugly specimens of modern architecture aren’t the cancer itself, but the symptom of revolt against the heart of God and the image of man. They are an assault on the incarnation of beauty. To allow ourselves to feast. To recklessly “ornament,” is far from superfluous. It is an act worship.

Let us work, pray, and teach for the return of such days.