Olga Kabanova. Le Corbusier

Le Corbusier is an exception
Olga Kabanova

Date of publication: October 28, 1999

The result of voting for the best architect of the 20th century is sad - only 46 responses, 11 respondents admitted to hating modern architecture. But I didn’t expect anything else. For the majority of the world's population, modern architecture is ugly and anonymous. Which, in my opinion, is a monstrous injustice. It was in our century that architects gained enormous technological and social opportunities. Another thing is that they often abused them.

For a resident of our country, where modern architecture was born, but at its stellar start was decisively stopped by an imperious shout, modern architecture is a faceless Soviet new building and clumsy innovations of post-Soviet architecture. The best thing about our cities is the historical part, lived-in, sentimental, warmed by human warmth. But there is also multi-storey America, new Berlin, the modernist experiments of Paris, there is Hong Kong sparkling with skyscrapers, there is the humane new architecture of Finland, striving for unity with nature.

By putting to the vote the pair Le Corbusier (8 votes for him) - Venturi (2 votes), I contrasted the ideology of modernism with the ideology of postmodernism. Demiurgic, innovative, directed only to the unknown future, the impulses of architecture of the first half of our century - ironic, reflective, manipulating with the past, architectural games of the last thirty years. In fact, the architectural reality of the twentieth century, of course, cannot be reduced to this opposition. It is much more complex and much more interesting. I hope there will be another reason to return to the topic. In addition to Le Corbusier - the symbol of modernist architecture, and Venturi - the banner of postmodernism, the following were voted: the unrestrained Spanish science fiction writer Gaudi (4 votes); Russian avant-garde star Tatlin (2); the great American Wright (3); Frank Stella, Richard Serra, Dennis Oppenheim, Academician Zholtovsky, Shekhtel, Bernard Venet (probably an architectural bureau, unfortunately, I can’t say anything about it) and “authors of ecological architecture” received one vote each. On my own behalf, I’ll add the elegant Frenchman Jean Nouvel and the indomitable English-Iranian Zaha Hadid.

I propose the following vote. I hope it will arouse reader activity. Thank you, sincerely Olga Kabanova

Each time has its own ideal of female beauty; we propose to name the main beauty of the twentieth century. Choose:

Greta Garbo or Marilyn Monroe
Audrey Hepburn or Marlene Dietrich
Barbie or Matryoshka