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From: "Architexturez." <admin-in@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
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Date: Mon, 20 Mar 2006 10:37:22 +0530
A handful of dust
The modernists wanted to strip the world of mystery and emotion. No
wonder they excelled at the architecture of death, says JG Ballard
....
Walking along the beach some years ago, I noticed a dark structure
emerging from the mist ahead of me. Three storeys high, and larger than
a parish church, it was one of the huge blockhouses that formed Hitler's
Atlantic wall, the chain of fortifications that ran from the French
coast all the way to Denmark and Norway. This blockhouse, as indifferent
to time as the pyramids, was a mass of black concrete once poured by the
slave labourers of the Todt Organisation, pockmarked by the shellfire of
the attacking allied warships.
A flight of steps at its rear led me into the dank interior with its gun
platforms and sinister letter box view of the sea. Generations of tramps
had dossed here, and in the stairwells were the remains of small fires,
piles of ancient excrement and a vague stench of urine.
cont'd....
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/features/story/0,,1734913,00.html