essay: Utopian Modernism in London: A Series of Drifts... [ Archinect ]

Utopian Modernism in London: A Series of Drifts...
Jun 26, 2006

London, as a centre of industry and a magnet for heritage tourists, as a 
vast metropolis and an obscurantist suburban sprawl, has always been 
about contradictions. To understand Modernism in London one has to 
consider a series of antagonisms. The conflict between Empiricism and 
Formalism as style, between the historicist and the modern, and between 
socialism and capitalism in this most mercantile of capitals. These 
oppositions and contradictions are still present in some form, so one 
way to look at these paradoxes could be to set up a series of 
oppositions--a weighing up of dreams and realities. We will frequently 
come down on the side of the former, as against the spurious pragmatism 
of the Blairite capital. As ever, the best way to do this is to walk 
through the city itself…

1952 - What is it that makes today’s homes so different, so appealing?
Alison and Peter Smithson, Denys Lasdun--The Street of the FutureAlison 
and Peter Smithson, Golden Lane Competition, Street-in-the-Air 1952
Only in painting, sculpture and (to a lesser extent) music, have the 
pioneers of the Modern Movement become the establishment in their 
respective arts. In literature and in architecture the reactionaries who 
use the techniques of Dickens and put up Shell Centres are still not 
only in the majority but represent these arts to many people. Thus 
Alison and Peter Smithson are faced with a multiple problem: not only to 
overcome the opposition of reactionaries to a previous generation, but 
also to have ideas accepted which are an extension and development of 
those of that generation.

B.S. Johnson, London: the Moron-Made City, or, just a load of Old 
Buildings with Cars in between (1965)

cont'd....
http://archinect.com/features/article.php?id=40475_0_23_0_C

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| the whitespace or the street of the future, on
| paper says it all, a residue of the deserts
| promised by modernist imaginations, and denied, in
| that even. the whitespace on paper does not
| materialize in reality -- and we remain with the
| concrete.

(image) Alison and Peter Smithson, Golden Lane Competition, 
Street-in-the-Air 1952 --