The Edifice Complex: How the Rich And Powerful--and Their Architects--shape the World PDF
Preview The Edifice Complex: How the Rich And Powerful--and Their Architects--shape the World
PENGUIN BOOKS THE EDIFICE COMPLEX ‘Essential reading for anyone who cares about the physical world around them’ Independent ‘Ever wondered why totalinarianism and architectural excess go hand in hand? This book details modern architecture’s frequent collusion with the bad guys’ Wallpaper ‘A captivating trawl that take in both the politicians that commissioned the buildings and the architects they employed’ Arena ‘Part history, part anecdote, part polemic… His acute eye and ear for bombast, dishonesty, boastfulness and the meretricious wherever it appears, results in a brutally honest description of twentieth-century architects and the way in which, almost invariably, their desire to build outweighs most other considerations’ Architectural Review ‘Well written and entertaining’ Financial Times ‘Sudjic knows that architecture is not just a backdrop to our lives. It matters, and he is able to tell us why, clearly and vividly’ Spectator ‘Astonishing… The conventional wisdom that despots and their architects inhabit a hermetic milieu, that they are atypical exceptions, is subtly overturned’ The Times ‘One of the best books on architecture of recent years’ Daily Mail ABOUT THE AUTHOR Journalist and cultural commentator Deyan Sudjic has been fascinated by the relationship between people and buildings for many years. Born in London to Yugoslav parents, he graduated from the University of Edinburgh with a degree in architecture but, in order to save the world from more leaky and mediocre buildings, chose not to practice but to work instead as a writer, editor, curator and critic. He wrote for the Sunday Times and the Guardian before launching Blueprint magazine as its founding editor. Sudjic currently divides his time between London, where he is architecture critic for the Observer and a visiting professor at the Royal College of Art, and Milan, where until recently he edited Domus, the international magazine of art, architecture and design. Deyan Sudjic was also Director of the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2002 and spent four years in Glasgow as the Director of its year as the UK City of Architecture and Design (an achievement that earned him an OBE), and has curated exhibitions at the British Museum (on Norman Foster) and at the McLellan Galleries (on architecture and democracy) as well as shows at the ICA and the Royal Academy. He is the author of the much-praised 100-Miles City, the best-selling Architecture Park, and monographs on John Pawson, Ron Arad and Richard Rogers. DEYAN SUDJIC The Edifice Complex How the Rich and Powerful Shape the World PENGUIN BOOKS PENGUIN BOOKS Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), cnr Airborne and Rosedale Roads, Albany, Auckland 1310, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England www.penguin.com First published by Allen Lane 2005 Published in Penguin Books 2006 1 Copyright © Deyan Sudjic, 2005 All rights reserved The moral right of the author has been asserted Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser EISBN: 978–0–141–90093–3 Contents Contents Acknowledgements 1 Why We Build 2 The Long March to the Leader’s Desk 3 Landscapes of Power 4 The World in Stone 5 The Architect Who Swept the Floor 6 Inventing a Nation 7 Identity in an Age of Uncertainty 8 The Uses of Marble 9 Ego Unchained 10 All the Presidents’ Libraries 11 A Tomb at the Drive-In 12 The Uses of Culture 13 High-Rise Syndrome 14 An Incurable Condition Sources Index Acknowledgements The author would like to thank, for their varied help, advice and encouragement, Steve Featherstone of Llewelyn-Davies, Peter Murray of Wordsearch, Zhang Xin and Yang Ho Chang, Alex Linklater, Claire Paterson of Janklow and Nesbitt, Charles Jencks, Stefan McGrath and Will Goodlad at Penguin, Jane Ferguson of the Observer, and The Research Library, The Getty Research Institute Los Angeles (980060), for permission to quote from the letters of Philip Johnson; and, in their different ways, Sarah Miller and Olivia Sudjic. 1 1 Why We Build I used to keep a photograph torn from a tabloid pinned up over my desk. Through the blotchy newsprint you could make out the blurred image of an architectural model the size of a small car, jacked up to eye level. Left to themselves architects use non- committal shades of grey for their models, but this one was painted in glossy lipstick colours, suggesting it was made to impress a client with an attention span shorter than most. Strips of cardboard and balsa wood stood in for a mosque with a squat dome fenced in by concentric circles of spiky minarets. The gaudy shapes, and the reduction of an intricate decorative tradition to a cartoon, not much different from a hundred other attempts at having it both ways, tried and failed to be simultaneously boldly modern and respectfully rooted in the past. The questionable architectural details weren’t what made it such an unsettling image. What really grabbed my attention was the glimpse of the darker aspects of building that the picture captured. None of the uniformed
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