The Architecture of Death
Almost all had survived the war and seemed to be waiting for the next one, left behind by a race of warrior scientists obsessed with geometry and death.
J.G. Ballard writing in the Guardian yesterday on modernist architecture. The architecture of death. Ballard is an astounding writer yet someone who has been part of the establishment for so long that sometimes one forgets just how good he is. Reading this article I was continously in awe of the man’s skill.
We see its (modernisms) demise in 1960s kitchens and bathrooms, white-tiled laboratories that are above all clean and aseptic, as if human beings were some kind of disease. We see its death in motorways and autobahns, stone dreams that will never awake…
’stone dreams that will never awake,’ I caught my breath when I read that and he’s describing a motorway. Go read it and get yourself some J.G. Ballard he knows things. Kesey kindly gave me a copy of his complete short stories some years ago and I’m digging it out again tonight for another read.