The Concrete Oasis - by Noah Putnam - Reboot

On Le Corbusier and architectural futurism

Like many of you, my first introduction to Le Corbusier was via James C. Scott in Seeing Like A State, in which Scott eviscerated Le Corbusier’s planned cities as the pinnacle of “high modernism”: a governing philosophy that imposes a top-down “administrative ordering of nature and society.” So I was naturally intrigued when Noah reached out with a pitch to redeem Le Corbusier, at least as an architect, if not a planner. Gotta say: I’m a convert. Noah’s essay asks why modern architecture is so ugly, then prompts a path forward for an “architectural futurism.” Architecture is one of the…

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