Militant Modernism
A defence of the concrete, the collective and the socialist architecture everyone now agrees to hate.
Owen Hatherley argues that modernism in architecture and design was a political project before it was an aesthetic one, and that writing it off as brutalist failure throws away what it was attempting. He covers Soviet constructivism, English council housing and the sexual politics of the modernist interior. The book is short, combative, and unusually well informed about the buildings themselves.
Recommended by 1 Person
Tyler Cowen
Owen Hatherley, Militant Modernism. A very good short book, defending “left wing modernism,” a much maligned target on the right these days. Hatherley himself is a much underrated figure, a commie who came along at the wrong time but a very good writer and thinker about aesthetics.
Source · February 2025
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