Nearly thirty years ago, Tom Wolfe put the architectural world in a tizzy when he published this essay attacking modern architecture.

Now, I'm not a big fan of glass & steel & concrete office buildings, but Wolfe is absolutely virulent on the subject. And therein lies the rub. He detests Bauhaus-inspired work so much that he has no perspective. He is guilty of the same pretentiousness and arrogance of which he accuses the architects whom he dislikes.

There is a great deal to be said against architects who prefer form over function, theory over practice. But any legitimate criticism is lost in this diatribe. Saying over and over again "it's ugly and I don't like the architects' politics" is not particularly persuasive.

Loved it--an essay about navel gazing and what happens when groups of people navel-gaze and gather together to prove which one of them is more perfect at navel-gazing. Wolfe critiques modern architecture, but it isn't just about the negative effects of the Bauhaus style as much as the dangerousness of a group of people who attempt to rid themselves of pesky intellectual and moreover, ideological, competition. You don't have to hate modern or post modern architecture to like the book, but it probably doesn't hurt if you are a bit of an iconoclast. ( )

Tom Wolfe's short work, From Bauhaus to Our House, is little more than a screed against the excesses of modern architecture. While agreeing with many of his conclusions, I found the style and tone of the book to be inappropriate for the purpose of serious art/architecture criticism. Written in 1981, it seems dated with a quarter century of architectural progress having occurred since it was published. There are references to other art forms, music in particular, that demonstrate an unfamiliarity with the material. The result of these references led me to question Wolfe's knowledge of architecture. While Wolfe has been one of my favorite authors with works like The Right Stuff and A Man in Full, this book will not be placed together with those favorites. An alternative for those who are interested in the spirit of twentieth century architecture may be found in the work of Louis Kahn. ( )

This is an amusing, long essay about the rise of Bauhaus architecture. Wolfe adopts a sarcastic tone and challenges the "glass box" style of architecture. I found this to be very informative and interesting. ( )

I should explain the five stars, as this is far from Wolfe's best book (the Right Stuff and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers are both perfect shots of their time). I read this book 25 years ago, and it's forever changed the way I look at buildings. The Philadelphia commercial areas are cursed with Gropius-like box buildings, with the suburbs marred by them every time a developer get a license to build. A book that changes the way one sees reality is worth five stars, in my book. Much worth reading. ( )

An interesting and jazzy look at modern architecture and interior design.

I don't know much about architecture so it was fun to read Wolfe's take on why we ended up with so much steel and glass in our cities. Gropius is explained and how the intelligensia fell over themselves to reproduce the austerity of marxist functionality in new materials as part of a post-modern frenzy. With Tom Wolfe the fascination is, as ever, not about what he says but the cool, stylised way in which he says it. Witty and luxurious prose. ( )

This irreverent short history of modern architecture is thrilling and funny, but it also makes one a bit angry. Most branches of the arts have suffered from the Twentieth Century’s silly and drab little fads and orthodoxies, but as Wolfe points out, architecture is unique in that it is something we cannot AVOID (unless we wish to quit our office jobs in our modern high-rises and walk down the sidewalk without ever looking up). Thus, modern architecture has become a part of our urban daily lives in a way that, say, twelve tone concertos or cubist paintings have not. And so the man-made world is a bit uglier, a bit less human and, irony of ironies, a bit less efficient and responsive to modern needs.

We can begin by blaming the architects themselves--those continental Marxist and socialist intellectuals, soon followed by apolitical American academic job grubbers, who competed with one another to produce the most non bourgeois (read: unadorned, abstract, and often just plain cheap looking) designs. These designs went often unrealized, though commissions were sometimes received for modern “worker housing" or other public buildings, third world trophy construction (let’s create a new concrete capital in the jungle!), and the occasional home for a family friend or relative of the architect. But it was American capitalists (!) who were responsible for funding some of the most visible manifestations of the New International Style, and Wolfe is gleeful in describing how the titans of the upper class often fell over themselves signing on for “glass-box" corporate headquarters, high-rent apartment buildings, the odd summer home or whatever--bourgeois structures, obviously, to their core. Of course, as Wolfe also points out, many of modern architecture’s other clients--such as the unfortunate inhabitants of the new public housing projects (not so much "worker housing" in America anymore as the actual workers had probably already decamped to the suburbs)--had no such choice in the matter.

Especially rich is Wofe’s dissection of the post-modernist reaction to modernism (“attempting to design non bourgeois buildings without irony--now THAT’s truly bourgeois!"). One looks with bemused horror at Robert Venturi’s Guild House in Philadelphia--a public housing project for the elderly--with it’s fake gold TV antenna on the roof (how ironic! how witty!), and reflects that in a just world the architect and the bureaucrats behind him could not have escaped being hung by their thumbs.

I have two small disappointments concerning this nifty book. The first is that Wolfe fails to acknowledge that some modern architecture does work. Sometimes less can be more, and sparseness, natural materials, lack of “artificial" adornments, etc. can often embody and express elegance and beauty (perhaps in spite of the questionable ideological motivations of the architects, but that’s beside the point). I am thinking here primarily of private dwellings--I live in a space with exposed pipes and I LIKE it. Also, even brutally plain structures can, dare I say it, be imbued over time with aesthetic value through the actions and affections of their inhabitants. The World Trade Center comes to mind here.

My second disappointment is that Wolfe only tangentially discusses the work of Frank Lloyd Wright. Wright didn’t like the new architects, though Wolfe implies that some of this was ego--the Germans took the spotlight away from him. Now, in my view, Wright’s designs are often beautiful--the Robie house in Chicago, for example, is certainly itself a fine and important work of American art (whether or not one would be comfortable or happy living within it, is a separate question)--but he shared with the Germans an arrogance regarding what people SHOULD desire in their living and working spaces. Both Wright and the New Internationalists implied that their designs were, above all, functional. But that is, of course, often exactly what they were not. ( )