By David Brussat
September 25, 2011
The photograph shows Wednesday night’s speaker standing on the grave of founding modernist Le Corbusier. Is Malcolm Millais smiling? Was he about to kick the concrete tomb? He looks harmless enough. But his book “Exploding the Myths of Modern Architecture” takes no prisoners. It was probably a mistake to allow him anywhere near the tomb of the still-reigning hero of modern architecture and erstwhile destroyer of Paris.
On Wednesday night, Mr. Millais will use his professional familiarity with engineering – he is a structural engineer himself – to put modernism’s shoddy definition of architectural “utility” on display at the Algonquin Club, 217 Commonwealth Ave., Boston. The provocatively illustrated talk, for which you may register here, is sponsored by the New England chapter of the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art. Seats are $25 in advance for members of the ICAA, the Boston Society of Architects and the Algonquin Club, and $35 at the door. The festivities begin at 6.
Malcolm Millais’s friend and fellow architectural theorist Nikos Salingaros, a mathematician at the University of Texas, San Antonio, joins the author of this blog in having written a review of “Exploding the Myths.” This blogger has written several columns about Mr. Salingaros and his theories linking human biology to a preference for traditional and classical architecture. The Salingaros review of “Exploding” may be read here. The book itself may be purchased here.
Wednesday is sure to be an evening for rattling cages and raising rafters.
