Making Dystopia: James Stevens Curl Exposes Totalitarian Modernism and the Falsification of History

I am delighted to have found this interview, and this channel. Thank you for putting into words, conversation and writing, explaining why we went from warm, inviting, detailed and enduring workmanship in architecture to cold, austere, hostile, ugly and inferior materials building.

When I started Architecture, one professor told us in the first lesson: "There are two Gods in architecture. Frank Lloyd Wright and LeCorbusier. You have to believe in those two, what else you believe ... I don't care."

What a fantastic interview this is. Many thanks to the staff at Cave of Apelles and in particular to Carl Korsnes for making this possible. We were so happy to have Stevens Curl in Oslo for the conference BUA 2023 (Beauty and Ugliness in Architecture seminar 2023). What a pleasant and interesting interview this is. Great work!

A superb interview. Curl is passionate about this subject and rightly so. These are horrible blots on the landscape, devoid of meaning and utterly depressing to look at, never mind those poor people forced to live in them.

Marvellous interviewee.I learnt a great deal, I hadn't appreciated how many of those early German modernists positioned themselves with the Nazis.

This is one remarkable interview, Its very educational and I am pretty sure I have learned a lot of new information and it has shook the ideology that was carved in my college years about the heroes of the modernism and the whole movement of simplicity ... I am pretty surprised how I got convinced to change my opinion and to do more research to learn more based on what i have heard in the interview . I am truly glad i found you through my instagram . well done connecting your social media and well done on such a well curated interview . thank you .

This interview deserves so much more viewers. Thank you. Look at "The Line" project in Saudi Arabia. The totalitarianism in modern architecture is very much alive.

Great interview! Curl is a genius. Greetings from Brazil.

I enjoyed this interview immensely. I had thought of persuing architecture as a young college student, but decided against it because I couldn't imaging myself designing the hideous, monstrous crap that passes for "modern architecture."

I absolutely LOVE the story about undiagnosed misogyny being the root of so many strange behaviors that we , the world population 2024 are engaged in dealing with . Keep talking gentlemen, so glad you both have your voices .

An erudite explanation of how the dreadful concrete monstrosities that infest cities all over the world. Professor Curl's book dismantles the pretentious nonsense that underpins "modernism" in architecture. We live with the dreadful results of this architectural style daily.

I'm an atheist, but I appreciate religious architecture, it's often beautiful and generally it has a deep connection with history and the region it exists in.

Very interesting and coherent with the direction the world is turning in all other aspects of life...

This was fantastic, I’ve always felt like I was missing information from this story or as if there were gaps in the narrative. This really clears things up. 🙏🏻

The wholesale destruction of beauty in public spaces shifts psychology from contentment to wanting- a certain type of wanting defined by a need to fill an existential vacuum that opens up as a result of the absence of the beautiful. This drives people towards consumerism and misanthropic thinking. People begin to see themselves in competition to one another and seek refuge in consumption. All of this makes sense in a capitalist political economy.

When modernists are replacing once a beatiful streets to create an uninhabitable ugliness it's one type of a disaster, but imagine when whole cities are formed that way. This is what happened in my country, georgia, while it was part of USSR. This interview finally sorted my ideas of 20th century left and especially communists being somehow very aligned with modernist architects and there admiration towards totalitarian mindset. Being 4th year architecture student only now, I see, what university should have tought me and failed to do so. Professors were very busy admiring modernism and conceptions mostly. I would like to read all books of James Stevens Curl, but it's quite hard to find any of them both physically and online, I would be grateful if somebody helped me find them, escpecially one about egyptian revival and mentioned in video, making distopya.

Enlightening and Eye-Opening - a masterful critique of the disfunction and dogmatism of Modern architecture and fallacies of contemporary urban planning. Professor Curl's insightful analysis is a must-listen for anyone interested in architectural history and its profound influence on our built environment.

A captivating interview! Resounding applause to the Cave of Apelles for hosting the venerable Professor Curl. His searing critique of Modernism emerges as a guiding light of intellectual heroism, and his masterful polemic, Making Dystopia, deserves a place on every architect's desk.

This is really infomative, I would suggest you add images of the buildings that you are talking about in the interview.

I Hope you guys make some shorts about this to share on instagram