Author Description

Skillfully blending documentation and illustrations, and gradually sharpening polemic and humor, Blake calmly explodes the fantasies of modern dogma that most architects once accepted. Such truisms as 'form follows function', 'the open plan,' and 'purity of design' are exposed as volatile ideas. The intricately planned, artistically designed components of the Ideal City have divided urban areas into tidy ghettos of culture, education, business, residence...even pornography...alienating individuals and threatening not only the economic futures of our cities, but civilized aspects of life in the West as well. This book calls for the slaughtering of the sacred cows of the Modern Movement, for a moratorium on the destruction of existing buildings and historic landmarks, and for an end to the construction of skyscrapers, new highways in developed nations, and single-use zoning. Blake demands legislation to hold building industries responsible for performance of their products, and a restructuring for performance of their products, and a restructuring of architectural education into something more basic and more human.