Rybczynski quotes some interesting views on architecture. One that he says flatly is “wrong”, and would have seemed mad the moment it was expressed in 1909, is the Austrian architect Adolf Loos, who called ornament a “crime” because in his view it wasted labour and effort. What, asks Rybczynski, is one supposed to do with vast blank surfaces? And what is wrong with adding an aesthetic to functionalism? Sadly, Loos was way ahead of his time, and one reason why so many buildings of the second half of the 20th century were so horrible is that, for both ideological and economic reasons, many architects and developers shared his view.
Rybczynski also, more accurately, quotes the late American architect Frank Gehry, who said in 2014: “In this world we are living in, 98 per cent of everything that is built and designed today is pure s—.” He continued: “There’s no sense of design, no respect for humanity or for anything else.” Those of us familiar with urban post-war Britain know the truth of that: at least many of those buildings have already been pulled down.
If the main value and joy of Rybczynski’s book is that it reminds us of the distinction between buildings and architecture, and teaches us to look closely and develop our taste for the latter and to deplore the former, it also has a subsidiary function. I have always thought the United States one of the most architecturally ugly places on earth. The drive to Manhattan from JFK airport can, just by looking at the mean, ugly buildings and the randomness with which they are built and situated, lower one’s mood considerably. Many of his examples of good building in the past century are, however, in the US, notably his home town of Philadelphia. It almost makes one want to visit that benighted country again.