The Edifice Complex: How the Rich And Powerful--and Their Architects--shape the World

587 Pages·2006·1.92 MB·English

by  Deyan Sudjic

PENGUIN BOOKS
THE EDIFICE COMPLEX
‘Essential reading for anyone who cares about the physical
world around them’ Independent
‘Ever wondered why totalinarianism and architectural excess go
hand in hand? This book details modern architecture’s frequent
collusion with the bad guys’ Wallpaper
‘A captivating trawl that take in both the politicians that
commissioned the buildings and the architects they employed’
Arena
‘Part history, part anecdote, part polemic… His acute eye and
ear for bombast, dishonesty, boastfulness and the meretricious
wherever it appears, results in a brutally honest description of
twentieth-century architects and the way in which, almost
invariably, their desire to build outweighs most other
considerations’ Architectural Review
‘Well written and entertaining’ Financial Times
‘Sudjic knows that architecture is not just a backdrop to our
lives. It matters, and he is able to tell us why, clearly and
vividly’ Spectator
‘Astonishing… The conventional wisdom that despots and
their architects inhabit a hermetic milieu, that they are atypical
exceptions, is subtly overturned’ The Times
‘One of the best books on architecture of recent years’
Daily Mail
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Journalist and cultural commentator Deyan Sudjic has been fascinated by the
relationship between people and buildings for many years. Born in London to
Yugoslav parents, he graduated from the University of Edinburgh with a degree in
architecture but, in order to save the world from more leaky and mediocre buildings,
chose not to practice but to work instead as a writer, editor, curator and critic. He
wrote for the Sunday Times and the Guardian before launching Blueprint magazine as
its founding editor. Sudjic currently divides his time between London, where he is
architecture critic for the Observer and a visiting professor at the Royal College of Art,
and Milan, where until recently he edited Domus, the international magazine of art,
architecture and design.
Deyan Sudjic was also Director of the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2002 and spent
four years in Glasgow as the Director of its year as the UK City of Architecture and
Design (an achievement that earned him an OBE), and has curated exhibitions at the
British Museum (on Norman Foster) and at the McLellan Galleries (on architecture
and democracy) as well as shows at the ICA and the Royal Academy. He is the author
of the much-praised 100-Miles City, the best-selling Architecture Park, and
monographs on John Pawson, Ron Arad and Richard Rogers.
DEYAN SUDJIC
The Edifice Complex
How the Rich and Powerful Shape the World
PENGUIN BOOKS
PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
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www.penguin.com
First published by Allen Lane 2005
Published in Penguin Books 2006
1
Copyright © Deyan Sudjic, 2005
All rights reserved
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject
to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent,
re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s
prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in
which it is published and without a similar condition including this
condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
EISBN: 978–0–141–90093–3
Contents
Contents
Acknowledgements
1 Why We Build
2 The Long March to the Leader’s Desk
3 Landscapes of Power
4 The World in Stone
5 The Architect Who Swept the Floor
6 Inventing a Nation
7 Identity in an Age of Uncertainty
8 The Uses of Marble
9 Ego Unchained
10 All the Presidents’ Libraries
11 A Tomb at the Drive-In
12 The Uses of Culture
13 High-Rise Syndrome
14 An Incurable Condition
Sources
Index
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank, for their varied help, advice and
encouragement, Steve Featherstone of Llewelyn-Davies, Peter
Murray of Wordsearch, Zhang Xin and Yang Ho Chang, Alex
Linklater, Claire Paterson of Janklow and Nesbitt, Charles Jencks,
Stefan McGrath and Will Goodlad at Penguin, Jane Ferguson of the
Observer, and The Research Library, The Getty Research Institute
Los Angeles (980060), for permission to quote from the letters of
Philip Johnson; and, in their different ways, Sarah Miller and Olivia
Sudjic.
1
1
Why We Build
I used to keep a photograph torn from a tabloid pinned up over my
desk. Through the blotchy newsprint you could make out the
blurred image of an architectural model the size of a small car,
jacked up to eye level. Left to themselves architects use non-
committal shades of grey for their models, but this one was painted
in glossy lipstick colours, suggesting it was made to impress a client
with an attention span shorter than most.
Strips of cardboard and balsa wood stood in for a mosque with a
squat dome fenced in by concentric circles of spiky minarets. The
gaudy shapes, and the reduction of an intricate decorative tradition
to a cartoon, not much different from a hundred other attempts at
having it both ways, tried and failed to be simultaneously boldly
modern and respectfully rooted in the past. The questionable
architectural details weren’t what made it such an unsettling image.
What really grabbed my attention was the glimpse of the darker
aspects of building that the picture captured. None of the uniformed