Emil Adamec - Beauty and Ugliness in Architecture

BEAUTY AND UGLINESS IN ARCHITECTURE

EMIL ADAMEC

Interview with Professor James Stevens Curl took place on 15 May this year in Oslo,

where we met on the occasion of a conference "Beauty and Ugliness in Architecture".

James Stevens Curl, portrait photo from 1990, author's archive (JSC)

Dear Professor, thank you for accepting the oﬀer of an interview for the Czech

magazine Stavba, which published the ﬁrst review of your book Making Dystopia

in 2019. We are now sitting in a hotel reception in Oslo, where we are both

attending a several-day conference on "Beauty and Ugliness in Architecture". In

hindsight, we can talk again about your book Making Dystopia and the context.

Could you please tell the story of how your book came about and what made you

write it?

It is also very nice to see you again. It is great to be here for this conference and

thank you for making this interview happen, which I look forward to. As for the

origins and inspiration of my book Making Dystopia, it was linked to writing the

Oxford Dictionary of Architecture. When I was working on that book with my

colleague Susan Wilson and preparing it for Oxford University Press, she said to me:

You know, in all the biographies of 20th-century architects, and also in the various

movements associated with Modernism, there are references to the various problems

of these people and movements. She implied there might be another book out there

somewhere. I thought about it and suggested it to the commissioning editor at

Oxford University Press. He thought it was a very good idea, so I took it on and

started writing the book in 2014. It came out in 2018 and I think it really helped to

consolidate all my thoughts about what was wrong. It seemed to me that it wasn't

just the early so-called International Style, but everything that's happened to

architecture since then. I also found it very strange that alternative aspects of

architecture (such as neoclassicism, which was prevalent throughout the 1920s and

1930s in many countries) were ignored by conventional modernist historians who so

deliberately distorted architectural history to tell only one side of the story. In other

words, it was not history at all. It was a kind of propaganda. So I decided to try to

balance that, not just with my dictionary entries, but with a carefully researched and

argued new book. Making Dystopia was actually Susan Wilson's idea, and when I

thought about it, I thought it was a pretty great idea and it would allow me to kind

of blow oﬀ steam, if you will.

I am, of course, familiar with your Oxford Dictionary of Architecture, and I conﬁrm

David Watkin's words that it is the best book of its kind that has been published.

It is interesting that it was your colleague Susan's suggestion that helped you to

create the book Making Dystopia. What other aspects inspired you to write the

book?

Well, I just said what inspired me to write it and also explained how it worked. But

of course the actual writing of the book didn't just pop out of my head. It's 60 years

of thinking about it, architectural experience, and also a huge amount of reading

over many years, because I've read all the holy texts, if you like, of Modernism, and

frankly, I haven't thought they were very good for a long time. So I've incorporated a

lot of the early history of modernism into the book and questioned the basis of any

solidity within that early history that I don't think is really there. And I think that

what's happened since then with postmodernism, deconstructivism, parametricism,

and everything else, has just been more and more distortions of movements that

started out as pretty incoherent and became even more incoherent as they continued

on their path of destruction. And then I think the environmental degradation ﬁlled

me with despair because when I visited various cities in Europe and America, I was

horriﬁed by the dehumanization of much of the environment and the colossal scale

of some of these huge structures that seemed to have no regard for human beings. So

I thought of the basically pernicious inﬂuence of modernism, and I thought it would

be an essential part of the book to point out its perniciousness and how destructive it

is. Yet his claims about the scientiﬁc, the rational, the mathematical, and the functio-

James Stevens Curl & Susan Wilson - Oxford Dictionary of Architecture 2016, (OUP)

nal all seemed completely false, because the result was the opposite of what was

claimed.

So, all the false claims of modernist architects and architectural historians that

have been made from 1918 to the present day that do not correspond to reality at

all have been exposed by your book Making Dystopia, and their origins and the

ways in which they were made have been explained. In the course of writing this

book, while you were uncovering the truth, did you come up with anything else?

And how satisﬁed are you with the Czech edition of the book that we have in

front of us?

Obviously, reading and research has only conﬁrmed what I originally suspected.

And then, as I delved deeper into the matter and read more and more absurd texts, I

realized that I was actually just scratching the surface to begin with. And when I

ﬁnally put the book together, you can see that it's a pretty big book. Still, I realize

that there's a lot more that could be said about the people responsible for this

disaster. At least I've started a kind of discipline that others can build on.

James Stevens Curl - Making Dystopia 2018, (OUP)

How are you satisfy with Czech edition of book we have in front of us?

I am very grateful to my Czech colleagues for their kind work and for putting this

together. It's really quite a faithful translation, although obviously I'm not very

familiar Czech, so I can't comment on the quality of the prose!

I will try to compare the two language versions in my second review of your book,

because the two languages are diﬀerent.

I can't check every nuance of a sentence to see if it has the meaning I originally put

into it. Because language is very diﬃcult. Nuances can be missed. Sometimes subtle

sarcasm or even twisting endings can be missed in translation.

That is why we now have two books side by side, one original and one Czech, and

we can read line by line and compare.

Well, Mr Obtrlik, the translator, if he found that he didn't understand the meaning of

a sentence or a paragraph, he wrote to me and I tried to explain to him in other

words how it actually worked. I hope he understood in the end.

So you communicated even during the translation?

Yes, of course: I said I would be happy to try to help as best I could. But sometimes it

was clear that there were diﬃculties in translating what was really meant in the

English original. But that is perfectly understandable because, as I said, translating

into any other language is fraught with such diﬃculties.

So if I ask you, as we talked about yesterday, do you think this book will be

identical, for example, in Chinese? Is that possible?

All translations are fraught with diﬃculties and dangers where complete

misunderstanding can occur.

I understand. Still, it's amazing that such a translation exists. Let's also move on to

another language, for example, as you explained yesterday, German or French, and

perhaps also Chinese. And in the case of Chinese, in particular, I think your book

could have a huge impact if the Chinese world woke up and took a lesson from

your book. I think it could have a global impact.

Yes, that would be great! Of course, all negotiations for foreign language editions

have been through Oxford University Press, and it has to go through Oxford

University Press, not me. If someone approaches me, I can then pass it on to people

in Oxford. But basically the details have to be handled by the Press.

What was your most surprising response after the book's release?

The truth is that I was not surprised at all, because the modernists and their critics

didn't answer any of my questions. They simply insulted me. It was an ad hominem

insult, pure and simple, without trying to refute any of my arguments or anything

like that, it's just insulting. That's what totalitarians do: they don't engage in proper

argument. They just stick to their entrenched attitudes no matter how unsustainable

it is. And that, I'm afraid, is what has happened. But of course there were others,

more perceptive, who saw the importance of the book, saw that it would provoke

debate, and many others praised what they called as my courage to attack what was

essentially a position of stablishment, indeed establishment which I think has no

right to be there.

I see what you mean. Your book is provocative to the target groups and their

reaction, as you expected, has been conﬁrmed. So the purpose has been fulﬁlled.

One of the worst aspects was that in the RIBA Journal, which is supposed to be the

journal of the professional institute, the editor at the time, as well as mocking my

book, rejected my work on the grounds that "I can draw a bit" and implied that I was

mentally handicapped.

But that's not true. You are an excellent artist and a great painter.

It's nice of you to say so: but he insulted me in the press. It was vicious and

deliberate.

Oh, really?

Yes, of course. And he described me as insane, in other words, crazy. Disagreement

with the fundamentalist quasi-religious cult of modernism will not be tolerated by

the bullying and bored people in charge. And then he indulged in a series of private

James Stevens Curl, portrait drawing from 2020, contour chalk drawing, by Jeﬀrey Morgan

tweets with his horrible friends, some of whom said I was going to die soon anyway.

So this is the editor of a so-called trade journal. It shows that this professional journal

is no longer ﬁt to represent a professional institute.

This is undigniﬁed! How dare they do this to you? You're also a great artist. Did

they even see your work before they told you?

No, it just appeared in a monthly magazine.

It's nonsense.

And it was just an ad hominem insult, that's all.

I don't think such acts should happen.

Well I got an apology, a letter of apology from the then president of the RIBA. But I

said that it shouldn't have happened at all, that it was irresponsible for someone to

insult a scientist like that without addressing the issues that I had raised. (loud

modern music started playing in the hotel lobby) Another thing - noise pollution.

Ah yes, as Sir Roger Scruton once remarked, this ubiquitous modern music is just

noise that is annoying and distracting. So we have visual pollution, we have noise

pollution.

It's true. It's horrible. So we've got visual pollution, noise pollution, and it's

mandatory!

That's right.

We have a corruption of language.

That's right, pollution is everywhere, nonsensical music with no meaning, and it's

intrusive and annoying.

Not exactly. Some so-called lyrics in pop music are very violent. (calling to the hotel

staﬀ) Excuse me. Turn it oﬀ, please!

That nonsensical sound is really annoying. I'm a quiet person and I seek out

silence or nature. This noise is shallow and doesn't enrich me at all.

It's horrible and it's everywhere!

It's very disturbing.

It's everywhere. A month ago I was travelling around Yorkshire and Lancashire

looking at old buildings. And I went into a wonderful old pub that I've frequented

for years where they have good beer, good food, it's a very nice building and it's just

been taken over by new management. And the ﬁrst thing they've installed there is

Muzak, reproduced music, which is absolutely terrible and spoils the atmosphere. I

don't want it. I used to use that pub because it didn't have that nonsense: I don't

think I'll bother going there anymore. But the problem is that it's getting harder and

harder to ﬁnd places that aren't ruined by this reproduced noise. And it's not good,

it's completely mindless, it's ugly, it's like everything else associated with

Modernism, it's unbearable.

I also can't stand the ubiquitous noise, so I prefer to be in nature. They've ﬁnally

turned the noise oﬀ, so we're back to peace, hopefully. Can you please explain the

title of your book Making Dystopia?

The book is also subtitled The Strange Rise and Survival of Architectural Barbarism. I

mean that architects (with honest exceptions) decided to ruin environment. In other

words, they creating a dystopia. And I ﬁnd it very weird, very strange, very sinister

that this cult of ugliness is gaining more and more followers, that it is now seen as

normal, it has survived all the criticism, and yet it goes on and gets worse and worse

and more and more expensive, and yet the buildings last only a very short time and

then have to be demolished. Buildings that don't work, that leak and that nobody

wants to live in are imposed on the rest of us by dogmatic architects who think in

abstractions and don't actually care about humanity at all. It is a huge waste of

resources. Why is this happening? And I suppose the explanation is, again, very

strange, because I think that what it is is actually a kind of quasi-religious

fundamentalist cult which brooks no opposition, that is self-referential. In other

words, architects criticizing and pat each other on the back, award prizes to those

most obscure projects, call themselves "starchitect" - "star architect", scratch each

other's backs when nobody likes their stuﬀ. For example, there are high level

walkways that are used by thieves, vandals and criminals, and there is always litter

around. In other words, it's an uncivilized environment created by barbarians and

should never have happened in the ﬁrst place. It is the result, I repeat, of a quasi-

religious cult. And a quasi-religious cult, like all fundamentalist cults, cannot be

opposed with rational arguments because its adherents are brainwashed and cannot

be convinced of anything else.

Follow the dogmas and ignore everything else.

Yes, that's right. And you know how dangerous religious cults can be.

Oh, yes. But this is a really dangerous direction!

I think the secular quasi-religious cult has actually deiﬁed, made gods out of

monsters like Le Corbusier: it's actually blasphemy to make false gods, isn't it?

Yes, it is. But why bless a fake who has spontaneously appeared out of nowhere?

Can we not criticize this?

Well, they elevated him and the others above criticism.

Is there no better alternative or competition?

Oh, no, no, they're gods, you know. Well, I've dared to show that they have feet of

clay and that their pronouncements are worthless.

This is the perfect explanation of the title of this book.

I remember many years ago a friend of mine wrote a book, a short book, called

"How to Tear Down a City". And he dedicated it to one of the city councilmen who

was pushing for the destruction.

I understand. So here comes the real question. Who are the people who should

absolutely read this book? Which people should absolutely read this book?

I think one of the problems is that schools of architecture are not educational

institutions, they're indoctrination centres. People are indoctrinated. If they don't

follow the latest fashion line approved by the Modernists, they are not eligible. In

fact, it is not an educational facility at all. I think this book should be read by

everyone involved in decision-making about the built environment: politicians,

urban planners, architects. The trouble is that they are all so brainwashed to believe

the opposite of what I point out in the book: that whatever I would consider to be

destructive is actually a kind of mandatory perfection that should be followed. And

it clearly isn't. But it will continue as before until we completely change architectural

education. And that means that I really think we have to set up alternative

educational institutions and get the political support to recognize that. Modernists

are unable to use materials. They are unable to think, as an example, about how to

put bricks together to make a pattern.

For example, the brick pattern we saw in the church recently?

The other day at Paulus Kirke Church I pointed out how everything depends on the

way the bricks have been put together and used in diﬀerent colours and how they

blend in with the stonework. Now you have to know what you're doing with

building materials and the Modernists have no idea. They design as if buildings

were made of cardboard and they use concrete ubiquitously. All because people like

Le Corbusier visited the Golden House in Rome, the great imperial palace in Rome.

And there are these concrete structures. And so he thought: "Well, that's amazing, the

bare concrete." And he just made it sort of the essence of his crazy philosophy that it

should be used. He completely ignored the fact that it was originally clad in marble,

frescoes, mosaics and other accessories. It was never intended to be seen as bare. But

the sight concrete was created almost as a part of religion. It had a stamp of a kind of

moral purity, which is nonsense. How can a material be morally pure? It's as absurd

as the analogy I made with Ruskin, who was another brain that moved in the

strangest ways. Ruskin argued that Romanesque mouldings are moral, but triglyphs

in the Doric order are immoral. That's ridiculous. It makes absolutely no sense. This

man's thought processes were very odd (and I mentioned in my book that he was

one of the people Gropius pretended to admire). In fact, I doubt Gropius ever read a

word from Ruskin, who wrote damnable prose full of nonsense. Gropius also

claimed to have been inﬂuenced by William Morris, but he could not have been so

inﬂuenced because William Morris insisted on craft, handiwork and beauty. Gropius

and his gang never used the word beauty. They completely rejected it, even banned

its use. And what they claimed was a false association with the Arts-&-Crafts people

to give themselves a kind of respectable pedigree they didn't have.

So by William Morris do you mean that architects should know handwork, should

know how to compose and combine materials, should have practical knowledge,

etc.?

They should know their history. They should use their hands to understand how

diﬀerent materials are used. For that reason, look at this (pointing to the pictures in

the Making Dystopia book): it's all factory production, prefabrication in a factory.

And the crane is used to glue the prefabricated parts together.

Yes, and then the structure leaks.

And then it has to be demolished because the water that has seeped into the

structure is a source of mould, freezes in winter and causes cracks.

It is not only that, but also the fact that the metal rods inside rust, expand and erode

the concrete. Look at the number of bridges we now have to replace. We spend

billions of pounds trying to make proper mistakes. In the old days, bridges would

have lasted hundreds, even thousands of years. Look at some of the bridges the

Romans built. Or Charles Bridge in the Middle Ages, all made of stone. How many

reinforced concrete bridges fall?

Yes, I have heard many times about the collapse of Modernist bridges, and the

other day in London we were talking about the bridge disaster in Italy.

Yes, I'll remember that. You know, so many inconveniences that occurred with all

those metals. As a speciﬁc example, I'll give you one road in Cambridgeshire and

Huntingtonshire in England, the A14. They had to replace all the bridges, every last

one, because the concrete was crumbling. After a very short period of time.

The quality of Roman concrete buildings therefore lay not only in the actual

composition of the material, but also in the chosen method of design and

construction. That is, they used the earth's gravity and the compressive strength of

the stone.

Yeah, that too. But Roman concrete also contained no metal. They often used

volcanic ash as an aggregate to create concrete that was waterproof. But the concrete

in buildings like the Golden House in Rome was hidden from view from the inside.

It was covered with marble, mosaics, plaster and frescoes and other decorations.

And yet it lasted because it had no metal reinforcement and because it did not

contain all the other chemicals in modern concrete that ultimately caused it to fail.

Roman concrete buildings are therefore watertight, they strengthen with age and

the building structure takes advantage of compressive stresses and the laws of

gravity. Today's Modernist buildings use composite reinforced concrete structures,

are suspended, stressed in bending, and due to gravity, rain, and geological forces

soon collapse on their own, are demolished, or are expensive to maintain.

Yes. That's right.

So your book Making Dystopia was written between 2014 and 2018 and the Czech

translation was published in 2022.

Yes, it was. When Susan and I ﬁnished the dictionary, it was ﬁrst published in 2015,

but we obviously ﬁnished it in 2014. A paperback edition followed in 2016 with one

or two minor changes. And I didn't start writing on Making Dystopia until after Susan

and I ﬁnished the Dictionary in 2014, and that was ﬁnished, I think, in 2017,

published in 2018, and the paperback followed in 2019. The Czech edition came out

in 2022.

And which chapters in this book do you think are more essential for the reader

who is going to open and read it?

Well, I think it has a coherent argument all along. I think it's important to understand

the feet of clay of people like Gropius, Miës van der Rohe and the so-called Le

Corbusier. And also to correct the falsity that has been perpetuated about these

people, that they were sort of quasi-democrats and rational human beings. That was

not the case. They were all about their own egos. Megalomaniacs.

As I understand it, the megalomania and the beginning of the problem can be

seen in Germany after the First World War. Since when is that the beginning?

Well, I really think, again, that the Bauhaus was built into a kind of pedagogical

institution that was considered breathtaking. But in fact it was a ﬂop, as I pointed

out. There were people like Itten, who were absurdly obsessed with arcane religions,

who insisted that the students be subjected to compulsory enemas and that they

consume huge doses of garlic mash and that their skin be pierced to let everything

rotten out of their bodies: then they got infections and had to go to hospital. These

were write-oﬀ cases.

This happened in 1919, when the Weimar Republic was established at the same

time.

Well, it wasn't just the collapse of everything in Imperial Germany, but the rise of all

sorts of strange religious cults, such as the cult of Madame Blavatsky, Mazdaism

(which was derived from ancient Iranian religion, Zoroastrianism, and so on). So,

well, that's what Itten & Co. were doing. There was an obsession with spiritualism

and things like that and a rejection of all conventional religion. And even, of course,

the acceptance of atheism.

Do you think that these circumstances were inﬂuenced, for example, by the book

Ornament and Crime by Adolf Loos?

He was very weird. Remember, he was a pedophile.

And he was under the protection of President Masaryk.

Yes, I know. What do you think of Masaryk, anyway?

As far as I know, he is probably an illegitimate son of Emperor Franz Joseph I

himself, but this has not been proven yet.

Are you serious? Oh, my God!

There was controversy about it, even a book was published about it. His great-

granddaughter wouldn't allow a DNA test.

Is it even possible that she was completely ignorant of his origins?

His mother was intelligent, educated and German-speaking. This refers to his

father, who was allegedly an illiterate and uneducated Slovak coachman.

But didn't he go to America during World War I?

Yes, he had a lot of support, especially from the American President Wilson.

However, his real reason for the destruction of Austria-Hungary may not have

been some noble national ideals at all, as we have been indoctrinated, but it may

have been his personal hatred of his biological father. And these and other

circumstances call into question the idealised image of his unwavering authority,

because in the end it could have been very diﬀerent. And I certainly don't think

Masaryk should be worshipped or even deiﬁed, as unfortunately often happens.

That's very remarkable, I had no idea.

There is a book about it and also several papers. I think it may be one of the clues

that could be related to your book Making Dystopia.

It's not one of those sensational cases, is it? I mean, we have absurd books about Jack

the Ripper's killer, mere speculation, exaggerated claims about who he might have

been, including the royal family: it's not that kind of book, is it?

The book The Emperor's President by Glockner (Dundr) and Spácil investigates

the traces and traces the circumstances, including the Emperor's notes in his diary.

This is then followed by contributions by Štědron and other authors. DNA

analysis may conﬁrm or refute this hypothesis. It has been widely debated among

Czech monarchists.

This is indeed very remarkable. Crown Prince Rudolf was a very special case, wasn't

he? He was constantly going around suggesting to various actresses that they

commit suicide together.

Just like the idea of creating an artiﬁcial state, of which Czechoslovakia is an

example.

I mean, it was a fabricated state, wasn't it? But the total destruction after the end of

James Stevens Curl, portrait oil painting from 2020, by Jeﬀrey Morgan

the First World War was not just on the battleﬁeld. It was the confusion that formed

in the formation of individual states and the giving away of parts of other states as

rewards. For example, the annexation of Transylvania to Romania, South Tyrol to

Italy, or the formation of Czechoslovakia.

Yes. That's right. Hungary lost the most territory. They broke oﬀ from the original

uniﬁed territories and became rival successor states, instead of maintaining a

grand empire with one monarch.

Austria-Hungary was a huge, enormous state. Part of today's Ukraine was also part

of this empire. Lvov or Lwów was Lemberg. Przemyśl, now in Poland, was a large

fortress, pulverized in the 1914-18 war.

All these events take place at the same time and in the same scenario and are

reﬂected in the architecture. That's why I associate them with your book Making

Dystopia.

I think they're interconnected. I think it's all connected.

What obstacles were encountered in writing this book? Did you encounter any

diﬃculties?

I mean, I had some trouble. Unfortunately, the editor of Oxford University Press,

with whom I got on so well, had a severe stroke, and although he was a young man,

he was quite incapacitated. Some of the people I had to deal with in the ﬁnal stages

of writing the book and submitting the pictures and text to Oxford were not friendly

to me or the book. In fact, it was stuck in the system for quite some time before it

was ﬁnally published. Fortunately, my original editor returned after a very long

time, and although he was physically quite damaged, mentally he was ﬁne. And

ﬁnally he solved things and book was printed. I think a published book went very

well.

JAMES STEVENS CURL (1937)

Prof, Dr, DiplArch, DipTP, PhD

is a highly respected British architect, architectural historian, painter and designer

who has published dozens of books and hundreds of articles on architecture,

landscape architecture, urbanism and the classical tradition. He studied architecture

at Oxford, was for a time editor of the architectural journal Survey of London, and has

worked in both the private and public sectors. He was an advisor to the Scottish

Committee for the European Architectural Heritage Year (EAHY) in 1975 and

worked full-time in academia from 1978-1998. He is a Fellow of the Royal Irish

Academy (MRIA), the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland (FRIAS), and the

Society of Antiquaries of London (FSA) and has received numerous awards and

honours, including the British Academy President's Medal for 'distinguished

services to the humanities', which recognised his 'contribution to the wider study of

architectural history in the UK and Ireland', and the Arthur Ross Award for

Excellence in the Classical Tradition (History and Writing) from the Institute of

Classical Architecture and Art (ICAA) in the USA. In 1991-2 and 2001-2 he was twice

Visiting Fellow at Peterhouse, University of Cambridge. His pioneering book, The

Art and Architecture of Freemasonry (1991), won the 1992 Sir Banister Fetcher Prize for

the best book of the year on architecture and the visual arts. He has published

extensively on classical, Gothic, Georgian, Victorian and funerary architecture, and

has written a comprehensive study, The Egyptian Revival (2005). He is co-author of

the Oxford Dictionary of Architecture and a passionate critic of modernism, as he

makes clear in his book Making Dystopia: The Strange Rise and Survival of Architectural

Barbarism (Oxford University Press, 2018, 2019). He has lectured in many places

James Stevens Curl, portrait bust from 1996, plaster by Alexander Stoddart,

court sculptor to King Charles III of Scotland.

including Antwerp, Armagh, Belfast, Birmingham, Brighton, Dublin, Bologna,

Boston MA, Bristol, Cambridge, Cardiﬀ, Chesterﬁeld, Coimbra, Coleraine, Denver

CO, Edinburgh, Ghent, Glasgow, Den Haag, Halifax NS Canada, Leicester, London,

Londonderry, Manchester, Monaghan, Montréal, New Orleans, New York, Norwich,

Oxford, Louvre in Paris, St Andrews, Schwetzingen, Seville, Sheﬃeld, Southampton,

Stamford, Washington DC and York. His most recently published books include The

Art and Architecture of Freemasonry: Architecture, Symbols and Inﬂuences and English

Victorian Churches: Architecture, Faith and Revival, both 2022. He is currently working

on a major book on classical architecture.

www.jamesstevenscurl.com

So it wasn't easy at all.

No, because there were speciﬁc people, and remember, they go to outside readers for

their opinions. I don't know who they were. There were two or three people

designated to read the text externally, supposed professionals. I know that one of the

people reading the book was very hostile to the book, for ideological reasons. He

was a member of that cult and was very unfriendly to the book.

One of the readers?

What we call "pre-readers" were two or three people outside the press who were

charged with reading the text. And one of them supported me, but there was another

one who obviously didn't support me and was strongly opposed for ideological

reasons.

They didn't want this book published?

No, no, of course not. So it was quite diﬃcult for a while. But in the end, I think it

turned out well. And then I was invited to America. I lectured in America. I did book

signings in Philadelphia. I stayed in New York. In New York I gave a lecture at that

excellent university club by McKim, Mead and White. And then I went to

Philadelphia. And then I went to Washington, D.C.

I made Czech subtitles for the video recording of your expert lecture at the

National Civic Art Society and ICAA Mid-Atlantic conference in Washington,

D.C.

That's great! Thank you. And then I went to New Orleans, which was unusual

because the city was ﬂooded. It was terrifying. Terrible humidity and heat, very

uncomfortable. And then I went on to Denver, Colorado, where I signed a lot of

copies of the book and got an extraordinarily good reception. They provided a very

good dinner at the club where I gave my talk. And then I went to Boston,

Massachusetts. And after Boston I spent the day with my Czech friends whom I have

known since the sixties and who now live in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

I remember you describing it to me.

Well, these are the people I knew in the 1960s who returned home at the time of the

invasion of the Warsaw Pact troops and allegedly absurdly claimed to be "saving

socialism". My friends are now American citizens.

So from that perspective, is your book more appreciated and accepted in America?

It was received with great respect in America and was very positively reviewed.

Overall, it appears to have been received with more enthusiasm in America and on

the European continent than in contemporary Britain.

But I recall you mentioning in our correspondence that something had happened

in the British Isles. Is your book less well received there than in continental

Europe and America?

The modernist cult is more aggressively established in Britain.

More aggressive than in continental Europe?

I think there is more resistance to the cult on the continent. There is no such thing in

Britain. People are still brainwashed and things like that.

So what is generally defectible about architecture today? If someone sees your

book, Making Dystopia, they might be surprised, because they've gotten used to

the idea that all the ugliness is standard.

Actually, I think it's part of looking with your ears. You only see what someone tells

you. Instead of forming your own judgement with your eyes, you only perceive

what is the result of your brainwashing. And that's why I think that because there is

such a huge amount of ugliness around us, people have become desensitized. I don't

think they're equipped enough to make aesthetic judgments on their own anymore.

They are very bullied and intimidated. And don't forget that a lot of these

Modernists are very violent.

Very violent?

Yes, violent. It makes people think in a diﬀerent way. It's like enforcement. It's

bullying.

Like ubiquitous advertising?

Partly, but it's much worse, especially in education. People are told what to think.

And they're ridiculed if they don't think such things are wonderful. They're

ridiculed, so they keep quiet. They are afraid to say what they think because they no

longer have the courage to stand up to these people.

Are they tired of it?

They're basically scared. That's exactly what I consider to be acts of enforcement and

bullying. It's like a bunch of brown shirts beating everyone around to make them

believe something. I call them the Commissars of Modernism.

What challenges will face next generation of architects if they start collaborate and

learn from your book?

Well, I hope that it will help them to be committed to their own decision and to see

that there is an alternative kind of contemporary architecture which may not at all be

parametricism, deconstructivism or any of these isms, but may in fact be truly

rational and based on reasonable planning, on the use of materials that are applied

with intelligence and sensitivity.

Do you think that the current globalism, as you mentioned, the international style,

do you think it's really its job to make this global world more interconnected?

No, it's to impose uniformity everywhere. And of course, it doesn't matter at all what

the climatic conditions are or anything else.

Is this the goal of globalism? Who beneﬁts from it?

Yes, it is one of the goals of globalism. Who beneﬁts? Greedy architects who can't do

any better.

But someone must be very interested in building something like this.

The point is that these people are considered heroes, so-called star architects. The

media makes them almost gods. As I said, it's blasphemy. And as for the politicians

and business entities, the big global companies that are only interested in money,

their apparatchiks think it would be proﬁtable to have extremely expensive

Modernist projects because it helps their advertising proﬁle.

And they like it?

No, they don't like it. But the media tells them it's great. You don't think they have

eyes to see anything? They're all opportunists. They're all about money and power.

The emperor has no clothes. The media, the media reptiles, insist that the emperor

has a beautiful dress when he is actually naked.

The media reptiles, including the school system, all those teachers, the whole

system that teaches this style?

They're all corrupt. Everything has been corrupted.

So in the hope of a better future, after someone who teaches architecture in

schools, practices architecture, or sits on a city council reads your book, do you

ever hope for a better future?

I don't have much hope, because everywhere I look I see disconnectedness,

everything unrelated to everything else. There is no cohesion, no urbanism. Look at

the disjointedness of some of the large housing estates that I describe and illustrate.

Just today I saw from the outside and was also inside the National Opera House

in Oslo, which is promoted in the media and also in lectures at architecture

schools as an iconic and famous building. But I have to say with certainty that it is

a truly horrible thing.

It is. Yes.

Someone in a YouTube video piled ordinary binders on top of each other or just

casually crumpled paper and "created" a ﬁnal model of architecture.

And all you have to do is get a computer to build it. And these things are built.

They're always much more expensive than the estimates. Look at the Scottish

Parliament. It cost ten times more than the estimates!

Not only is it much more expensive, but it's retardedly trivial. If Modernists claim

that the traditionalists' classical architecture is more costly because it contains art

and ornaments, compared to unsustainable materials and buildings of

Modernists, aren't these more expensive?

How can buildings that fail as architecture, that leak, that don't work and that have

to be demolished soon after completion be cheaper than architecture that lasts and

works in all aspects, and especially as architecture? Much of of what is being

imposed at present is absolutely not architecture at all. And then, you see, the

Modernists claim that Classical Architecture is tainted because of lies about the

National Socialists: they insist that National Socialism is "right-wing", and of course

it is not. The National Socialist German Workers' Party was ﬁrmly on the left.

And if you look at how all the technology, new appliances and new ideas are

developing, what do you think, for example, about the fact that some buildings

today are created by computers, by artiﬁcial intelligence, with all the errors that

cannot even be controlled. Where will all this evolve in the future?

It gets worse: it's madness. It's absolute madness! So there you have it. I mean, I've

forensically dissected the matter. I tried to explain what happened. I think the whole

mechanism of how buildings are promoted and the way some architects are made

into deities has gone mad. I think all these things need to be reviewed and changed.

We cannot continue the way we are doing it.

But according to your book and your conviction, you think that we should start

with changes in architectural education because these schools produce architects,

right?

I think it has to start in education, yes.

Schools of architecture are publicly funded and strive to produce results that can

satisfy the public and taxpayers. In reality, however, the results fall far short of

their expectations. Have I got that right?

If you'd let me look at it for a minute, I really should have gotten the English edition.

I mean the so-called "star architects" of the original deities of modernism, Le

Corbusier, Gropius, Miës van der Rohe. I think it would be correct to call them all

full Hubris, but in the end after Hubris there is the Nemesis, the goddess of revenge.

And I think we will see revenge because these buildings will fail.

Hulme Crescents, Manchester, by modernist ﬁrm Wilson & Womersley, once the most dysfunctional

housing estate in Europe, demolished.

Photo from 1996, MEN (Manchester Evening News) Media Archive

Blobism is in fashion today. And even worse, and on a much larger scale, is the

disrespect for the original historical construction. As I showed in my presentation

on the almost completed giant building in the centre of Prague by Zaha Hadid. It

is created by computers without human scale, without details.

Yes. Of course. That is correct. It's terrible. It is absolutely horrible! I think it gets

even worse. You can imagine that back in ﬁfties, sixties and seventies the buildings

were pretty bad, but Oh, my God!, I think it's gone mad now.

So would you support the idea that there might be an alternative in architecture

schools?

Unfortunately, I think that most architecture schools are currently unable to educate

students to think. Because all techniques are based on terror, bullying and

brainwashing. That's not education.

But contemporary state schools of architecture already exist. How about splitting

these schools in half, with the traditionalist part of the school taught by experts

specializing in classical architecture?

Most of them have cancelled history classes. Personally, I think the people who run

architecture schools are intellectually very weak. And they simply follow party lines.

They are like gauleiters or commissars. No profession is as politicized as

architecture.

What about sculpture and the arts and crafts that come with architecture?

Not coming. It's no longer coming.

There is therefore very little hope for the future.

Yes, I'm afraid it is.

That's why words like Making Dystopia and Architectural Barbarism appear in

the title.

Yes.

Let me ask you about something we discussed together on the conference panel.

Can you please explain how the introduction of the metric system has led to the

dehumanization of architecture?

I think it's just one aspect of the triumph of abstraction over reality and human,

humane architecture. Metric system is based on dividing distance from the North

Pole to the equator into millions of meters. Now, instead of being based on a foot

divided by twelve, with subdivisions of each twelve, which by the way can be

divided by three as well as by two, a more rigid abstraction of the metric system

cannot be divided exactly by three. It can be divided into two, but not into three.

And since the unit of measurement, the metre, has no connection with the humanity

of the imperial foot, which again had the advantage of being divisible by three, it is

another sign of alienation from human values and human beings, whereas the old

foot-inch system was connected with human. Incidentally, this system is still in use

in the United States. You can split any size, even a fairly small size, into three in the

imperial system, but you can't do it in metric system, not exactly, without having

repeating decimals. Metric system is another manifestation of dehumanization and

abstraction. And Modernism is full of these abstract ideas that never have anything

to do with humans.

So, if we build two equally tall buildings side by side, one of which is a

skyscraper with many ﬂoors and the other is a cathedral that is divided into three

parts, then...

Some of the earliest skyscrapers were successfully built by Americans in a sort of

base, center and top system. In other words, classical principles were applied. The

classical language was inﬁnitely adaptable; it could be applied to skyscrapers.

The metric system therefore dehumanizes architecture.

The metric system is just another example of how architecture and construction and

the built environment have fallen victim to dehumanization and abstraction instead

of reality and a measurement system that is based on the human ﬁgure rather than

abstraction. I am referring to the x-millionths division of the distance from the North

Pole to the equator. What the hell does that mean? How does that relate to it? And I

still think in feet and inches because it makes me feel more comfortable. And I know

plenty of craftsmen who prefer feet and inches.

I used Viennese footprints and thumbprints when making sculptures or

designing a villa. It made sense: measures divisible by two and three.

Two days ago we visited the impressive Norwegian folk architecture, including a

wooden church. Can you describe a relation between small volume Norwegian

wooden column church outside and large interior?

Well, I think it's because when you look at the exterior, it's a mixture of very small

things, like porches, sort of a cloister around them, bits of decoration with dragons

and things like that. It's very complicated, whereas the space inside is quite simple.

So I think it's the amount of geometric shapes and pieces that are sticking out all

over the place that makes a church feel strangely small, and then you walk in and it's

a really majestic space inside.

We also visited the Oslo City Cemetery together. What was interesting for you?

It was another example of what we call a garden cemetery, which evolved from an

18th century English garden with several buildings. The French then began to create

gardens punctuated by eye-pleasing buildings, often concerned with memorising. In

England, of course, there are extensive gardens with mausoleums. For example,

there is a huge mausoleum by Hawksmoor at Castle Howard and another beautiful

mausoleum by Wyatt at Brocklesby Park in the north of England. The French built

an English garden in Paris and created the Bois des Tomb ea ux, the forest of tombs. But

these are just tomb-style buildings. And then some French theorists thought it would

be more interesting and more powerful to bury real bodies in gardens. And so

English-style gardens were created, developing the idea of the tomb in the garden.

This is also supported by some English poets known as cemetery poets, Edward

Young, Thomas Gray and Robert Blair. And Young's Night Thoughts have been read

all over Europe, translated into every European language, including Turkish and

Maltese: they deal with life, death and mortality, melancholy and memory. And then,

in the early 19th century, the French decided to acquire very large plots of land in the

suburbs because of the disastrous state of the cemeteries in Paris, which were

frighteningly overcrowded. And there they would create a huge garden cemetery,

which they would then decorate with monuments for people to admire, so that the

Père-Lachaise cemetery, the father of the garden cemetery, was created. The result was

that in the 19th century no metropolis anywhere in Europe or America could

function without a new cemetery. And they were often combined with gardens, this

being an example. Oslo's model cemetery is relatively modest: it is not as grand as,

for example, Glasgow's Necropolis, London's Kensal Green or the great Italian

Cimitero Monumentale, such as those in Milan and Rome. There is, of course, the

Certosa in Bologna and the Staglieno in Genoa.

Yes, in Bologna, and you also mentioned, I think, Vienna?

Ah, yes, Vienna has its Wiener Zentralfriedhof. But it's later, actually quite late. It's

spectacular, but it's not in the ﬁrst wave. Père-Lachaise is from 1804, in this period.

And then Kensal Green in London, 1833, Liverpool, 1825. The last one was badly

damaged by vandals and the city council, which did more damage than the Luftwaﬀe

after the 1939-45 war.

Really the city council?

Oh, yes. Philistines. However, England and Scotland have some wonderful examples

of 19th century cemeteries that are well worth a visit. Edinburgh has one such early

example. Greyfriars Cemetery was built in the 16th century because the Scots, being

very aggressive Protestants, separated the living from the dead. This created a

cemetery that was not connected to a church. Well, because one of the central things

of Catholicism was prayers for the dead. And that was forbidden in extreme

Protestantism. And so it would help keep the practice alive if the dead were seen too

close to the living. That's why Scottish cemeteries have their own character.

Could you explain the relations between English Gothic Revival churches and

Central European Baroque churches?

I think both need to be seen in the light of the anti-religious reformation. After the

devastation caused by the Thirty Years' War, there was a massive programme of

church building and restoration, particularly in Germany and central Europe, where

whole families of architects, sculptors, fresco painters, cabinetmakers and so on,

created magniﬁcent masterpieces of Baroque and Rococo churches. This was

encouraged by the Counter-Reformation, which wanted a kind of visual and

theatrical revival of Catholicism to win back the faithful after the disasters of the

Thirty Years' War, which had decimated the population of Germany itself and, I

think, the Czech lands. In the southern part of Germany in particular, there are some

absolutely stunning, exquisitely beautiful Baroque churches. And that involved

training people to work with plaster, frescoes, the complex geometry of ellipses and

interconnected ellipses and things like that. So you had whole families like the

Zimmermanns, the Dientzenhofers, the Assams, etc. As for the Gothic Revival in

England, the Gothic had to be relearned by architects and craftsmen after centuries

of Classicism. And there was also a religious revival to emphasize Catholic traditions

within the Church of England. Let's not forget that they were all working in the

classical style, classical stucco and so on. And almost from one day to the next

people had to re-train themselves in Gothic, Gothic ornament, Gothic colour, Gothic

joinery, Gothic sculpture and so on. And so almost all of the architects who were

involved in the most successful aspects of the Gothic Revival, which I'm going to

illustrate, were high-ranking church dignitaries, deeply religious, who were imbued

with knowledge and scholarship about church history and what the various parts of

churches were for. Under extreme Protestantism, and after three centuries of Puritan

iconoclasm, few knew the purpose of such things as the sedilia, the seats for the

clergy, the piscina where the holy vessels were washed after Mass, the lectionary,

and the like. All this had to be re-learned in the 19th century. Therefore, their

meaning also had to be explained, through what came to be called ecclesiology.

As far as I know, Gothic architecture kept its secrets.

Yes, that was a by-product. But in the great church building phase of the 19th

century, not only the architects had to learn Gothic, but also the craftsmen, especially

the artisans who did the work. You had whole groups of people working on stained

glass windows who had to relearn the art from scratch. Sculptors, masons,

stonemasons and others were retrained.

Do you think that resuscitating the tradition of Freemasonry in sacred architecture

can positively beneﬁt the design of contemporary architecture?

I think Freemasonry was very important in the 18th century and early 19th century

for various reasons associated with the Enlightenment. I don't think it is signiﬁcant

today because most modern Freemasons know very little about the architectural

symbol. I think Freemasonry was extremely important in Britain, America and

Europe. Look at Mozart. If you compare Mozart's Masonic music with his church

music, Masonic music is much better. It is much more deeply felt. And the two great

masses that Mozart wrote, the great mass in C minor and the Requiem: both are

unﬁnished. So he was bored with one and too ill to ﬁnish the other.

What are you doing now? Is it a planned book on classical architecture? What

should your fans look forward to?

Yes, this is a forthcoming new book on classical architecture. And I should have it

ready by the end of the year. I published a book on classical architecture in 1992. A

second edition came out in early 2000, published in London and New York. Norton

Publishing did it, it went out of print for a while, and all the rights came back to me,

so I ﬁgured this book was too good to let it sit. Unfortunately, the original book

wasn't stored on the computer, but Nicola Willmot-Noller, who has worked with me

on some of my other projects, scanned it, so I'm now working on those scans,

updating the book, adding illustrations and other things, and it's turning out a very

comprehensive volume indeed.

Is there a technical fault?

Well, it's just part of the electronic process. So I have to read everything carefully to

make sure and ﬁx it. And then I edit it and add more illustrations and improve the

glossary. And then, of course, it will have to be indexed. But ﬁnally John Hudson,

who published my English Victorian Churches: architecture, faith and revival in 2022, has

oﬀered me a contract. So I hope to ﬁnish it by the end of December, and then it will

be up to John to publish it.

So what is your message to today's world of modernist architecture in terms of the

the principles of classical tradition, Gothic revival, Egyptian revival, Freemasonry,

etc.?

I would encourage all architects to get educated and read up on history and study

precedents. Because if you don't understand the precedent and the language you

learn doesn't express anything, it's meaningless. In other words, it's so abstract, it

doesn't mean anything. How can you create an architecture that has a vocabulary,

that has syntax, that has coherence, or anything else? And I think without education

and without knowledge, we get what we deserve. Waste.

Yes, this is very visible nowadays. We only get what we deserve. How are your

views received by contemporary architects who are involved in modernist

architecture? Do you think that some of the Modernists may convert to your side?

I think if people are brainwashed, it's very diﬃcult. As I said earlier, you're dealing

with a fundamentalist, humorless, quasi-religious cult. People who are brainwashed

by extremist, fundamentalist cults cannot convert easily. The damage is already

done. You ask how my views are received by Modernists: they are of course ignored

or devalued.

I understand. It's an unfortunate situation. How did your book do in Britain and

in other countries and diﬀerent social classes?

Well, there is another point I would like to make. When the robber barons, if I may call them

that, of the trade unions, particularly in the mining industry and in some of these industries,

who behaved like dictators when their power was broken a few years ago, unfortunately there

was no attempt to retrain the workers who were displaced and lost their jobs in mining and

heavy industry and all similar industries. Too many skilled and semi-skilled British workers

were thrown on the scrap heap instead of being retrained for other trades. The result is that

we now have perhaps a second and third generation that is completely dependent on a culture

of dependency, where they are on the dole from the state, and they do not know what work is.

And that, I think, is a serious problem. And it is all very well to destroy the robber barons, but

Plan B should have been to retrain the displaced workers. Because there's a very large section

of the population who don't even feel part of the state anymore and are far removed

Thamesmead, London, GKC architects' department, used by Kubrick as a backdrop for his ﬁlm A

Clockwork Orange, a district now also largely demolished.

Author of the photo: Geoﬀ Brandwood

from the power brokers in the government in London. I think you have a potentially

dangerous situation, especially if you are forced to live in places like dystopian hell

holes where the unfortunate inhabitants retaliate by demolishing the environment

they have been thrown into.

Yes, people must feel very unhappy and hopeless there. It's no pleasure to be

there, is it?

Yes, that's right. Of course, what I have stated is a generalization. There are people

who have managed to escape out, who have reinvented themselves, gotten out of a

tight spot, but a very large number of them have actually been thrown on the scrap

heap. There were some individuals who were fortunate enough to be able to get out.

The professions and media are largely controlled by Modernists, so my work has

been condemned by so-called special interest groups intent on giving us all "more of

the same" or worse, and of course the desensitized population, intimidated by the

acceptance of the unacceptable, will hear nothing of my work, but will simply

demolish in protest the supposed paradise to which they have been thrown into. The

commentators who saw the point of my book were thinkers, concerned historians

and writers who were not afraid of being ostracized by the establishment. It was

interesting how some English writers had no courage, hesitantly chose neutrality

and did not want to engage, so afraid were they of rocking the boat, so that the most

positive views of my work were expressed mostly outside the British Isles or by the

few independently minded people who were not intimidated into silence by

"received opinion" and the "party line of totalitarianism".

The day after tomorrow, the 17th, is a public holiday in Oslo, and the celebration

of the Norwegian monarchy will be similar to the coronation in London, where I

was.

When the Germans invaded Norway without warning in 1940, the royal family had

to ﬂee because they might be captured and used for propaganda purposes. They

tried to settle in Sweden, but King Gustav Adolf V was very pro-German, so it was

clear that their presence in Sweden was not welcome. Because the Crown Princess

and the Prince had met with Franklin Delano Roosevelt before the war, a meeting

that went very well, the President arranged for a ship to take them to the United

States, where they spent most of their time. But the Crown Prince was in London

with the King and the government in exile, while a Nazi government was formed

here under a Norwegian collaborator. The current King, by the way, is almost as old

as I am.

You've had a successful response to your book, Making Dystopia in America, and

you've had an adventurous journey there.

After my American marathon, I was completely exhausted. First I had a long ﬂight

from New York, then a horrible train ride down to Philadelphia. Terrible. The creepy

Pennsylvania Station, which is like a horrible hell of a rat underground (the great

terminal and masterpiece by McKim, Mead & White was destroyed, an act of

cultural vandalism, encouraged of course by Gropius, who was a nobody compared

to the great architects of the American Beaux-Arts classical tradition, and who wasn't

even ﬁt to lick the boots of masters like McKim, Mead & White). And on from

Philadelphia to Washington, D.C. And then from Washington, D.C. to New Orleans.

Through ﬂoods and humidity. Then Denver, Colorado. And then a huge cross-

country ﬂight from Denver right across a completely empty landscape. I had a lay-

James Stevens Curl and Emil Adamec, joint photo after a conversation

in a hotel lobby in Oslo, 2023, archive of the author (EA)

over in Detroit, "which is bad news". Then Boston. And then I ﬂew back from Boston

airport. I spent the day with my dear Czech friends in the New England countryside,

who of course are perfectly happy in America. They bought a beautiful old farm in

New England and started working on it. They had to straighten it out because the

wooden structure was leaning quite alarmingly to one side. They found a lot of

arrowheads and other weapons from the Indian wars in the garden. But they did a

beautiful job. It looks absolutely amazing. And they have a beautiful garden. It's a

very nice space. And there are craftsmen there. Blacksmiths, carpenters and so on.

Real people who work with their hands.

When I sculpted in Maine, I also saw traditional craftsmen.

I hear it's very pleasant in Maine. I've never been there myself. I've traveled in parts

of rural Virginia and Massachusetts. I found some of the coastal towns in

Massachusetts quite interesting. It was a little unnerving because some of the older

buildings looked so English, but they're kind of longer. The proportions are weird

and stretched out. In America, I was received very politely and warmly everywhere I

went: it was really warm and cordial.

In a moment we will move to the conference venue, where you will present your

second paper, this time on Gothic Revival in England.

I will explain the Gothic Revival from the point of view that it started in the 1930s. In

fact, however, it began a little earlier, because the Gothic was already manifest in the

18th century and even in the 17th century. Gothic in some places, such as Oxford,

never really died out. It just continued through the 17th century into the 18th

century.

I visited Oxford a few days ago and was impressed. It is a very impressive city.

Did you work in Oxford when you were young?

Yes, I worked at St. John's and All Saints' Universities.

So hopefully they will shine and not be ruined by the modernism I have already

seen in Oxford.

I have to admit, terrible things were happening in Oxford. Parts of the centre have

been destroyed: Cornmarket, for example. It's terrible because there's a Saxon church

in Cornmarket. Before the conquest, you know, before 1066.

I wish you every strength in your tireless work and thank you very much for

providing this interview.

It's nice to meet you. I hope the conversation was useful.

EMIL ADAMEC