Why Modern Architecture SUCKS

On June 30, the far-right website Infowars posted a 15-minute-long video titled “Why modern architecture SUCKS.” This foray into design criticsim by Infowars—better known for pushing the ludicrous Pizzagate conspiracy and for host Alex Jones’ insistence that the Sandy Hook massacre was faked—comes on the heels of another video that turns well-known works of architecture into symbols of liberal decadence. I’m referring to the National Rifle Association’s “clenched fist” ad, which critics have called “chilling” and “an open call to violence.”

The aesthetic judgment in the NRA’s one-minute ad is implicit, almost subliminal, whereas InfoWars launches a full-bore attack. But both bear the same message about modern architecture: It is the province of the liberal urban elite, and that it stands for oppression.

The Infowars video is not the work of the red-faced, desk-pounding Jones but of a British alt-righter named Paul Joseph Watson. It’s a mish-mash of critiques borrowed from highbrow architectural traditionalists with other opinions that seem idiosyncratic to Watson. He clearly researched his subject, albeit through the keyhole perspective of “globalist” cultural tyranny.

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Watson seems to have drunk deeply of the writing of James Howard Kunstler, the fiery retro-urbanist who wrote The Geography of Nowhere and whose TED talks Watson generously excerpts. Kunstler was an early influence on New Urbanism, and Watson touts many of the principles of that movement, extolling the virtues of neo-traditional architecture and of Poundbury, Prince Charles’ classicizing model town in southwest England. Watson also complains (correctly!) about restrictive zoning and makes a plug for mixed-use development, not seeming to realize that that is eminently compatible with large, contemporary-style buildings, and harder to find (and fund) in areas of low-rise houses, where he insists everyone wants to live.

The NRA’s ad, on the other hand, uses a somewhat different visual tactic. The spot is narrated by NRA spokesperson and talk-show pundit Dana Loesch, who lays out a series of charges against an unnamed “they”

Still from the NRA ad show, the Walt Disney Concert Hall
Still from the NRA ad show, the Walt Disney Concert Hall - We are never told who “they” are, but the shots make it clear: “They” are people in liberal L.A. and Chicago who swan about in fancy parks and buildings. Perhaps the NRA’s depiction of Disney Hall and Cloud Gate was just an handy b-roll choice, and perhaps Watson’s animus against modern design is a personal quirk. But it seems more likely that elements of the far right are deliberately making architecture a front in the Trump-era culture wars. Why? In one way, there’s nothing new about this: There’s a long conservative tradition of eviscerating Modernism, which young fogeys can learn from and mine. In the past, the vehicle for such criticism was the magazine or newspaper column and the odd TV gig. But Internet video has opened up the field to amateur critics and made it possible to skip the textual description and short-cut straight to the offending building itself.