I watched Jonathan Meades' first instalment
of his essay on Brutalism last night.
Bloody infuriating but also brilliant stuff.
Why infuriating:
Just a bit too much of Meades' face and
full frontal figure, I'm afraid.
Rather like that hairstyle which Neil Oliver blasts all over his
'archaeology' programmes, or the costumes that the Honourable Lucy Worsley
likes to wear. The cult of
personality is, I'm afraid, a dumbing tool of television. And the Philip Glass background music
to moody, grainy shots of Nazi bunkers is just too predictable a juxtaposition
for me.
Meades' thesis that architecture as an art
is fully justified when it's created by genius runs against my own experience in
practice and as an academic that architecture is a potent tool in class
hegemony. He claimed that
"the concensual cannot help but be feeble" (rather like democracy, I
suppose, Jonners?); and he pitied the mentality that says "I don't know
much about architecture, but I know what I like" (a bit the same with me and
fashion, jazz, motor cars, French wine, perfumes, rugby union, aviation
displays and American comedy: I don't know much about them, but I guess I am
entitled to an opinion.)
So why do I also find his programmes
brilliant, and why would I want to work with this man?
Simply because he is courageous enough to
stand apart from the crowd. Far,
far too much of the professional space I have occupied has been shared with the
architectural mentality that talks about the 'real world' (ie the one in which
architects earn their crust), and which expects architecture to be no more than 'appropriate', 'polite' and of course 'sustainable'. It's a sort of open-collar-shirt-and-ironed-jeans-on-friday
mentality, a mentality that imposes limits on itself, rather than celebrating
the possibilities of transgressing limits.
That's why I want to work with Jonathan
Meades. He stands apart from all
that professional self-interest stuff - and he's articulate. I can't wait for next week's instalment.
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