"EN TID - EN STIL!"

Fra Audun Engs facebook:

Det er ikke slik at nyere former for arkitektur representerer et fremskritt fra eldre arkitektur. Stilpreferanser vil gå i bølger. Det sier lederen for den viktigste britiske organisasjonen for kulturminnevern i dette intervjuet. Jeg vil tilføye: Modernistisk ideologi og krav på stilmonopol er basert på en påstand om at kun en stil er et sant uttrykk for en epoke, og at det i vår tid er modernismen, som representerer et stort sprang framover for menneskeheten. Dette er ren ideologi, med en autoritær karakter. "EN TID - EN STIL!" (ja, jeg assosierer på en sårende og usaklig måte med "En fører - et folk!"). Et sitat fra intervjuet i The Guardian:

"Simon Thurley: Chief executive of English Heritage: --- "He's happy that so few Britons live in a Le Corbusier-like utopia or post-modern fantasyland. "I just don't agree with the notion of progress. I don't think it is necessarily progress to consume a vast amount of energy just to stay static. Any tower block has to have its air conditioning on 24/7. Glass and steel use huge amounts of carbon to make them. Cutting stone out of the ground and cutting down trees don't. I'm not saying the Gherkin isn't a beautiful building because it is, and the Cheese Grater is great, and actually I think the Shard isn't a bad building either, but I just don't think they in absolute terms represent progress on a Georgian terrace house. I just don't."

The fact that Thurley doesn't believe in architectural progress gives the book its singular perspective on how buildings shaped, and were shaped by, the English. Instead of the arrow of progress, he offers a pendulum account: the English have run from ornament to austerity and back again. "We've seen that in our lifetimes. Critics have given the name post-modernism to buildings like Terry Farrell's TV-am building with the egg cups on the top in London's Camden. That was the swing from minimalist no decoration coming back to decoration and fun. It'll go back."

But not for long. The English, he maintains, have what he calls "a sweet-tooth aesthetic", a taste for ornamentation. That taste, he suggests, explains why each square metre of Lincoln Cathedral cost 10 times more than its French equivalents.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/feb/08/simon-thurley-stonehenge-brutalism-interview