Zaha Hadid's design leaves "an enormous amount to be desired", Le Corbusier likened to Pol Pot and the Pope should not fall victim to "modernist propaganda".
"Frankly, I can't think that I have ever encountered an art gallery that addresses its nominal function with such seeming cynicism. If the measure of success is the number of text-messaging adolescenti that hang out in its Piranesian halls, I don't doubt that Maxxi will come to be seen as a hit. But as a gallery, let alone as a portrait of the cultural priorities of the 21st century, it leaves an enormous amount to be desired."
BD Online
Full Article
"Le Corbusier was to architecture what Pol Pot was to social reform … Like Pol Pot, he wanted to start from Year Zero: before me, nothing; after me, everything. By their very presence, the raw-concrete-clad rectangular towers that obsessed him cancelled out centuries of architecture. Hardly any town or city in Britain (to take just one nation) has not had its composition wrecked by architects and planners inspired by his ideas."
City Journal
Full Article
"The appeal begs the pope to rethink, to not fall victim to the smooth rhetoric of modernist propaganda that admonishes the church for 'contenting itself with imitating the models of the past,' and that it should seek 'an expression of modern times.' Those are Cardinal Ravasi's words ... But they could have been lifted from any textbook at almost any school of architecture."
Projo.com
Full Article
"If we don't revise our architecture, we'll be revised by it. When I started to work for the Prince of Wales, it wasn't the way to win hearts and minds in the architectural community. Most avant-garde architects not only live in traditional buildings themselves - they go on vacation in traditional buildings, they send their children to school in traditional buildings. It's good enough for them, but not for the masses.”
Pasadena Star News
Full Article
"I remember the emptiness of the left over space that sat below it, with parallels to Spaghetti junction - an uncomfortable block on a desolate concrete forest of supporting structure. Internally too the building felt bunker like."
The Architect's Journal
Full Article
