How Architecture Became MODERN (and yes, it gets weird)

Did you know that one architect wanted to demolish Paris and replace it with… this? It is just one example of the bizarre history of modern architecture. A century ago, a new way of designing arose, called modernism, giving us a very different kind of buildings compared to what had always been built. Some of these were stunning, but many were ugly or strange. I travelled around Europe to And in this video, we'll uncover some juicy and little-known facts. We'll look at the dystopian plans for Paris, the fascist futurists of Italy, to an esoteric cult at the Bauhaus in Germany, involving… garlic paste. We'll even discover an almost religious tendency these movements share, one that explains why their buildings are so different and minimalist. So, join us on this journey and let's dive right in. I'm walking in a new district of Paris on a rainy day. The district is called Boulogne-Billancourt, which was built over the last decades and is now an area that many urbanists, like the Netherlands, like to take as an example for what they design. I noticed myself wondering, how did architecture evolve into this? Some of the urban basics seem to be in order here. There's public transport, greenery and the buildings at least face the street. But that's about where the good elements end. Because it's not the most beautiful place. The buildings and facades are minimalist and look incoherent and chaotic. And they are already aging badly. However, this plan is nothing like what one famous architect imagined for all of Paris. To demolish the historic city center and to replace it with rows of identical skyscrapers connected by highways. Something radical happened in architecture that might explain these megalomaniac plans that wanted to start from ground zero and why this 21st century city district looks like this and not like these parts of Paris. To understand why, we must go back in time, all the way to the origins of an architectural movement that shaped the 20th century. You might be thinking about the Bauhaus or Le Corbusier. And yes, they were influential. But who influenced them? For that, we need to go further back in time, to several radical thinkers and a foundational change happening in the 19th century. But before we get there, first another question. What does modernism mean in the first place? Well, it's a term that is used for architecture, but also art and literature that seeks to find new forms of expression and rejects traditional or accepted ideas. In the case of architecture, it is best explained by looking at some examples of buildings. What do you see? Some characteristics immediately stand out. They are not symmetrical, they don't have a clear structure divided into top, middle and bottom and they use mostly industrial materials like concrete, glass and steel. They are minimalistic and devoid of ornament. They are designed in a fundamentally different way than everything that came before. And that is on purpose. Because modernism, by definition, needs to be innovative, it needs to change and shake up the status quo. But why though? The modernist movement was in many ways a reaction to the past and to the new circumstances brought forth by the industrial revolution. Cities had become overpopulated, dirty and unhealthy because of massive inflows of people looking for work and a better life. The darkness and dirt of the industrial cities awakened a desire in people for clean air, light and space and to solve the health problems in the cities. But the new age had an even bigger impact. Suddenly there were machines, mass production, wonderful inventions like trains and later electricity and radios. The modern age had arrived. With it came industrial construction materials and methods. In other words, there were new opportunities for construction too. This time of transformation would soon be followed by radical new voices in the world of art and architecture. I'm in beautiful Vienna, Austria. Here, in 1897, a group of Viennese architects decided to break away from the artistic status quo of their day. They would now define the art for the new era. It was the Vienna Secession. Their designs looked a bit like Art Nouveau and used a lot of ornament. What the secessionists from Vienna did was more revolutionary than you might think. In his book From Bauhaus to Auerhaus, Tom Wolfe explains this wonderfully. Up until that point, what was art and what wasn't was decided by the officially recognized cultural organizations and elites at the time. But the Vienna Secession did something new and unexpected. They formed what Wolfe would call a compound. Several artists would declare themselves, often with a dramatic manifesto, as independent from the establishment. They would proclaim that they were now in charge of the true art. And others, who wanted to partake, had to join and accept their ideas, which were superior to theirs. This was all very exciting during the early 20th century and one after the other manifesto appeared. All movements we will discuss after this are such compounds. And they were all competing who was purest. That purity is very important and we'll come back to it later. The Vienna Secession believed in how art should express its own time. Later compounds would express that stronger. It was the idea of the zeitgeist, or the spirit of the time. This idea would become one of the pillars of modernist thought. On a side note, this zeitgeist idea also clashes with the idea that new traditional architecture can be built in our time. Yet, it is being built. To some, it can be controversial, however. Especially when it's politically mandated. Like the executive order by US president Trump about making federal architecture beautiful again. It's an issue that divides the world of architecture, but also public opinion. And in today's media landscape, it's sometimes hard to get a nuanced view of reality amidst all the sensationalism. For this reason, I like to use Ground News, because they help to get a balanced view of publications, so that we can stay better informed about all sides of the story. This helps you become more confident in processing all that's going on in the world, keeping you centered, focused and less distracted. Ground News is both a website and an app, gathering news from hundreds of sources that allows you to compare how these topics are covered, with extra context on each source, like political bias and factuality. Take the example of Trump's executive order for example. Ground News lets me compare 70 sources about this story. It includes headlines from various left and right-leaning publications. And as you can see, how they frame the story is completely different. We see articles like In Defense of Brutalism and In the Image of the Caesars in the center and left-leaning media, while right-leaning media mention it a bit more matter-of-factly, or positively. In my view, none of these publications really take the effort to go deep enough into this question or even look at the studies done by the National Civic Art Society, which might explain the rationale behind the executive order better. We can also look at the bias distribution of publications and see their factuality and even ownership. There's also the blind spot feature, which shows what stories are only reported on by either left or right-leaning publications. I think it's a great way to get access to different viewpoints without falling for one particular bias, and to get a more nuanced understanding of the world. And it's ad-free, so you get your news without any doom-scrolling. If this sounds good to you, subscribe today to get 40% off the Vantage Plan by scanning this QR code or using my link ground.news.aesthetic. Again, that's ground.news.aesthetic to get the plan I use for just $5 a month. You can also find it in the description below. Thank you Ground News, and let's continue. In the same city of Vienna, lived another radical thinker, who wanted to do away with that which makes Vienna such a beautiful city in the first place. The name of this Austrian was Adolf Loos, famous for his book that would change everything, Ornaments and Crime. In it, he made the case that ornament was not fit for the new age anymore, and was even immoral. He did that by making a quite racist point out of the backwards culture who would tattoo and pierce themselves, and that modern men who would tattoo themselves should be degenerates or criminals. In his view, culture progresses in a linear way upward. In Adolf Loos' eyes, in the further development of mankind, ornament had no place. His book is still read in art schools and architecture schools, where they have apparently found a way to ignore all the racism, while still rejecting ornament. However, ornament seems to be making a comeback, even amongst modernists. Maybe the linear view of history wasn't right after all. But for some real shocking views, we need to move a bit south, to Italy. In 1909, an Italian poet and writer launched the Manifesto of Futurism, another compound. His name? Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. He had some colorful beliefs, like that all the museums should be destroyed, that old books should be burned, and any ties with the past should be severed, like traditional art forms and classical culture. Why? Well, the Futurists worshipped youth, speed, the dynamism of modern life, and they even glorified violence. It's no wonder that their movement had close ties to fascism in Italy. The abstract art form of Italian Futurism inspired architecture in the form of Antonius and Elia's utopian schemes for cities and buildings. His drawings show multi-level cities with roads, lifts and bridges. They were a sign of what was to come. But in the north, things were changing too. I'm in Utrecht to visit a very special house, one that embodied the ideals of a new form of art that would have a strong influence on modernism. It's the Rietveld-Schroeder house, and the art form is called the Stijl. It was founded in 1917 and led by figures such as Piet Mondrian, Theo van Doesburg and Gerrit Rietveld. Mondrian is well known for his abstract paintings. He saw his art as a potential universal visual language, one that would reduce art, architecture and design to its most essential elements. He started out painting figurative works, which became more and more minimalist, until they dissolved into almost nothing. These artworks would shock the world. Finally, there's another movement that influenced modernism heavily. The Russian constructivists. They created minimalist, functional, utilitarian designs, and some of their graphic design is now world famous, and they used it to serve the collective Soviet purpose after the revolution. As you can probably notice, all these art forms were so minimalist. But why? This brings us to a hidden theme that all these movements and people share. One not often mentioned, and one that I believe defines modernism. A search for purity. It is visible in their constant urge to reduce shapes to their bare minimum. Basic geometric shapes. From Adolf Loos' hatred for ornament, to the minimalist lines of the Rietveld house, to the white-on-white paintings of Malevich, a supremacist, who was looking for the most pure of forms, and later in the designs of the Bauhaus and Le Corbusier. Exactly like the credo of Mies van der Rohe, less is more. Where did this drive come from? Purity could be equated to truth, rationality and universality. Taking away all differences would allow people to get to one artificial new aesthetic, that would be so simple and pure that it could be universal. Maybe they thought they could purify society by purifying form. The problem is that at some point you cannot reduce anymore. You can only express yourself by arbitrarily combining geometric shapes. This playing around with volumes is sometimes tied to the function of a building, but often it's useless and just done to achieve some dramatic effect. Over time, with new tools such as fancy software, more exotic shapes could be made. Parametricism. Blob architecture. We've seen it all now. It's fat after fat, a search for meaning in an architectural language that is fundamentally stale and depleted. Why? Well, because its biggest goal has already been achieved. Purity of form. One can play with shapes forever, but basic geometric forms are fundamentally alien to humans, because they don't appear in nature and they don't carry any symbolic meaning. This lack of meaning, history and symbology in modern architecture has two interesting effects on how modernist architects operate today. First of all, they justify their works with an incomprehensible word soup full of nonsense. Second of all, they push engineering to the limit to cope, to do something new with these basic shapes. Ever more taller and slender towers, more extreme cantilevers, but for what? Ultimately, the answer seems to be fame and recognition, but only amongst their peers, because most people don't really care about these buildings or they actively despise them. And this lack of meaning and emptiness, ladies and gentlemen, is why I believe that modernism and minimalism is, after 100 years, finally on its way out, although cheap ugly boxes will continue to be built for obvious reasons. But I digress. I'm curious for your ideas in the comments. Was there another factor that could explain why artists tried to usher in new worlds? The answer might lie in another event. Imagine a war so destructive, so deadly and dispiriting that it not only killed the belief in the old world order, but practically ended the old world itself and traumatized a whole generation. The first world war was such a war. And it changed everything. Millions died in a brutal, meganized battlefield. The consequences were massive. Old countries were abolished. Royalty and nobility lost their importance. Maybe most importantly, disillusionment took the place of societal optimism. Art went from portraying heroism to turning inward, expressing feelings of purposelessness. When you look at German cities from the late 19th century for example, or the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, you can see this old optimism reflected in architecture. This all changed after World War I. The old world was dead. And things would never be the same again. In Germany, from the ashes of the old empire, the Weimar Republic arose. And in the city of Weimar, one of the most well known compounds was created. To learn more about that, I traveled to Dessau, Germany, where this school that would become world famous relocated and built their own campus. It was the Bauhaus. The founder, Walter Gropius, wanted to bring art, craft and industry together. At first, the school did a lot of crafts, from weaving to pottery and metalwork. But later, the focus shifted to technology, industrial and interior design, typography and architecture. In its early years in Weimar, it was a bit of an eccentric school, Johannes Itten for example, who taught the foundational course or workhorse that all students had to follow, was a Swiss painter and a mystic. He was a follower of the Neo-Zoroastrian Mazda's Nan cult, an esoteric spiritual movement with some interesting dietary practices, like eating lots of garlic paste. The Mazda's Nan fair actually became the standard food in the school's canteen for a while. Itten and other Mazda's Nan inspired students started to get a growing influence within the school. And like Adolf Loos, Itten wasn't afraid to share his enthusiasm for the white race. Walter Gropius and Johannes Itten eventually clashed over their views and Itten left, after which the school moved to Dessau. Its graduates would spread over the world, taking their views with them. Meanwhile, in France, another architect was working to change the world. It was, of course, the Swiss-French architect we all know today as Le Corbusier. His real name was different, Charles-Édouard-Jeanneret-Gris. He is best known for his five points of architecture. First, pilotis or columns to lift buildings off the ground, open floor plans, façades independent of structural constraints, horizontal windows, and roof gardens. He imagined the house as a machine for living in. But not only that, he had one of the most bizarre and shocking ideas about urban design. The Radiant City or Le Ville Radieuse. In his proposal, the city center of Paris, which he hated, would be demolished to make place for sterile rows of mega skyscrapers, connected by highways. The plan for Paris was also known as Plan Voisin. I got to know it quite well because I made this 3D model in Blender. Commerce, residential areas and industry would be neatly separated. The entire city was designed like a machine, a modular system to be mass-produced and applied all over the world. I made the 3D model I used available to my patrons. Although his plan in Paris never came to fruition, we should still consider his plan as having succeeded. Why? Because it inspires modern urban planning which was applied all over the world, for which many old places were demolished. And it inspired some megalomaniac projects that weren't that different. Le Corbusier also had some questionable flirtations with fascism according to two French authors who dug into his history. In any case, he is to this day regarded as a demigod by many architects. Even though his planning ideology failed miserably and his dark history has come to light, maybe his architecture makes up for his horrible planning. Most architects like his buildings but agree that his planning ideas kind of sucked. Everybody is entitled to their opinion of course. Frankly, I think he's overrated and I know this is going to lead to some multi-page essays in the comments about how I'm wrong and need to educate myself and learn to love him. Well, sorry in advance. Maybe it's a fun video topic though. In any case, time to move on. The movement was now fully developed and ready to take over the world. The next chapter would start after World War II, which is a topic for another video. Let me know if that sounds interesting. You might wonder why I'm focusing on all these scandalous parts of modernist history. Well, it has to do with narratives. We're always told stories and these stories shape how we see the world. As you know, it's the winners who write history and modernism had complete victory in the realm of architecture. And today, we see this victory everywhere. In all the magazines, books, museums, journals and, last but not least, universities, it's a daily parade of modernism. Even history was rewritten. Many amazing 20th century buildings that weren't modernist were completely ignored and haven't made the history books. In most accounts, the rise of modernism reads like a victorious, epic and spotless origin myth. However, I believe that another perspective on this narrative is badly needed. Especially since modernism claims to be universal, claims to be democratic and the only true modern and good kind of architecture. With such claims, I think some scrutiny is welcome. Did modernism achieve its goals? It promised to bring about utopia. But today, in our cities full of minimalist cubes, we still see so much violence and hate. Happily, Le Corbusier's plan to demolish Paris wasn't executed. And every day, millions of people enjoy the city's beauty. I think that's something that many people miss in architecture today. What about the joy of seeing an ornament? The excitement of diving into the history of a certain architectural element? The beauty of the crafts? That's why I started this channel in the first place. There is so much richness in our architectural heritage. And because of modernism forbidding any return to traditional forms, we cannot use it for new buildings explicitly, only in ironic ways. And frankly, I think that's wrong, because I believe that modernism is mostly based on arbitrary ideas rather than evidence-based foundations. I can recommend these four excellent books about it. Today, an ever-increasing amount of data is teaching us how we relate to our built environment and how it can create environments that are less stressful and more pleasant. It's this evidence-based design that is, in my opinion, the future. We might discover very soon how badly we messed up by taking detail and ornament out of our built environment. I'm working on a video about that topic, so follow us not to miss it. If you found this story interesting and want to learn more, like the forbidden knowledge of creating beautiful, livable cities, we created our own detailed course. Check out the description for more info. And if you always wondered about the costs of traditional architecture versus modern architecture, then definitely watch the next video. Thank you for watching and see you next time!