![]() Arguably the success of modernity was over. By that time, the negative effects of modernism, such as social and environmental alienation caused by monotonous housing areas and large-scale public and commercial buildings dissonant with their surroundings, had become overwhelming. Most architects in Western Europe fervently promoted the goals of the Modern Movement until the 1960s. … his vision of a technological future lies at the centre of the Modern Movement’ (Watkin 1996, 8). According to Adam, it was Marx who created the philosophical system that formed the basis of Communism and Modernism and ‘combined a wholly technological view of society with a belief that history was rolling relentlessly towards a predestined end, and considered that only a revolutionary destruction of the old order could create a truly modern world unencumbered with its past. ![]() In A History of Western Architecture, David Watkin ( 1996) quotes architect Robert Adam’s comparison of Marxism and Modernism. Thus, they were inevitably bound by history. Paradoxically, while endeavouring to forget the history of architecture, the modernists defined their theories through it, in terms of not using the language of classical or traditional architecture. Indeed, for the modernists, previous architectural styles were nothing but a lie (Le Corbusier 1977, 72–73). ![]() Right from the outset, the Modern Movement in architecture (also known as the International Style), headed by Swiss architect and urbanist Le Corbusier, oriented intensely towards the future, while history was something to be deliberately left behind. It was built around the idea of socialist and fair human conditions, the potential of technological and scientific development, new aesthetic understanding emphasising the functionality of, and advocating, plain undecorated walls and simple rectilinear shapes and forms, and the complete abandonment of traditional architecture (see Le Corbusier 1977). Modernist architecture started after the First World War as a utopian vision of society. In addition, we take a look at Poundbury, Prince Charles’ retrotopia realized on the outskirts of Dorchester, and consider if and how his nostalgic ideas have been successfully constructed. In our chapter, we scrutinize three aspects intertwined in A Vision of Britain: firstly, the author’s attack on modernism in architecture secondly, the populist arguments he uses to legitimize his attack and thirdly, the retrotopic tendencies of his proposal for a reversion to the architecture of the past. ![]() Prince Charles’ opinions generated extensive positive feedback by the audience, and his ideas fuelled an architectural debate for several years, forcing many architects to re-evaluate and clarify their views on modernist architecture. He called for an architecture which could please the more traditional taste of ‘ordinary’ people. In 1989, Charles, Prince of Wales (now King Charles III), published A Vision of Britain: A Personal View of Architecture, a book promoting traditional over modernist architecture.
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