One of the modernists, with the crazy hair has just declared neo-classical architecture a classist tool, which keeps people in their hierarchical place and that modern architecture is about breaking down the class walls and reducing the hierarchy.
What an absolute pile of cunt twattism.
I'd rather see a building built out of something solid, that doesn't look like shit if it gets rained on repeatedly - or gets litter stuck to it, or leak or has absolutely no soul in the name of the class divide.
Balls, balls and balls again sir!
Firstly architecture has always been intricately tied in with class structure, the elite build huge imposing buildings... I mean ffs we've been doing it since the Ziggurats.
Modernism sought to destroy that by providing comfortable, light and affordable buildings with modern amenities and, to a great extent, it worked. Of course the class divisions remained, it was still a capitalist society after all, but the point was to bring the poor up to a good standard of living.
Compare the recorded reactions to people moving into the great modernist estates when they were built to how they are now. The world was recovering from WWII, people didn't have what we take for granted now, and modernism gave them that... You can't just build hundreds of thousands of lovely classical houses. It failed in Britain because we were too heavily crippled by war debt and because successive governments failed to upkeep the better examples and commissioned countless awful examples not even designed by architects (which fell apart from time to time).
Of course that's just one aspect of modernism, will get to the others.
The day modernist architects sell up their Georgian townhouses and move into the housing estates they drool over is the day I'll take this sort of thing seriously. Perhaps.
Actually a lot of them do tbh, Barbican, Brunswick etc rather than Park Hill mind you.
Nah, I just think that if you're going to build something out of steel and glass - that's cold and soulless and alone, don't come the raw prawn by saying it's to do with class. Yeah alright - buildings do have class connotations with them, a lot of the buildings of government - the real solid classics are gorgeous things, but you don't destroy those connotations by making everything a great statement of just how amazing you are with your bloody protractor and looking down on the old stuff as haughty capitalist scumbag stuff.
But it's not just about building stuff out of glass and steel... Obviously a lot of vast office blocks do, but that's corporate architecture for you. Lots of glass does, of course, have the advantage that you can work in a really nice space, architecture isn't just supposed to be looked at from outside (mind you buildings with too much glass obviously present many problems too).
Berlin Philharmonie
Vienna Konzerthaus
Two of the most praised acoustic spaces in the world, but give me the philharmonie any day (photos can't do it justice btw, very hard to photograph a space like that, technically I mean. Because it's roundish), it is one of the most majestic, inspiring spaces I've ever seen. Not that I don't love the Konzerthaus, but it's not the same.
Why? The style is timeless. The notion that historical styles are somehow outmoded is a recent and bizarre one. The Victorians were happy mixing high-tech with historic designs.
It's really not, not unless you have an army of craftsmen to hand. That's partly why modernism arose, because people who had studied Palladio et al realised that the imitations of the time just seemed like tawdry rip-offs. We come back to the class apsect here too, modernism thought to revitalise the traditional crafts and cultures of the regions they lived in, but use them in a modern sense.
Just in conclusion, look at the most successful large scale urban arts and culture projects in recent years; Tate Modern (5 million visitors a year), the British museum refurb, Gateshead complex in Newcastle etc... Going back to the South Bank. All these were built to open up art and culture to more people, and they do.
What we do now is qualitatively different. 
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