(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
Cities of Power is about politics, architecture and modernism. Early on, the book comes with the following statement: "Modernism is not to relate to tradition, but to break with everything our ancestors have done." Such a definition of modernism seems headless. If you do not adhere to tradition at all, you also have no ideological thinking to build on. Each building is planned, with no connection to the surrounding environment, and without awareness of what it will express. The claim is therefore hanging in the open air, without being sufficiently discussed. For what is modernism itself, if not a tradition? When the book is about architecture as a tradition, it all becomes a contradiction, although the author, sociologist Göran Therborn, is right that a lot of modern architecture is actually thought of as such a tradition.
The city's self-enjoyment. I love big cities and feel sorry for those who do not find metropolises as exciting – people who prefer small seaside resorts along the Spanish coast when swimming on the beach in Barcelona. They may be – yes, just – untraditional?
Cities are so much more than condensed assemblages of people located within a particular geographical area: Cities are designs, they are complex socio-structural constructions, more or less planned out of a whole.
Fascism and its town planners are a particularly fascinating field – the madman's attempt to realize the dream through a massive architecture that did not take into account the people who would inhabit it, as if they stood in the way of the city, or of the architect's imagination, and the city had thrive best without them. Much modernist architecture testifies to the fact that man has been in a different position in relation to buildings. How did city planners come up with the idea of making man superfluous? Who should enjoy the city then? The city itself?
The violence of architecture. "Big cities radiate economic power," writes Therborn. He calls his book "a macroscopic global analysis".
The cities of the ancient great civilizations were designed as representations of the cosmic order, Therborn argues; Modern cities, on the other hand, are expressions of pure power and have no cosmic pretensions. The sociologist talks about the two "dimensions" of the city: the purely aesthetic – the graphic design of the city – and the city's "grammatical power".
"Fascism has a special place in any study of modern power," the author writes. Fascist architecture is a kind of apotheosis, an aesthetic superstructure of the violence of ideology. A modern city in fascist design just exudes violence, war and imperialism. And not least, it represents a victory of nature and man. "Fascism has had many admirers and followers ... all of whom can be seen as part of a tribe of chauvinistic, violent, and anti-Galitic authorities," he writes.
Of course, ancient Rome is and was an obvious role model for modern fascist architecture. This was especially true for Mussolini. In Nazi Germany, Albert Speer was the chief architect; he seems to have been the only architect in the entire Nazi kingdom. Unlike Hitler, Mussolini had many architects swarming around him, not just one – but Marcello Piacentini was fascist architecture's primus inter pares.
How did city planners come up with the idea of making man superfluous?
Germany. It is undeniably something disgusting, but also deeply fascinating about the architecture of fascism and Nazism radiated. Through the bulging, massive buildings, the sky-striking madman madness was to manifest itself in concrete form. In his autobiography Inside the Third Reich Albert Speer writes that Hitler's new plans for Berlin were inspired by the Champs-Élysées. For Hitler, the main thing was the desire to conquer the world, and it was important that Berlin shine with supremacy and omnipotence, yes, that it should realize imperialism as an idea. "Berlin was not enough for Hitler," writes Therborn: "For his coming Teutonic kingdom – from Norway to northern Italy – and for the coming Germanic world, he envisioned a whole new city: Germania. Speer was put on the case, but he rather advised Hitler to bet on winning the war. "
Fascist ideology had a few simple basic principles: virulent nationalism and brutal social Darwinism, which in Nazism also included anti-Semitism and imperialism. Together, the two ideologies constitute an extremely authoritarian urbanism, which made the man in the street feel insignificant in relation to state power. Fascist ideology has survived in its architecture, but even in cities that call themselves democratic, the architecture of fascism is far from absent. It is an architecture that does not take into account, and it is often beautiful, albeit in a frightening and overwhelming way.
Capitalism first. So what does the author think the future will bring? In the closing chapter "Envoi: global capital, the future of national capitals and of their people", Therborn writes that the idea behind the capitals of the world's great countries is that they should express economic and cultural relevance in a global perspective. But what kind of future does man want in a world of ruthless capitalism? Will they have any future whatsoever? he wonders. Göran Therborn does not seem optimistic.
