I juts read this article in City Journal by Theodore Dalrymple called “The Architect as Totalitarian.” Before you ask, yes, it’s about Le Corbusier.

I just want to say Thank You to Theodore for bolstering my already strong opinion about Corbu, namely, you’ve got to be mentally ill to think that his stuff is any good, and by “good,” I mean good for humanity, not for the evolution of ridiculous architecture ideologigies.

Great Quote #1:

When one recalls Le Corbusier’s remark about reinforced concrete—“my reliable, friendly concrete”—one wonders if he might have been suffering from a degree of Asperger’s syndrome: that he knew that people talked, walked, slept, and ate, but had no idea that anything went on in their heads, or what it might be, and consequently treated them as if they were mere things. Also, people with Asperger’s syndrome often have an obsession with some ordinary object or substance: reinforced concrete, say.

Great Quote #2:

The most sincere, because unconscious, tribute to Le Corbusier comes from the scrawlers of graffiti. If you approach the results of their activities epidemiologically, so to speak, you will soon notice that, where good architecture is within reach of Corbusian architecture, they tend to deface only the Corbusian surfaces and buildings. As if by instinct, these uneducated slum denizens have accurately apprehended what so many architects have expended a huge intellectual effort to avoid apprehending: that Le Corbusier was the enemy of mankind.

Read the whole thing.