Argument for modernist architecture

"Mr Janss, when you buy an automobile, you don't want it to have rose garlands about the windows, a lion on each fender and an angel sitting on the roof. Why don't you?"

"That would be silly," stated Mr Janss.

"Why would it be silly? Now I think it would be beautiful. Besides, Louis the Fourteenth had a carriage like that and what was good enough for Louis is good enough for us. We shouldn't go in for rash innovations and we shouldn't break with tradition."

"Now you know damn well you don't believe anything of the sort!"

"I know I don't. But that's what you believe, isn't it? Will you tell me why, when it comes to a building, you don't want it to look as if it had any sense or purpose, you want to choke it with trimmings, you want to sacrifice its purpose to its envelope – not knowing even why you want that kind of envelope? You want it to look like a hybrid species until you get a creature without guts, without heart or brain, a creature all pelt, tail, claws and features? Why? You must tell me, because I've never been able to understand it."

"Well," said Mf Janss, "I've never thought of it that way."


The Fountainhead, p163, by Ayn Rand, published by Penguin