Earlier this year Prospect magazine posed the question ‘Has modern architecture ruined Britain?’ Arguing fervently in favour of the motion was the distinguished scholar and inexhaustible author James Stevens Curl, FSA, while the counter-view was fielded by the esteemed writer and commentator Barnabus Calder. The rancorous exchange of words that ensued was grounded on Curl’s opening assertion that ‘Visitors to these islands who have eyes to see will observe that there is hardly a town or city that has not had its street – and skyline – wrecked by insensitive, crude, post-1945 additions which ignored established geometrics, urban grain, scale, materials, and emphases’. The cause of this architectural and humanist fiasco, he added, was, in part ‘irrational modernist beliefs’.

What instigated this vigorous debate was Making Dystopia, a publication that has fiercely split opinion, generating plaudits and censures in equal measure. Reviewing the work, Hugh Pearman, editor of the RIBA Journal, called it ‘An anti-modernist diatribe’. William Whyte, FSA, took a similar stance, pronouncing it ‘haphazard’ and accusing the author of ‘rhetorical excess’ and contorted logic. More complimentary were Graham Cunningham, writing in the New Criterion, who considered it ‘an important and necessary book’, while Patricia Craig in the Times Literary Supplement upheld Curl’s position, writing ‘His current book is a challenge to the despicable architectural orthodoxy of the present time’ and adding ‘the architectural imagination [has] lost its focus’.

This is a scholarly, encyclopaedic, meaningful and exceptionally frank book that is lucidly written, meticulously researched and draws on some sixty-three years’ astute observation of buildings. At the root of Curl’s dystopia is the correlation between the decline in architectural expression, language and meaning and the ‘destructive Modernism-inspired urban planning of the post-war years’. The consequence, the author asserts, are city- and townscapes that remain dysfunctional, incoherent, uncomfortable, inhuman and untruthful. Timothy Brittain-Catlin, in his Prolegomenon to the book, describes this situation as a ‘cultural and environmental catastrophe …’, a position that the author wastes no time in amplifying, not only drawing on the origins of this supposed calamity, but going as far as to name and shame those dystopian rogues responsible, namely the architects Walter Gropius, Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier and the apologists such as Nikolaus Pevsner.

His critics will gladly point out that this is no new argument. Far from it − indeed, protagonists such as Reginald Blomfield, Osbert Lancaster, David Watkin, Mark Girouard and HRH Prince Charles, to name a few, have heroically carried the anti-modernist torch long before Curl picked up his pen. And then there are close divergences, one of which is Ezra Pound’s ‘cult of ugliness’, which responded to the ‘horrid or sordid or disgusting’ conditions of modernity by changing aesthetic theory and literary practice.

Making Dystopia is an angry polemic, yet is balanced with erudite humour; it could never be described as dull and as such more than warrants shelf-space alongside its eminent forebears. A good example of its ireful tone is when modern architecture and its exponents are compared (in the spirit of Pound) to a dangerous and destructive cult that, the author forcefully contests, isolated believers, claimed superiority, demanded subservience, brainwashed, was self-referential and created an incomprehensible history and vocabulary − strong words that, not surprisingly, have generated some vulgar criticism from adversaries.

In defence of Curl’s antagonists, it is fair to say that buildings are a product of their age, so to decry the perceived utopianism, functionalism, abstraction and invention of modernist architecture may be unjust to its architects. By ‘product of their age’, I mean that there were strong underlying sociological factors that influenced architectural change, something that might have been better unlocked in the book. For example, some self-conscious utopian ‘Renaissance’ men, like Patrick Geddes (1854–1932) and Victor Branford (1863–1930), considered that social science, town planning and, therefore, architectural design were common bedfellows in the quest for human community and artistic creation. Social reconstruction was, therefore, progressive and, to achieve harmonic communities, modern solutions to modern problems prevailed. Hence, architects like Frank Mears (1880–1953), Geddes’ son-in-law and sometime assistant, created buildings in various styles (from Arts & Crafts to a pseudo-international style) to meet varying social needs. Two other followers of Geddes also understood architecture to be both social and material − Patrick Abercrombie (1879–1957), who did much urban planning on war-torn English towns, and Lewis Mumford (1895–1990), who had one eye fixed on the utopianism of previous generations and the other on the dystopian effect of modern architecture. It seems that with the practical implementation of function comes eventual aesthetic and social dysfunction.

Those who have witnessed post-war urban planning and architectural development in towns such as Coventry, Exeter, Plymouth and Southampton might view Curl’s arguments as compelling, a point strengthened by the Prospect open poll in which 65 per cent (of the 979 who voted) supported Curl’s proposition. Yet, reading Making Dystopia it is easy for thoughts to turn towards reviewing the aesthetic values of modern design, a point expressed in Calder’s cautionary closing statement in the Prospect duel (Curl and Calder Reference Curl and Calder2019) where he urges

Calder is right, yet somehow it is hardly a satisfactory resolution. What makes something utopian or dystopian is a positive attempt to create a strong sense of place, a position that is so subjective; for example, does Birmingham’s new Selfridges store in the Bullring make a positive contribution to place-making? Or do the pastiche-driven Duchy of Cornwall developments at Poundbury, near Dorchester, and in Cornwall succeed as a ‘machine for living’? Part of the solution, suggests Curl, is not a one-style-fits-all approach to architectural language, but, rather, better architectural education will facilitate stronger environments and better design for living.

This is a tough book, using tough language, putting across a tough message. It is a book that has launched a thousand insults. In New Design Ideas, Sir Roger Scruton wrote ‘a handful of egotistical charlatans imposed modernist architecture on the rest of us, accompanying their cold-hearted and alienating forms on the people whom they despised by means of loud fanfares and self-applause’ (Reference Scruton2018). Timothy Brittain-Catlin expressed recently in Architectural Review, ‘Why did we let the bullies win?’ (Reference Brittain-Catlin2019). Personally, I am not convinced we have.

These arguments aside, Oxford University Press have honoured the author with a nicely presented and reader-friendly volume, its academic stature reinforced by 2,145 footnotes, a useful glossary, a forty-two-page bibliography and equally robust index. An epilogue deals with architectural education and its failings, while an ‘Afterword’ presents an alarming dystopian illustration (by Curl after Alfred Rethel) of the author flaccid in his chair next to a window (engraved with the word ‘barbarism’ across the lintel) looking out onto a whole range of debased modern buildings as the figure of Death rings a bell warning humanity of impending doom – a dramatic termination to an equally powerful book.

Making Dystopia is a gratifying and thought-provoking read. Personally, there is a lot I just do not agree with; however, it pulls forcefully on our own relationship with buildings and design, and raises our consciousness as to whether modern architecture lacks empathy and fails to respect surroundings. It is much more than the age-old pilaster vs pilotis debate and as such it should be mandatory reading for all students of architecture or design.

One perceptive reviewer concluded ‘[this] book lets a thousand cats out of a thousand bags’. Of that there can be no doubt.