NP? totalitarian architecture

[Doug Millison]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/china/story/0,7369,765394,00.html
[...] Unless one takes the view that all business with China is evil, there
is nothing reprehensible about building an opera house in Beijing, or
indeed a hotel, a hospital, a university or even a corporate headquarters.
But state television is something else. CCTV is the voice of the party, the
centre of state propaganda, the organ which tells a billion people what to
think.

Now it is true that architects are often drawn to power. Le Corbusier tried
to interest the Vichy regime and Stalin in his projects. Philip Johnson was
a bit of an amateur black-shirt. Before leaving Germany, Walter Gropius and
Mies van der Rohe were too close to the Nazis. One can see why. To build on
a grand scale you need authority and a lot of money. And architects with a
utopian bent, who dream of transforming not just skylines but the way we
live, are natural suckers for totalitarianism. And, indeed, suckers for
capitalist excess. It all depends on the client.

There are, none the less, limits. It is hard to imagine a cool European
architect in the 1970s building a television station for General Pinochet
without losing a great deal of street cred. And though it might be cool to
be anti-American, I cannot imagine a Koolhaas, say, or a Perrault wanting
to build a television station for Saddam Hussein. What, then, is it about
China that makes it OK? Let us assume it is not simple greed, or lust for
power. [...]  one huge lie. China is not remotely a socialist society. It
is, in fact, one of the most rightwing countries in the world today, more
rightwing even than Chile under Pinochet, where there were still pockets of
organised activity not under the junta's control. China now has raw
capitalism, but no independent trade unions, let alone political parties.

While still, on occasion, mouthing a few Marxist slogans, the party bosses
operate like corrupt chief executives, doling out money, concessions and
franchises to cronies, family members and favoured minions.




"Brock [...] leaning darkly in above her like any of the sleek raptors that
decorate fascist architecture." (Vineland, p. 287)