I love modernist architecture

I love modernist architecture, I love modernist writing, at heart I am probably more of a modernist than anything else. Post modernism and semiotics left me cold. 

But why does no one live in a modernist house, and why doesn't anyone much want to. The bulk of architecture books, blogs and magazines focus on houses and buildings that are very much in the modernist vein, more curvy perhaps, more layered, but far more akin to Le Corbusier than to Georgian or vernacular. 

The modernist aesthetic of people like Le Corbusier has formed the baseline for popular taste, we might osciallate round it, but we never venture terribly far. The designs of Dieter Rams, or Apple, they are modernists. There is other stuff about, steampunk, Kai Krause, even Archigram and Future Designs, but we never seem to be able to escape the sleek modernist lines of the early twentieth century design. We don't all wear their glasses, or early twentieth century clothes, or read their books, or listen to their music, but we will aspire to live in their sleek glass walled houses.

Look at the photos of Julius Shulman and you see the perfect modernist dream, the sun is shining, the perspectives are crisp, receding into the stunning horizon, attractive young people drape over angular furniture. There is something ageless about his photographs because the best of them are perfect abstract compositions. They are picture perfect, and we want to be part of that perfect picture. 

But deep down, we know that the sun seldom shines, our perspectives recede into a horizon of blocky housing estates and electricity pylons, we don't want to drape ourselves over uncomfortable angular furniture. Instead we want to be in warm rooms slouched on leather sofas, surrounded by screens and clutter.

We are hard wired to want space that is cozy and defensible, just like the hamster or the caveman. And the great modernist panes of glass feel neither cozy nor defensible. They were not practical to build either, our traditional vernacular architecture was largely a set of tricks and techniques to cover up lines that were not straight and edges that did not meet. Old style pitched roofs kept off the rain, ugly ventilation kept back the damp. 

Modernist architecture can make for fabulous photos, but in our hearts we do not want to live in glass walled rooms. Perhaps we need to find a more functional idea of beauty.