Architects, Planners and the Classical City
Ray Laurence on how the myth of the classical urbs bewitched 20th-century town planners.
'A monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend'. It is almost ten years since Prince Charles initiated the recent architecture debate at the Royal Institute of British Architecture's 150th anniversary celebrations. This has been seen as a crusade for Britain's cities and a holy war against the architectural establishment.
The debate has been carried on in terms which have been far from polite. Architects have likened the prince to Pol Pot and Adolf Hitler, whilst some modernist architects have been parodied as the Honeckers or the Ceaucescus of the profession. Revivalists attack the modernists, who in turn dispute with the post-modernists. The only thing on which they are all agreed is that they detest the vernacular.
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