The Toxicity of Modern Architecture
IN a typically lamentable piece entitled 'Upward-thrusting buildings ejaculating into the sky – do cities have to be so sexist?', a Guardian writer informs us that so-called toxic masculinity is built into the fabric of our urban spaces. The article explores Lesley Kern's new book, Feminist City, which concludes that "our built environments can still reflect patterns of gender-based discrimination". The reviewer even backs up this ludicrous claim with a quote from the feminist geographer, Jane Darke, who insists that “Our cities are patriarchy written in stone, brick, glass and concrete.”
Even as early as 1977, professor of architecture Dolores Hayden was complaining about what she perceived to be “Skyscraper seduction, skyscraper rape” and describing the modern office tower as a contribution “to the procession of phallic monuments in history – including poles, obelisks, spires, columns and watchtowers,” and that such buildings employ the visual effects of “base, shaft and tip”.
That may well be the case, but it's hardly personal and what is presented as a form of conscious misogyny is actually one part of the male psyche. I would certainly like to hear what Camille Paglia has to say about all this, especially as the American feminist's 1990 work, Sexual Personae, made a point of celebrating the Apollonian nature of Western art and architecture in general. In fact when I read it some eight years after publication I detected a number of similarities between her ideas and those of Julius Evola, most notably in her comments about the upward trajectory of male urination/ejaculation and the downward descent of feminine urination/labour. One is solar, reaching for the stars, the other earthly and chthonic.
All very interesting, but to return to the article at hand I find it curious that the Guardian review is confined to the imagined exploitation of women. Not the fact that the doubling or trebling of city skyscrapers over the last few decades may provide us with a useful indication of the true disparity between rich and poor, but that men are somehow targetting women and women alone. How ironic that it was a woman - and a particularly awful woman at that - who once said that “the age of the skyscraper is gone. This is the age of the housing project. Which is always a prelude to the age of the cave.”