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Owen Hatherley
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Militant Modernism (Zero Books) Kindle Edition

by Owen Hatherley (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 29 ratings
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Militant Modernism is a defence against Modernism's many detractors. It looks at design, film and architecture - especially architecture — and pursues the notion of an evolved modernism that simply refuses to stop being necessary. Owen Hatherley gives us new ways to look at what we thought was familiar — Bertolt Brecht, Le Corbusier, even Vladimir Mayakovsky. Through Hatherley's eyes we see all of the quotidian modernists of the 20th century - lesser lights, too — perhaps understanding them for the first time. Whether we are looking at Britain's brutalist aesthetics, Russian Constructivism, or the Sexpol of Wilhelm Reich, the message is clear. There is no alternative to Modernism.
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  1. Print length
    175 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  4. Publisher
    Zero Books
  5. Publication date
    April 24, 2009
  6. File size
    1954 KB
  7. Page Flip
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Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B008H3WJQA
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Zero Books (April 24, 2009)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ April 24, 2009
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 1954 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 175 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 29 ratings

About the author

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Owen Hatherley

Owen Hatherley

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Owen Hatherley was born in Southampton, England in 1981. He received a PhD from Birkbeck College in 2011 for the thesis The Political Aesthetics of Americanism, which was published in 2016 as The Chaplin Machine (Pluto Press).

He writes regularly on architecture, culture and politics for Architectural Review, the Guardian, Jacobin and the London Review of Books, among others. He has published the following books: Militant Modernism (Zero, 2009), A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain (Verso, 2010), Uncommon – An Essay on Pulp (Zero, 2011), Across the Plaza (Strelka, 2012), A New Kind of Bleak (Verso 2012), Landscapes of Communism (Penguin, 2015), The Ministry of Nostalgia (Verso, 2016), Trans-Europe Express (Penguin, 2018), The Adventures of Owen Hatherley in the Post-Soviet Space (Repeater, 2018), Soviet Metro Stations (with Christopher Herwig, Fuel, 2019), Red Metropolis (Repeater, 2020), and the forthcoming Clean Living Under Difficult Circumstances (Verso 2021) and Modern Buildings in Britain (Penguin, 2021).

Hatherley is also the editor of The Alternative Guide to the London Boroughs (Open House, 2020). He has edited and introduced an updated edition of Ian Nairn's Nairn's Towns (Notting Hill Editions, 2013), written texts for the exhibition Brutalust: Celebrating Post-War Southampton at the K6 Gallery, and introduced William Morris' How I Became A Socialist (Verso, 2020). Between 2006 and 2010 he wrote the blog 'Sit Down Man, You're a Bloody Tragedy'. He is the culture editor of Tribune.

Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5 stars
4.3 out of 5
29 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Lilliana Ramos-Collado
5.0 out of 5 stars England's "Brutish Brutalism"
Reviewed in the United States on January 7, 2017
Verified Purchase
Most of Hatherley's books thrive on spicy wit and devastating analytic intelligence. His takes on Britain' contemporary architecture and urbanism sound brash... and they in fact are — as he portrays still-trendy Britsh brutalism as "brutish", and pins a red flag on the alienation effects of an "energetic functionalism"— but most of his intuitions and opinions are hard to refute. He goes back to figures like Albert Speer —Hitler's architect-of-choice— and questions the user-friendliness of present urbanism and architecture trends and their sincerity in creating livable cities and communities for the less-entitled population. I could not stop reading "Militant Modernism". A great, insightful book.
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farington
3.0 out of 5 stars As much about modernism in general as about modern architecture
Reviewed in the United States on September 9, 2016
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I bought this book because I was interested in the recent revival of interest in '70s brutalist architecture in the UK. Hatherly, far from being a nostalgist for the style, skewers sentimental notions about modernism and takes things back to their origins in Russian constructivistism, urging a revival, not just of an architectural style, but a revolutionary modernist sensibility. Unfortunately he started to lose me when expanding on the details of this sensibility; I wasn't clear why he was writing about sex in Soviet Bloc films, and I was left at the door when he launched into his discussion of Brecht. I couldn't follow what any of it had to do with modernist architecture. So I was good with about half the book, meaning 60 of the 120 pages. They were 60 interesting pages, but I'm not sure the book is essential reading.
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Top reviews from other countries

Oliver
5.0 out of 5 stars 10/10
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 5, 2021
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Really a hidden gem, would miss a lot if I wouldn’t buy it
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Kristina
4.0 out of 5 stars radical viewpoint
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 8, 2014
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This small but novel book takes a radical viewpoint on modernist architecture. The story we have been taught is that modernist architecture was generally a failure, especially when it came to social housing. Hatherley, taking something of a radical leftist viewpoint, argues that the working class deserved more than sentimental conservative design. The radical modernism was housing a new world for an emerging proletariat. A slight problem with the book, however, is that it moves away from architecture into cultural studies. There is nothing wrong with relating architecture to the bigger picture - but perhaps the book should then have been bigger.
2 people found this helpful
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Rococosimpzo
5.0 out of 5 stars University Essay
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 21, 2013
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The book is fantastic, I purchased a nearly new second hand one. I have not read it all, as I purchased it to write an essay about sex in architecture, it covers Reich, Marxism and Le Corbusier. A very enjoyable read, nicely composed for a young reader such as myself. I would recommend !
2 people found this helpful
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kera-anne
5.0 out of 5 stars Was bought for someone else
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 7, 2019
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Bought for my brother, needed it for uni so guessing it's great!
2 people found this helpful
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Alastair Ball
5.0 out of 5 stars Great summary of modernism
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 11, 2015
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Excellent book with lots of detail and a powerful argument. The book is really well researched, written with flair and is good summary of the history, ideas and debates around modernism
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