Blame Le Corbusier
Sir: Le Corbusier, whom Theodore Dalrymple accuses (Global warning, 7 June) of causing more damage to European cities than Genghis Khan, the Luftwaffe and Bomber Harris combined, uttered one of the most evil phrases of the 20th century. ‘The house is a machine for living in’, a notion taken to heart not only, alas, by French architects but British ones too. It has been the motto of every school of architecture in the country for more than 50 years and more than anything else accounts for the horrific and inhuman environments our urban populations have to live in. Is it surprising that mindless violence is on the increase in those hell-holes of concrete mass-housing, the council estates of south London? If you give people machines to live in, why expect them to behave like humans?
When our architects are required to design an individual house they are completely at a loss. They were never taught the elementary lesson of how to combine a roof with a facade, still less how a facade should be balanced. They have heard of proportion but have no idea that it is based on the human scale. They know nothing of detail, classical or otherwise. They were taught to despise the past, and so have no reference points. They have a trade union, the RIBA, which has a stranglehold on their education and grants them their qualifications. It is high time it was abolished.
John Hoar
South Molton, North Devon
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