Modernist vs. Urbanist
RE Christopher Hawthorne’s “In the Rush to Rebuild, a House Divided” [Dec. 4]: The Modernist carping about Andres Duany, Peter Calthorpe et al being called upon to help with the Katrina rebuilding reminds me of Modernist composers complaining that major orchestras only play “the classics.” The fact is that academic music has become “music for musicians” just as Modernist architecture has become “architecture for architects.”
If the New Urbanist approach would lead to “a silly, Disney-fied cartoon version” of the city, as Reed Kroloff says, then we must likewise assume that a Modernist would create a carnival of curved and crazily canted structures serving as nothing more than a monument to a massive architectural ego.
Classical forms endure long after fashion fades. That is a lesson that these naked emperors of high Modernism would do well to learn.
JONATHAN SHARKEY
Port Hueneme
Sharkey is a member of the Port Hueneme City Council and the Congress for the New Urbanism.
The biggest entertainment stories
Get our big stories about Hollywood, film, television, music, arts, culture and more right in your inbox as soon as they publish.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
