I was listening to some old interviews on Tyler Cowen’s podcast, Conversations with Tyler, and came across this one, with Ross Douthat, made in March, 2020. Douthat made this observation about architecture: “I would say that, basically, the place that modern architecture has ended up and the traditionalist alternative are both sort of decadent . . .” I found that interesting, since modernism and traditionalism are usually described as a divide rather than as evidence of the same thing. Decadence in modernism is apparent in the (fruitless) search for unceasing novelty, that takes architects into increasingly obscure ratholes. In traditionalism decadence can be the result of a sometimes fawning admiration for the past, that inhibits the sort of originality that—in different ways—fueled the architecture of Michelangelo and Borromini, or more recently of Bertram Goodhue.
Photo: Nebraska State Capitol (Bertrand Grosvenor Goodhue, architect, 1920-32)
