Thinking about Trump.
There may be a connection between the complete meltdown of a system and the emergence of a new style in architecture. I'm sure you are wondering why anyone would even care about the subject of "style" when the whole freaking system has become unglued. Well, it is just an observation. Take it for what it's worth.
Let's look at the Gothic, or maybe the Modern Movement. Two great styles that materialized out of chaos. Granted, each "chaos" had their own individual characteristics - the first was out of a slow speed implosion taking over a eight or nine hundred years to play out. The second, out of - and after - the strikingly swift annihilation of the European country side along with its complete economic melt-down.
Gothic grew out of an optimism fueled by an emerging intellectual order, nurtured by a new respect for knowledge and learning. The university and the book was its source of inspiration. Its perspective or view, was perched from an angle that was high and wide. It knew the chaos of the previous age first hand and it responded with an approach that required a deep and sophisticated knowledge of multiple disciplines. The Gothic cathedral required the influence of the universities exploring new found mathematics and natural science of the Greeks, along with the theology of Averroes, Maimonides and Thomas Aquinas. A fusion of religion, physics and aesthetics, a merging of the Guilds, the Church and the State, created these magical forms - with a lot of help from the Arabs.
If we look at the Modern Movement during the first 40 years of the 20th Century, we can see a quicker implosion. It takes a while to understand the forces behind all this, especially the First World War. Consider Dylan's line in With God on Our Side "The First World War came and it went, the reason for fighting, I never did get".
If you read Thomas Pickitty, it turns out to be quite straightforward and it had a lot to do with an excessive concentration of wealth. Yet, the focus of this note is architecture.
A lot of great 'isms' came out of that turmoil; Italian Futurism, Dutch Neoplasticism/De Style, French Purism, German Expressionism/Bauhaus and Russian Constructivism. All were aiming at more or less the same thing, a break from the oppression of the past. And it was easy to make that break when powers holding it together were collapsing. Gone were the slavish attachments to historicism and eclecticism, both being more of an amusement than a movement. But what would take its place? What would the future look like?
In its place would be a real movement, they said. It will take in the real world. it will update and modify itself to respond creatively to the constantly changing conditions, whether technological or political. It called for a violent and complete break from the past yet it would be optimistic. It would espouse the freedom of democracy, the efficiency of the Fascist or the power of the socialist worker. Modernism meant there was no past, only the future. How it evolved is another story.
Regardless, when the stuff hits the fan, the styles change. Not just change, but morph into something never seen before.