Subtitled An anatomy of creativity seen through the lives of Freud, Einstein, Picasso, Stravinsky, Eliot, Graham and Gandhi, it is a detailed study of these, the big seven Modernists, and it shows how they often made breakthroughs or underwent creative shifts every 10 years. The notion that there is a ‘10-year rule’ of reinvention for the creative genius in the twentieth century has been well argued by the Harvard cognitive scientist Howard Gardner in his book Creating Minds, 1993. Sometimes, a movement or an individual may be momentarily in the public eye and enjoy media power, but such notoriety rarely lasts for more than five years and usually for not more than two.
Rather, it belongs to a competitive drama, a dynamic and turbulent flow of ideas, social movements, technical forces and individuals all jockeying for position. The main narrative does not belong to any building type, movement, individual or sector. In terms of cost airports have won, in terms of prestige museums, in terms of kitsch it has been shopping and mega-malls, but building-counts like body-counts only tell the background story. In terms of sheer numbers the century has been claimed for the shed building, the factory, warehouse and its cousin, the office. Did Modern architecture, as its apologists claim, triumph over other contenders? What was the relationship of commercial practice to quality - did the best architects lead or only influence the profession? Did good architecture trickle-down or was it dumbed-down? Or did a hundred mini-movements tell the real story of the century or was it like that of the past, one of spec builders, the DIY industry and self-build? This is a harder question than it first appears. Now that the century is over it is time to ask what it meant for architecture. Originally published in AR July 2000, this piece was republished online in December 2011
At the start of the twenty-first century, Charles Jencks gives a personal, perceptive and provocative summary of the architecture of the twentieth.
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