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doubt on that form of living. ‘Live in a house?’ was the title. ‘Houses have been ascribed great advantages in comparison with blocks of flats mbt shoes review . Is it simply romanticism, or is there any realism in such a line of thought?’ Various reasons were then advanced, in the subdued manner of somebody acting as devil’s advocate, as to why houses might be wanted. One of them was that there ‘is ground for belief that many people consider that the spread of motoring will make it possible to live in small houses farther out in spite of worse communications than in the more central living areas’. ‘But on the other hand,’ the course goes on to say, ‘we can find other reasons against small houses. The drift from the country to the towns, especially the medium-sized concentrations, continues. This means that more people are moving to places where the way of living is, by mbt shoes online tradition, less in houses than is the case in the country, and in small villages.’ This is not strictly true, but it is persuasive: even in a forward-looking society, tradition is a powerful justification. Flats are traditional in all towns; houses are not; the public accepts that, and adjusts its tastes accordingly. Town planning may concentrate on flats, in the knowledge that resistance has been undermined beforehand. The ABF course betrays, in passing, yet another means of discouraging small houses. By starving such developments of public transport, their attractions are reduced. There are small <a href="http://www.christian-louboutin-2012.com/christian-louboutin-evenings-c-7.html"><strong>christian louboutin heels</strong></a> housing estates in the environs of Stockholm, for example, which are practically devoid of public transport. In a few cases, existing railway services have been left to decay. On the other hand, the new approved suburbs have been well provided with underground railways and rapid bus services. 272 The New Totalitarians Most building in Sweden is highly industrialized. Prefabrication is the rule. Long production runs mbt discount are common. In consequence, uniformity is guaranteed. Over large areas, thousands of flats are identical, and it is possible to visit homes in widely separated parts of the country and yet have the impression of staying in one place. In one way, this serves the purpose of regimentation. People all live in more or less the same kind of flat, and the thought of asking for distinctive architecture as a contribution to identity is rare. A schoolteacher put it this way: ‘All rooms have four walls and a ceiling. So what’s the difference?’ To the average Swede, a house, in the words of Le buy mbt shoes Corbusier, is ‘a machine for living in’, although not perhaps in quite the sense that he meant it. Standards are uniformly high. Construction is solid, workmanship impeccable and jerry building unknown. Refrigerators and deep freezers are always provided: kitchens come fully equipped. Bathrooms are superb and plumbing faultless. “Walls are insulated, Cheap mbt shoes and central heating universal. Windows are large, and rooms are light, although often in a clinical way. Functionally, a modern Swedish flat could hardly be improved on. Rooms are admittedly small and ceilings low, but since tenants appear not to mind, that can scarcely be labelled a serious defect. The ABF housing course mentioned above asks: ‘How far can one standardize in order to keep prices down? Are the fears that simplification can go too far mbt chapa , justified? Standardization, after all, is a link in efforts to economize, i.e. to husband the limited resources we have. If we can do that, we can create the resources for a higher mbt shoes sale housing standard, or lower housing costs: the housing consumer gets more for his money. ‘It is the function of the architect to provide a neutral frame for those who live there. In this way, individuals have greater possibilities to create an environment according to their own personal evaluations. Furniture, textiles and other decorative The Environmental Mill 273 objects are an expression of personal taste,* which comes out far more clearly within a neutral framework.’ That proposition is an exercise in triteness and sophistry. It is merely an argument for anonymous architecture, dressed up in respectable clothes. Nevertheless, it has been generally accepted. To achieve this steering of architecture, architects must of necessity be the servants of politicians and planners. Alternatively, they have to subordinate their originality mbt shoes clearance to the exigencies of policy. The architect is customarily a man of independence, with certain aesthetic and social ideas which he wishes to embody in a building. This is not so in Sweden. Architecture, with the acquiescence of the architects, has become the servant of the State and the agent of its ideology. The function of the Swedish architect is officially defined as that of changing society. Architects, turned by their commissions into irregular civil servants, have identified themselves with the State, and helped to realize its aims. <a href="http://www.christian-louboutin-2012.com/christian-louboutin-sandals-c-2.html"><strong>christian louboutin sandals</strong></a> And this has been compounded by a singular development in professional ideas. For the modern Swedish architect, aesthetics do not exist. This is only a local application of a general trend. Beauty has been denied validity, because it cannot be defined; for the same reason, ugliness is said to have no meaning. It is nihilism dignified by professional acceptance and supported by philosophy. ‘Value nihilism’, which denies the existence of values that cannot be exactly mbt clearance measured, is the accepted Swedish * The late industrialization of the Swedes has happily left them with roots in their traditional peasant culture. This has meant that they have preserved a sense of colour, pattern and texture which makes the average person an accomplished interior decorator. The connection with the Scandinavian countryside can be seen in the constant use of the forest colours; the muted pink and grey of granite outcrop, the sombre greens of the conifers, and the hot ochres and viridian of the lichens. Such subtle elements are handled with dexterity: rarely in a Swedish horne is there visual disharmony. 274 The New Totalitarians creed. It is a comforting doctrine. It dismisses metaphysics. Applied to architecture, it means that function alone counts. The architect is no longer concerned with designing a beautiful building, but only with the production of rigidly specified structures. These specifications are social, economic and technical, in that order. The social requirements have primacy, and determine the nature of mbt shoes uk the others. Broadly <a href="http://www.christian-louboutin-2012.com/christian-louboutin-pumps-c-1.html"><strong>christian louboutin pumps</strong></a> speaking, their aim, like that of education, is to change men in the way demanded by the new society. And as the schools imprint, to use official catchwords, equality and community so is architecture expected to do the same things. Equality is a word of many meanings, particularly in Swedish. In the strict sense of social levelling, the environment is used for its consummation by mixing classes. The municipal mbt stockists housing offices try to distribute tenants in the new suburbs so that there is no separation of income or profession, and juxtaposition of the unequal is ensured. By and large, this has been achieved. Whether it will destroy the notion of class or simply exacerbate antagonism remains to be seen, but, in this context at least, it is the intention that counts. Social levelling is perhaps the least of the meanings of ‘equality’ in Swedish. Literally, the word for it -jamlikhet – means even and identical, and out of this there arise strong connotations of self-effacement and regimentation. As a corollary, architects are strongly discouraged, where they are not actually forbidden, from putting individuality into their designs. All Swedes are to be provided with roughly the same form of dwelling: a flat (or terraced house) that is comfortable, but not excessively so, a kind of golden environmental mean. It is permissible to have a slightly better flat, but not a spacious mbt clearance split-level apartment; a little larger standard house, but not an individually conceived home for gracious or eccentric living. There is no option in kind; choice is restricted to degree. The citizen must live as the State prescribes. The Environmental Mill 275 This doctrine is upheld by the rulers of the country. Mr Hans Lowbeer, the University Chancellor, although of the upper classes, lives in a modern Stockholm suburb called Farsta, incorporating the principles of equality applied to the environment. ‘I live like everybody else,’ he says, ‘we’ve got to put equality into living.’ Mr Olof Palme, the Prime Minister, lives in a terraced house at Vallingby, another socially engineered Stockholm suburb. Both men appear genuinely to believe in the civic virtues of anonymous and uniform living: at all events it makes sound political sense. The Swede suspects a man who lives differently from others; conformity among his leaders is a necessity for his support. Anonymous architecture ought to be mbt uk the logical consequence of anonymous living. This is not only the case in Sweden, it might be objected. But what distinguishes the Swedish situation is that anonymity is deliberate official policy, and that, since the State alone determines the form of architecture, there is no competition and no relief. It is as if, in England discount mbt trainers , all new building were in the hands of the Greater London Council or the Ministry of Works; or cheap mbt shoes , in America, in the control of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The significance of individual buildings has been abolished in Sweden. It is the relationship between them alone that counts. Of course, any architect with a feeling for artistic unity will try to relate his work to its neighbours. But in Sweden, the principle has been invoked as a conscious aid to anonymity. It has been employed to eradicate vestigial traces of character so that buildings become the visual expression of a collective society. Each town looks very like the other, and there is something oddly disembowelled about all buildings erected since the 1940s. This is not, of course, an inescapable consequence of modern architecture. There was a time, during the first four decades of this century, when the Swedes, <a href="http://www.casualphorum.com/viewtopic.php?p=1867256#1867256"><strong>Blogs » ProveYourExtreme</strong></a> although admittedly under Finnish and German 276 The New Totalitarians influence, designed buildings of some character. And, looking across the Gulf of Bothnia, to Finland, the cradle of contemporary architecture, one sees building after building of tremendous personality. But in Finland the architect is still trying to cultivate architectural beauty in a modern idiom. Consequently, there are buildings in Helsinki with all the distinctive vigour of a Renaissance palace in Italy. To see the work of Alvar Aalto is to succumb to sheer architectural vitality. But mbt shoes australia in Sweden, anonymity has become part of the creed of the architect. Professor T. Ahrbohm, a leading Swedish architect and a high civil servant, has this to say: ‘I sympathize with anonymous architecture, and disapprove of buildings that are monuments to mbt shoes sale their designers. Housing is not an expression of an architect’s personality, but an instrument of society. Nor is it functional, in the sense of being built with a certain function in view, because it has to take care o