Design

The Perils of Diagnosing Modernists

Two researchers recently suggested that autism and post-traumatic stress disorder led to the minimalist stylings of Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius. Their questions and tools are useful, but there’s danger in mistaking one piece of a puzzle for its entirety.

Modernism, Ann Sussman and Katie Chen implied in their August essay, was a path emerging from neurosis and one that never should have been followed. But their evidence that architecture by men like Le Corubsier is founded on “disorders” is highly questionable.AP

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By Darran Anderson

January 25, 2018 at 9:00 AM EST

The places we inhabit influence the way we see the world. A military installation or a prison is designed to have a psychological impact as much as day-glow kindergartens and restful hospitals. Equally and inevitably, psychology has shaped architecture.

Might we discover then that form follows dysfunction? Ann Sussman and Katie Chen have done so in a provocative piece published last August for Common Edge, “The Mental Disorders that Gave Us Modern Architecture.” Narrowing Modernism down to two crucial figures, Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius, they suggest minimalist ahistorical buildings originated in part from autism (in the case of Le Corbusier) and post-traumatic stress disorder (Walter Gropius). Modernism, they imply, was a path emerging from neurosis and one that never should have been followed.

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