The Modern Nostalgia. Architecture, Autonomy, Philosophy
The Modern Nostalgia. Architecture, Autonomy, Philosophy

Summary/Abstract: The certainty of decadence is perhaps what, consciously or unconsciously, has led the architectural rationale to seek for renovation in the study of the past. But since the immediate past is the natural object of critique, its distant counterpart usually becomes the object of desire. Le Corbusier, for example, praised the aesthetic and functional standards of the machine as much as those of the Parthenon. The new architectural attitude that revolted against the ornament and academic thinking, at the beginning of the twentieth century, reflected on the technical character of the new era without forgetting the lessons of the past. The following lines consider the nostalgic dimension of Modernism, which implies a radical break with the past that nevertheless questions certain aspects of the new beginning. Because nostalgia is inherent to any revolution whose internal contradiction is explained by its French and Latin etymological origins: “the recurrence of a point or period of time.” The more radical the revolution, the more nostalgic.

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