Architecture and Modernity : A Critique

“A homogeneous
metropolitan public.”
(From Christoph Mohr and
Michael Müller, Funktionalität
und Moderne, p. 189.)
38
derlying aim of realizing a classless society was not achieved, the implicit promises
of modern architecture also turned out to be empty ones. The expectations aroused
were only fulfilled in the realm of aesthetics; at the level of praxis they remained
frustrated. 93
Viewed in retrospect, this criticism is to a certain extent correct. The activists
of Das Neue Frankfurt assumed somewhat naively that transformations in the realm
of architecture would be sufficient in themselves to spark the process of a more general
reform of society. As we know now, that hope was in vain. That the project failed
to be completed, however, was not only due to the unfavorable turn of political and
economic events, but also to misjudgments and false expectations of it initiators. It
is doubtful, for instance, whether the radical ambition to design the city according to
the needs of the collective could have any real meaning in a context where the capitalist
system of ownership was left basically untouched. Uhlig and Rodriguez concur
with Tafuri in arguing that the construction of the Siedlungen attested to a strategy
of evasion: they certainly did not solve the real problems of the city that resulted from
the increasing commercialization of the center.
2 Constructing the Modern Movement