Just finished Owen Hatherley's
Ministry of Nostalgia. It's a rant about retrochic, why we shouldn't just pick and choose things from different eras just because they're stylish, and why we shouldn't
project a half-remembered past onto our wishes for how we'd like things to be today. Similarly, he argues that we should consider purpose as much as form when evaluating buildings and arts, although it was only in the latter stages of the book does he admit that he is just as guilty of praising the aesthetics of brutalist municipal housing whilst overlooking its social function as much as anyone.
The best section in the book is
his discussion about how we've suppressed the work of the Empire Marketing Board in favour of the more memorable Underground posters and Crown Film Unit documentaries despite being commissioned and produced by most of the same people.
Favourite quote, about the newly-renovated Imperial War Museum:
Quote:
Because of how cheap and flimsy it is, Foster's Imperial War Museum is maybe a more appropriate response to austerity 2015, housing the trinkets of the past (and, of course, their current reproductions) in a building that evokes a Bravo Two Zero version of a PFI hospital.