Abstract
ABSTRACT This article reassesses the influence of gothic design principles on twentieth century urbanism and considers their contemporary import. The paper elucidates how William Morris’s gothic design philosophy, which inspired two major strains of contemporary urbanism, became detached from its radical politics as it migrated from England to the United States. Architectural modernism came to dominate urban design, characterized in opposition to gothic principles, and aligned with capitalist production. Modern architects championed and fetishized machine aesthetics, which were applied to urban-scale design with ambiguous consequences. The scaling of design principles between objects, buildings and cities has been a prominent yet neglected aspect of twentieth century urbanism, requiring greater critical attention. The paper articulates a defense of “gothic ontology”, not as neo-revivalist style but type of praxis. It is contended that three gothic design imperatives - aesthetics of labour, politics of making and vitality of ecology – are resurgent in urban thought today.
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