Visiting Norway, Dalrymple notices that the new architecture there is no better than that of his native Britain, though Norway is a richer country:
It must be admitted, however, that architecture is past its Corbusian nadir, that it can now construct buildings of a cold and glassy elegance to which, however, the heart will never warm, and which age will never improve. They are the cold-blooded reptiles of architecture; and while snakes can be elegant and even, in a way, beautiful, one does not clutch them to one’s heart.
I do like that quote about not clutching reptiles to ones heart and it just seems so perfectly apt that I saw a recent photo of, I think it was Boris Johnson, kissing a reptile.
Okay that’s not quite the same as clutching it… Indeed someone else was holding it which perhaps illustrates the point more than not, “yer gotta embrace it Boris, you can do it.”
We’ve all gotta embrace the cold new world.