Rebel architectural theorist goes to church

by Krystofer Penner | Published 2nd October 2012 in Ways of Seeing

“Every true artist should come to his work now with something of the spirit of a liberator fighting an entrenched tyranny,” writes Nikos Salingaros.

Salingaros is the 2012 Slater-Maguire lecturer at St. Margaret’s Anglican, Winnipeg (corner of Westminster and Ethelbert), to be given on Monday, October 15 at 7:00 pm and titled “Biology, the City & Responsible Design.”

He is Professor of Mathematics, Urbanist and Architectural Theorist from the University of Texas at San Antonio.

“We live in a time when the art all around us accustoms men [sic] to, and insinuates into their souls, the most erroneous and degrading ideas imaginable about themselves and their world. The prerequisite, then, for restoring sanity to our civilization is an unqualified rejection of artistic modernism. Consequently, the first duty for every true artist at this moment of history is an act of spiritual fidelity to the timeless traditions of art-making, and an uncompromising, unmitigated hatred towards the dictatorship of modernism.”

Salingaros advocates a “return again to the permanent sources of all genuine inspiration – the beauty pulsating throughout the natural world, the capacity for excellence inhering in the human soul, the
faint and sporadic glimpses we have of a purposefulness behind the observable chaos of life.”

Salingaros’ anti-modernist stance rangles many traditional architects, but others praise him as a great visionary. The Utne Reader calls Salingaros “one of 50 visionaries who are changing your world,” and Planetizen ranked him 11th among “The top 100 urban thinkers of all time.”

The lecture is free.