The Tamesis
These things are always more interesting as a dialogue than a monologue. So I asked some people I trust (whose answers I know are more interesting than my own) to weigh in on this month’s topic. Bettina Korek Since 2020, he has run London’s Serpentine Gallery with a rigorous openness that I think is rare; she thinks about culture as the best designers think about space, which is to say that what you leave out is as important as what you put in. Lily Atherton HanburyCo-founder of Le Monde Béryl (a University of Pennsylvania architecture graduate), I’ve known her for many years and her intuition for beauty is something you can’t teach. and Sophia RoyAs stylist and founder of The Garment, he brings something to the table that I find quietly compelling: an emotion that’s both visceral and calculated. I learn something every time I talk to them.
Is there an object, space, or piece of work—new or old—that you feel perfectly embodies the spirit of modernism?
Lily Atherton Hanbury: The first one that comes to mind is Le Corbusier because he turned modernism into a belief system. His practice completely breaks with the traditions and rules of the past, formed between a rapidly changing world and the ongoing, ritualized experience of everyday life. Simple, sleek forms inspired by movement and the machine age are transformed by a reconnection with nature and the human body. He believes that design can enhance the life experience. If I had to choose an example to reflect this, I would choose Chandigarh because it was so comprehensive, created a new dialect and still feels incredible today.
Sophia Roy: Donald Judd. [His work] It matters because it was considered. I think that’s why it lasts so long…it doesn’t impose itself! This reduction isn’t really about aesthetics as we understand it today: it’s there on purpose and needs no further explanation, it’s a fairly standard criterion.
Bettina Korek: For me, it’s the Serpentine Gallery. Not just one of them, but the whole plan. Baudelaire said that modernity is ephemeral, fleeting, and accidental; I think this is exactly what the pavilion is about. Each piece is a complete work, a never-ending series, so every year an architect who has never built in the UK builds something different on the Serpentine’s south lawn. This openness and infinite continuity is to me the spirit of modernism. This is not a style but an ongoing experiment.
