Living Machines: Bauhaus Architecture as Sexual Ideology [Paperback]

E. Michael Jones (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1995

Following up his best selling books Degenerate Moderns and Dionysos Rising, E. Michael Jones completes the trilogy as he reveals in this book how modern architecture arose out of disordered lives of its creators. Beginning with the simultaneous collapse of both his marriage and the Austro-Hungarian empire, Walter Gropius began to formulate an architectural rhetoric that he felt would speak to the needs of the newly emerging modern man. As a sexually liberated social nomad, modern man would have no need for home or family, no need to be rooted in a particular time or place or family or soil or culture. He was to live henceforth in the "international style." Within a period, that deeply materialistic architectural vision would conquer the world. From the suburbs of Moscow to the south side of Chicago, the new man would live in machines, living machines, to use Gropius' words. Jones' book, Living Machines is an explanation of where that vision came from, where it led, and why it ultimately failed. "Socrates said that the order of the city was the order of the soul writ large. In other words, man's internal spiritual order, or disorder, is inevitably reflected outward in the political and cultural arrangement of his surroundings. In Living Machines, E. Michael Jones shows this to be no less true for modern architecture. Anyone who has stood dumbfounded before the sterility and ugliness of many modern buildings must have wondered what conception of humanity inspired these structures. Jones has the answers in the moral biographies of the seminal architectural revolutionaries of the 20th century. As Jones has shown in his other works, aesthetic revolutions are born of moral revolutions. As provocative as Tom Wolfe's From Bauhaus to Our House, Jones's book is far more profound. In his dissection of the spirit of modernity, Jones has again proven to be a master pathologist. This book should be read as part of a brilliant tr

Product Details

• Paperback: 128 pages
• Publisher: Ignatius Press (April 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0898704642
• ISBN-13: 978-0898704648
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #938,150 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #79 in Books > Religion & Spirituality > Other Practices > Baha'i

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Rollicking overview of modernist architecture, February 11, 2007

By 

Mark "eclectic dilettante" (Los Angeles, CA, United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Living Machines: Bauhaus Architecture as Sexual Ideology (Paperback)

This book is very insightful, because it helps us question something that is so often taken for granted: the shape of buildings around us. It is a fast read at only 120 pages, but touches on several big ideas about the influence of architecture on individuals as well as countries and history. My amateur interest in architecture is spurred to further investigation after reading this informative and provocative book.

I'm giving it 5 stars for the readability and "a-ha" spark of realization factor. The book is not without its flaws, as it is clearly based on a series of lectures, so suffers from the typical continuity/context issues that stricter editing could have cured. Originally addressed to people familiar with modern architecural history and Ivy League colleges of the United States, some of the unexplained references earlier in the book are eventually resolved in later chapters. One other criticism is that so much of the book seems to be an "ad hominum" attack on Gropius, even going so far as to psycho-analyze several events in rather symbolic detail.

11 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An outstanding third offering. . ., November 21, 2002

By 

David Zampino "21st Century Hobbit" (Delavan, Wisconsin) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Living Machines: Bauhaus Architecture as Sexual Ideology (Paperback)

. . .in E. Michael Jones' frontal assult on modernism!

In "Degenerate Moderns", Jones reveals how much of modern society was brought about by persons whose personal lives (and beliefs) could best be described as deviant. In "Dionysos Rising", he addresses certain trends in music which somewhat less success. In this volume, he takes on Walter Gropius and the Balhaus School of Design. The style is quite different from the previous two books and reads almost like a novel. In the book we learn how Gropius' own beliefs about sex, family, and religion (and his, shall we say, deviancies in these areas of life) influenced his architectural work.

A devastating critique of the International school of architecture in general, and Walter Gropius' work in particular.

18 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent! Read it and be enlightened., December 20, 2001

By 

Michael Ezzo (Yokkaichi, Japan) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Living Machines: Bauhaus Architecture as Sexual Ideology (Paperback)

I was fascinated by this incredibly revealing book.
E. Michael Jones is the author of other works
that "search and destroy" (in a manner of speaking)
the corrupt social and political views of many purveyors
of modern art forms, showing how they not only
result in (further!) lowered standards of moral
conduct, but also reflect the apostasy and debauchery
that are so often a staple in the lives of the men
who produce it. Here he takes on Walter Gropius
and his Bauhaus architectural movement of the
early 20th century. I love the way Jones has
structured it, to read swiftly, almost like a novel,
by how he continues to shift back and forth
between the time of Gropius' activity, and then
the modern day exigencies surrounding the hapless
victims (from Chicago to Poland) who have to actually
DWELL in these monstrosities
that were once considered so fashionable and chic.
Jones has cut right to the heart of the issue, by
revealing clearly how the static and cold style

of the buildings these avant garde architects promoted,
reflects perfectly the debased sexual morass
that Gropius and many of his colleagues
(Mies van der Rohe) found themselves
swallowed up in. I went to an arts academy when I was
younger, and had to read about the Bauhaus
and Gropius' work. I knew it was horrible
at the time, but couldn't articulate my views.
Now I can, thanks to Mr. Jones' book.
It should be read by everyone with the guts to
look modernism in its blackened eye and see it for
the moral bankruptcy it represents.