Architecture

Abstract This article examines how decadence inflected modern architectural thought from the late eighteenth to the late twentieth century, starting with the polemical writings of the French architect Charles-François Viel, who dismissed scientific methods and engineering techniques as inferior to classical tradition. Later, decadence played a part in the Arts and Crafts critique of mechanized industrial production as well as twentieth-century condemnations of the managerial practices of late capitalism. Nevertheless, fin-de-siècle decadent culture also influenced architectural designers and theorists, exemplified by the art nouveau stylings of Charles Rennie Mackintosh and the theoretical writings of Ralph Adams Cram and Geoffrey Scott. From concerns about the sources and causes of social decadence to the aesthetic influence of decadent culture, the works explored here trace interchanges between decadence and modern conceptions of architecture.