"Ultimately, history will judge the decisions I made. I won’t be around because it’s going to take awhile for the objective historians to show up. And so I’m pretty comfortable with it. I did what I did. I know the spirit in which I did it."-
George W. Bush, “On Legacy,” 2013
Is history still told by the winners?
"An escalator can never break–it can only become stairs. You would never see an “Escalator Temporarily Out Of Order” sign, just “Escalator Temporarily Stairs. Sorry for the convenience. We apologize for the fact that you can still get up there."- Mitch Hedberg, “On Escalators” from Comedy Central Presents, 1999
"I was at this casino minding my own business, and this guy came up to me and said, ‘You’re gonna have to move, you’re blocking a fire exit.’ As though if there was a fire, I wasn’t gonna run. If you’re flammible and have legs, you are never blocking a fire exit."- Mitch Hedberg, “On Fire Safety” from Comedy Central Presents, 1999
Marcello Piacentini, Model of the EUR, Rome, Italy, c. 1942 (via e42)
Marcello Piacentini, Master Plan of the EUR, Rome, Italy, c. 1942 (via e42)
Marcello Piacentini, Arch of Empire at the EUR, Rome, Italy, c. 1942 (via e42)
Marcello Piacentini, Elevation of the Arch of Empire at the EUR, Rome, Italy, c. 1942 (via e42)
Florestano Di Fausto, Arco dei Fileni, Ra’s Lanuf, Libya, 1937
Florestano Di Fausto, Arco dei Fileni, Ra’s Lanuf, Libya, 1937
"I am finished. My star has fallen. I have no fight left in me. I work and I try, yet know that all is but a farce … I await the end of the tragedy and – strangely detached from everything – I do not feel any more an actor. I feel I am the last of spectators."- Benito Mussolini, Interview with Madeleine Mollier, 1945
"The arch form was not inherently fascist but was indeed part of the entire history of architecture."- William Wurster, “On Benito Mussolini and Eero Saarinen’s Arches,” c. 1947-67
Léon Krier, Pavilion on a Lake, c. 1990 (via archreview)
Léon Krier and Massimo Scolari, Le désespoir de Janus, 1975 (via archreview)
‘In this collaborative drawing by Léon Krier and Massimo Scolari, two forts face off across a strait. The structures, represented in Scolari’s trademark lurid fantasy style, have more than a whiff of Antonio Sant'Elia to them, and with their cantilevered gantries, these industrial-Futurist homages are not unlike the contemporaneous works of the High-Tech architects. Facing the future and the past simultaneously, the despair of Janus is that he is trapped between the two, unable to move forwards or back. It’s an apt description of the Postmodern dilemma represented here; perhaps these are not forts but the towers of some unfinished bridge, standing sentry over a gap that will never be crossed.’
