Decline and Fall - by Evelyn Waugh

Architecture from the perspective of a novelist conveyed by a satirical story surrounding a bourgeois family and their British timber tudor estate. Proposed in a typical conservative setting the importance of this story from our perspective is the parody of the architect to whom is commissioned for his rumored genius to modernise the outdated Hampshire estate. Otto Silenus (or Professor Silenus) who is seen as a ‘find’ by estate owner Mrs Beste-Chetwynde is a young progressive architect from Eastern Europe that holds only two completed works to his name, a chewing gum factory and the decor for a cinema-film. The text that follows this insight provides us with the novelists first attempts to portray the architect as a cold and dehumanised modernist. When describing the professors second completed works, “the decor for a cinema-film of great length and complexity of plot - a complexity rendered the more inextricable by the producer’s austere elimination of all human characters”. The language used here seems to be mocking the architect and provides us with how the character of the architect is portrayed. This is emphasised further by the Otto’s proclaim that the only perfect building is a factory because it serves the purpose for machines and not men. His cold analysis is rounded off by his amusing reluctance to include a staircase labelling humans as creatures. The project is complete and Mrs Beste-Chetwynde is delighted with new modernised look and as the story moves forward Mrs B-C wants to marry Otto. Although this is a satirical story this element of the plot runs parallel with what we witnessed in the love story of Faust whereby the lady falls for the powerful maverick. Mrs B-C does not come from a small village but there is nothing to suggest that she does not have a small mind and is clearly attracted to the professor’s creative ability and ‘swag’. Whilst conversing with the illusive Paul, who remains a character of which we only know of his ‘shadow’, the Professor responds to Paul’s questions of “Don't you think she is wonderful?”, he replies, “No. I can't say that I do. If you compare her with other women of her age you will see that the particulars in which she differs from them are infinitesimal compared with the points of similarity. A few millimetres here and a few millimetres there, such variations are inevitable”. I may be wrong, but I’m sure the way it which Otto critiques Mrs B-C is deliberately written in a way to suggest that he is analysing her as if she was old tudor building? Just like in Blackadder the parody of the architect is always the same, a humanless modernist more fascinated by the machine age suggesting the old is nothing more than the forgotten. With this mindset are we moving quick enough towards our search for the alternative and being held back due to a stigma that we carry as architects from the perception of society?