James Stevens Curl 26 March 1937 – 5 November 2025
Professor James Stevens Curl, an internationally-acclaimed architectural writer, died in November 2025 at his home in Holywood, Co. Down
In 1983, the Queen’s University Department of Architecture, Belfast, posted a few of us off to Winchester, Hampshire, to complete our undergraduate practical training year. The local hospital authority there had a drawing office which took in trainees from Belfast every year and whilst walking to and from work every day I would unwittingly pass the house of Co. Down author James Stevens Curl, who lived at No. 5 Clifton Terrace, just off the Romsey Road. However, it was a good thirty-five years later that I had the pleasure of first meeting James at the launch of his now internationally acclaimed book “Making Dystopia: The Strange Rise and Survival of Architectural Barbarism” (Oxford University Press, 2018) at the Ulster Scots Centre in Belfast.
From time to time during those 35 years I found myself making very good use of some of James’ books on architecture. For example, his “Oxford Dictionary of Architecture” (which he co-wrote with Susan Wilson) became for me an essential go-to reference, covering architectural history in detail from ancient times to the present day.
Professor Curl and I very quickly became friends following our introduction, due in large part to our shared interest in understanding why the vast majority of people are of the opinion that architecture was infinitely more beautiful prior to the year 1 BM (Before Modernism). “Making Dystopia” was James’ written answer to this question. He concluded that the basis of the Modernist style is nothing more than a series of quasi-religious beliefs which unfortunately continue to be proselytized in most of the schools of architecture to this day.
Curl fully understood that in order to debunk any belief system, you need to first analyse the personality and actions of its founder or, in this case, founders. The prophets of Modernist architecture were arguably Le Corbusier, Ludwig Miës van der Rohe and Walter Gropius. He concluded that these big figures were in essence self-advertising totalitarians. Le Corbusier displayed his absolutist approach to the built environment through his monstrously inhuman masterplans for central Paris and Algiers, backed up by his diktats, maxims, and declarations in “Vers Une Architecture”. Miës van der Rohe emerged in the 1930s as a radical, bent on expunging all architectural ornament as is evident from his puritanical minimalist creations which were executed in accordance with his famous ‘less is more’ slogan. “Making Dystopia” amusingly charts Miës’ opportunistic passage from being pro-Nazi (he resigned from the Prussian Academy of Arts in 1936 with “Heil Hitler!” typed below his signature) to purely careerist refugee from Nazism. Curl, a master of architectural history, even questioned the foundational skills of the movement’s leaders, quoting Philip Johnson’s assessment that Gropius was ‘not a great designer’. For Curl, this was evidence that the movement’s success owed more to ideology and institutional power than to the traditional architectural virtues of craft and composition. Curl also reminds us that Gropius supported the demolition of one of New York’s greatest buildings, Penn Station: “This superb building not only functioned rather better than anything Gropius claimed to have designed… This is probably why Gropius was keen for what he described as a ‘monument to a particularly insignificant period in American architectural history… a case of pseudo-tradition’ to be removed, because it showed up the shoddiness of much of Modernism to a painful degree.”
“Making Dystopia” received international acclaim from highly respected figures such as Sir Roger Scruton, Anthony Daniels, Professor Nikos Salingaros and Witold Rybczynski, however, was met with notable silence from much of the architectural establishment. The response from some Modernist practitioners was along the lines of: “Don’t confuse me with the facts – I’ve already made up my mind”. Curl was well aware of the penalty for apostasy, so wasn’t surprised at all.
In honour of the man, a symposium to celebrate his life and works has been arranged for Friday 22nd May 2026 in Oslo, Norway, where in recent years James delivered a number of inspired talks. In addition, an annual lecture in his name is planned in order to promote, in going forwards, his vision for a European return to high culture. I know that James would infinitely prefer to be remembered this way than by, for example, a blue plaque on the wall of No. 5 Clifton Terrace, Winchester.
John Smylie