Holywood giant, James Stevens Curl
Several giants in the world of architecture passed away last year: Leon Krier who was from Luxembourg, as well as Robert A M Stern and Frank Gehry who were both from the USA. Here on the island of Ireland we also lost an internationally respected figure in the field, namely Professor James Stevens Curl. This prolific and highly accomplished writer was born in Belfast on 26th March 1937 and passed away at his home in Holywood, Co. Down, on 5th November 2025.
Curl was to many a prophet of Beauty. To others he was a very large stone in their shoe.
The author’s outputs include: The Victorian Celebration of Death (1972), Victorian Architecture: Its Practical Aspects (1973), A Celebration of Death: An Introduction to Some of the Buildings, Monuments, and Settings of Funerary Architecture in the Western European Tradition (1980), The Londonderry Plantation (1986), Georgian Architecture (1993), Encyclopaedia of Architectural Terms (1993), English Heritage Book of Victorian Churches (1995), The Protestant Cemetery in Rome: One of the Loveliest Places on Earth (2009), Funerary Monuments and Memorials in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Armagh (2013), The Oxford Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (1999, 2006, 2015), Freemasonry & the Enlightenment: Architecture, Symbols and Influences (2022) and Classical Architecture: Language, Variety and Adaptability (1992, 2001, 2025).
However, the Curl book that grabbed the headlines was Making Dystopia: The Strange Rise and Survival of Architectural Barbarism (2018). In this thoroughly researched volume, the author challenged what he viewed as the bizarre and destructive design strictures of the Modernist style in architecture which require that new buildings should always, where possible:
…look novel no matter what, and contrast strongly with their context. They should ideally shock the viewer.
…have façades which appear structurally illogical, avoiding the expression of vertical load paths in accordance with the natural law of gravity. Remember that your creation will be held up somehow by structural engineers.
…use lots of exposed concrete. And you should insist that this is a structurally ‘honest’ material, whilst drawing attention away from the hidden steel reinforcement which is key to it standing up.
…aim to be 3-dimensional sculptures-in-the-round – even where it is a requirement for the façade to adhere to an established street line.
…include where possible lots of white rendered surfaces, flat roofs, horizontal strip windows, pilotis, and big cantilevers – except if one has opted to do Modernist ‘blobitecture’, in which case anything goes.
…be devoid of decoration which is strictly haram.
Prior to Modernism, Curl wrote, architecture was “…a great language capable of infinite variety of expression, a mighty and expansive vocabulary, a vast resource based on two and a half millennia of civilisation (codified and made available in hundreds of admirably illustrated pattern-books that enabled ordinary builders and architects of only moderate talent to create streets and buildings that harmonised with each other)“. The author made the case that the typical Modernist building is “…not architecture at all, because it has no vocabulary, grammar, syntax, serenity, repose, quality, or beauty“.
Making Dystopia describes how, to this day, most of our schools of architecture ensure that the “quasi-religious” creed of Modernism is perpetuated. Curl explained that, ever since the start of the movement, “In the curious ‘compound’ of Modern architecture, critics and certain practitioners became adept at using a rarefied, somewhat cloudy language, which many confused with profundity, but then cults invent their own liturgies, ambitious claims, and opaque language, designed to veil rather than illuminate, or perhaps, by obfuscation, to suggest a depth of meaning that in truth is absent.”
Curl produced his brilliant reviews and insights right up until the end, with his last article appearing in The Critic magazine on 2nd November 2025, just three days before he died.
James Stevens Curl is survived by his wife, Dorota, and his two daughters, Ingrid and Astrid. The latter will be one of the speakers at the forthcoming symposium to be held this May in Oslo in memory of her father’s life and work, along with celebrated writers and practitioners such as Alexander Stoddart (the King’s Sculptor in Ordinary), Anthony Malcolm Daniels (English cultural critic and internationally acclaimed author) and Professor Robert Adam (leading classical architect, educator and activist).