Just arrived. Always an excellent, illuminating read. Attend the-modernist.org for yours. This one’s mine and you can’t have it.
In the enduring search for the peaceful rural ideal it can be easy to forget that the ‘rural’ acts as a conduit for the modern. Through their role in transport, militarisation or energy production, these pastoral, bucolic or rugged areas have evolved their own architectures and infrastructures. A dam halfway up a mountain, for example, is a surprise – a startling juxtaposition – but as with so many edifices it is there for one reason: to help us live.