Meeting Peter Marcuse, Urban Theorist and Son of Herbert Marcuse

Posted by Ross Wolfe

Peter Marcuse

At a conference on the legacy of 9/11 for New York convening tomorrow at a site near Ground Zero, I will be attending a lecture of the son of the famed Frankfurt School critical theorist Herbert Marcuse, Peter, who is a professor of Urban Design at Columbia University. Whatever my qualms with his father regarding the politics of the New Left, I am of course thrilled to have the chance to meet him. I have added his blog to my blogroll, as well.

“Comrades!

The twin fires of war and revolution have devastated both our souls and our cities. The palaces of yesterday’s grandeur stand as burnt-out skeletons. The ruined cities await new builders[…]

To you who accept the legacy of Russia, to you who will (I believe!) tomorrow become masters of the whole world, I address the question: with what fantastic structures will you cover the fires of yesterday?” ⎯ Vladimir Maiakovskii, “An Open Letter to the Workers” (1918)

“Utopia transforms itself into actuality. The fairy tale becomes a reality. The contours of socialism will become overgrown with iron flesh, filled with electric blood, and begin to dwell full of life. The speed of socialist building outstrips the most audacious daring. In this lies the distinctive character and essence of the epoch.” ⎯ I. Chernia,“The Cities of Socialism” (1929)

“The idea of the conquest of the substructure, the earthbound, can be extended even further and calls for the conquest of gravity as such. It demands floating structures, a physical-dynamic architecture.” ⎯ El Lissitzky, The Reconstruction of Architecture in the Soviet Union (1929)