Diary of a Genius

The uneasy marriage of reason and nightmare which has dominated the 20th century has given birth to an increasingly surreal world.

Comedy and Tragedy, Gilbert Bridge, Barbican Centre, City of London, EC2Y

More and more, we see that the events of our own times make sense in terms of surrealism rather than any other view…

Petticoat Lane, Spitalfields, Tower Hamlets, E1

…whether the grim facts of the death-camps, Hiroshima and Viet Nam, or our far more ambiguous unease at organ transplant surgery and the extra-uterine foetus…

Ofra Zimbalista's Blue Men, Maya House, Borough High Street, Southwark, SE1

…the confusions of the media landscape with its emphasis on the glossy, lurid and bizarre, its hunger for the irrational and sensational.

Patricio Forrester's Deptford Marbles, New Cross Road, Deptford, Lewisham, SE14

JG Ballard’s introduction to Salvador Dali’s Diary of a Genius (1974)

1984

The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part…

Victoria Embankment Westminster, WC2N

…but that it was impossible to avoid joining in.

Richard Rogers' Lloyd's Building, Lime Street, City of London, EC3M

Within thirty seconds any pretence was always unnecessary.

Chamberlin, Powell and Bon's Barbican Estate, Barbican, City of London, EC1A

A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness…

Kohn Pedersen Fox's Heron Tower, Bishopsgate, City of London, EC2N

…a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current…

View of Canary Wharf from Stave Hill Ecological Park, Timber Pond Road, Surrey Quays, Bermondsey, SE16

…turning one even against one’s will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic.

Richard Roger's 88 Wood Street, City of London, EC2V

And yet the rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowlamp.

Windsor House, Victoria Street, Victoria, Westminster, SW1

From George Orwell’s 1984 (1948)

A House is a Machine for Living in

You employ stone, wood and concrete, and with these materials you build houses and palaces.

Clare House, Bow, Tower Hamlets, E9

That is construction. Ingenuity is at work.

Marble Hill House, Richmond Road, Twickenham, TW1

But suddenly you touch my heart, you do me good, I am happy and I say: “This is beautiful.”

Chamberlin, Powell and Bon's Barbican Estate, Barbican, City of London, EC1A

That is Architecture. Art enters in.

Dolls House, Hollytrees Museum, Colchester, Essex, CO1

From Le Corbusier’s Towards a New Architecture (1923)