If you came across a video featuring Frank Gehry‘s frenetic Disney Concert Hall, Renzo Piano’s towering New York Times building, John Portman‘s postmodern Westin Bonaventure Hotel, the Art Deco Los Angeles Timesbuilding, and Anish Kapoor‘s reflective Bean sculpture, you’d probably assume you were watching a survey of some of the past century’s most memorable modern architectural landmarks.
Unfortunately, all of these buildings are featured in a video far more sinister, as first noted by Citylab‘s Kriston Capps and discussed by design critics across the internet: the National Rifle Association’s latest propaganda ad. Images of these works, along with street scenes in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles–stereotypical bastions of liberal elites–cycle through the video as NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch snarls: “And then they use their ex-president to endorse the resistance. All to make them march, make them protest, make them scream ‘racism, and sexism and xenophobia and homophobia.'” It is an “open call to violence to protect white supremacy,” as Deray Mckesson put it; some NRA members have condemned the ad according to The Washington Post.
But what’s less clear is why these modern buildings are featured. Architecture has a long history of functioning as a symbol of power–but how, historically, did modernism became a political target? It’s complicated.