Greek and Roman Architecture in Classic Drawings Book

Is this a foundational text that gives me a better framework for understanding 20th-century architecture? Yes. Did I strongly dislike it? Also yes.

In fairness, it's hard to get in the mindset of 1923, and I think the past 100 years haven't been kind to elite European men who believe their opinions constitute an immutable and universal truth. For instance:

"Decoration is of a sensorial and elementary order, as is colour, and is suited to simple races, peasants and savages. Harmony and proportion incite the intellectual faculties and arrest the man of culture."

But even apart from his irritating self-certainty, I found myself strongly disagreeing with his perspective. His mantra "the house is a machine for living in" claims that the modern man, who sees efficiency and austerity in his factory job, feels an existential alienation when he returns to his home:

"His town, his street, his house or his flat rise up against him useless, hinder him from following the same path in his leisure that he pursues in his work."

I think this is a fundamental misstatement of the modern problem - to my mind, the old and familiar, the colorful and decorative, provide a sense of comfort and repose from the alienating pace of the modern world, which subjects humans to a rate of change we aren't built to withstand.

But then again, maybe this idea of "the modern problem," that there is a fundamental epochal question which must be answered, is itself a concession to a Corbusian conception of the world. I'm not saying it's not influential, it's just not my thing.