“Death was what the Atlantic wall and Siegfried line were all about. Whenever I came across these grim fortifications along France’s Channel coast and German border, I realised I was exploring a set of concrete tombs whose dark ghosts haunted the brutalist architecture so popular in Britain in the 1950s.”
- J.G. Ballard

The modernists wanted to strip the world of mystery and emotion. No wonder they excelled at the architecture of death, says JG Ballard.

All of us have our dreams to reassure us. Architecture is a stage set where we need to be at ease in order to perform. Fearing ourselves, we need our illusions to protect us, even if the protection takes the form of finials and cartouches, corinthian columns and acanthus leaves. Modernism lacked mystery and emotion, was a little too frank about the limits of human nature and never prepared us for our eventual end.

- J.G. Ballard, “A handful of dust” @ The Guardian: Link

Wikidia: Atlantic Wall - Siegfried Line