Modern Architecture Since 1900

Since its first publication in 1982, Modern Architecture Since 1900 has become established as a contemporary classic. Worldwide in scope, it combines a clear historical outline with masterly analysis and interpretation. Technical, economic, social and intellectual developments are brought together in a comprehensive narrative which provides a setting for the detailed examination of buildings. Throughout the book the author's focus is on the individual architect, and on the qualities that give outstanding buildings their lasting value.

For the third edition, the text has been radically revised and expanded, incorporating much new material and a fresh appreciation of regional identity and variety. Seven chapters are entirely new, including expanded coverage of recent world architecture.

Described by James Ackerman of Harvard University as 'immeasurably the finest work covering this field in existence', this book presents a penetrating analysis of the modern tradition and its origins, tracing the creative interaction between old and new that has generated such an astonishing richness of architectural forms across the world and throughout the century.

Auteur

William Curtis has won worldwide acclaim for his architectural writing. His books include Le Corbusier: Ideas and Forms and Denys Lasdun, both published by Phaidon.

Résumé
A penetrating analysis of the modern architectural tradition and its origins.

Contenu
Part 1 The formative strands of Modern architecture: the idea of a Modern architecture in the 19th century; industrialization and the city - the skyscraper as type and symbol; the search for new forms and the problem of ornament; rationalism, the engineering tradition, and reinforced concrete; arts and crafts ideals in Britain and the USA; responses to mechanization - the Deutscher Werkbund and futurism; the architectural system of Frank Lloyd Wright; national romanticism and classical transformations; cubism and new conceptions of space. Part 2 The crystallization of Modern architecture between the wars: Le Corbusier's quest for ideal form; Walter Gropius, German expressionism, and the Bauhaus; architecture and revolution in Russia; skyscraper and suburb - the USA between the wars; the ideal community - alternatives to the industrial city; the international style, the individual talent, and the myth of functionalism; the image and idea of Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye at Poissy; the continuity of older traditions; nature and the machine - Mies van der Rohe, Wright and Le Corbusier in the 1930s; totalitarian critiques of the Modern movement; the spread of modern architecture to Britain and Finland; universal models, national inflections and regional accents. Part 3 Transformation and dissemination after 1940: modern architecture in the USA - immigration and consolidation; form and meaning in the late works of Le Corbusier; the Unite d'Habitation at Marseilles as a collective housing prototype; Alvar Aalto and Scandinavian developments; disjunctions and continuities in the Europe of the 1950s; the process of absorption - Latin America, Australia, Japan; Louis I. Kahn and the challenge of monumentality; architecture and anti-architecture in Britain; crises and critiques in the 1960s; modernity and tradition in the Third World; architectural types and urban fragments - new directions in the 1970s. Part 4 Changing ideals in the late 20th century: modern architecture and the historical sense; world cultures and local identities; traditions of the modern; towards architecture, beyond style.