Modern Architecture

Fülszöveg

THE WORLD OF ART
Modern Architecture
A Critical History Kenneth Frampton
297 plates
The history of modern architecture', says Kenneth Frampton, 'is as much about consciousness and polemical intent as it is about buildings themselves.' After the revolutionary developrfients in building techniques of the 1 9th century, anything seemed possible The new horizons in technology led architects to reconsider what architecture should be about, turning it into a battleground of ideas. Building has become far more than an end in itself: it has been used to realize new styles of living, as the social engineering of Le Corbusier aimed to do; it has even been 8; means of political expression, for the Futurists, the Russian Constructivists, the Italian Fascists.
In his survey of 20th-century architecture, both source-book and critique, the author provides an invaluable'jvealth of visual arid documentary evidence, emphasizing the importance of ideas as never before. All the crucial... Tovább

Fülszöveg

THE WORLD OF ART
Modern Architecture
A Critical History Kenneth Frampton
297 plates
The history of modern architecture', says Kenneth Frampton, 'is as much about consciousness and polemical intent as it is about buildings themselves.' After the revolutionary developrfients in building techniques of the 1 9th century, anything seemed possible The new horizons in technology led architects to reconsider what architecture should be about, turning it into a battleground of ideas. Building has become far more than an end in itself: it has been used to realize new styles of living, as the social engineering of Le Corbusier aimed to do; it has even been 8; means of political expression, for the Futurists, the Russian Constructivists, the Italian Fascists.
In his survey of 20th-century architecture, both source-book and critique, the author provides an invaluable'jvealth of visual arid documentary evidence, emphasizing the importance of ideas as never before. All the crucial collective developments, from Constructivism and Expressionism via Functionalism and the International Style to New Brutalism, are covered. He illuminates the relationships and influences of major groups—the Chicago School, the Vienna School, the Futurists, De StijI, the Bauhaus—and selects the work of leading figures such^as Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe for especially detailed treatnient. He also deals with rtiovements of the period normally neglected, namely the New Tradition and the New Monumentality, particularly as these found expression in the so-called Art Deco culture and the architecture of the Third Reich.
The message of the book is that a compromise must be found between the fundamental need for place creation and physical continuity and the laws of rationalized production. In the author's words, 'Building, dwelling, cultivating and being were once indivisible': in this now lost unity he sees much of the challenge for the future.
Kenneth Frampton was born in 1930 and trained as an architect at the Architectural Association School of Architecture, London. He has worked both as architect and architectural historian, and is at present Professor at the Graduate School of Architecture and Planning, Columbia University, New York, and a Fellow of the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies, New York. He has also served as a visiting lecturer in the School of Environmental Design, Royal College of Art, London. He is author of numerous articles on the history of the Modern Movement and his other publications include a short survey entitled British! Buildings 1960-1964, which was co-authored with Douglas Stephen and Michael Carapetian.
On the cover; Alberto Sartoris: axonometric profect for Notre-Dame du Phare (church and religious centre), 1931. By courtesy of the architect. Vissza