Synopses & Reviews
What is the appropriate architecture for modern times? Should it free itself from the shackles of earlier forms? Or should the received wisdom of the past be incorporated into new buildings? Architects and critics have debated these questions for over a century. Rather than validate a particular ideology, Dennis Doordan's thoughtful, wide-ranging survey follows the progression of modern architecture as a manifestation of this debate.
Histories of modern architecture are often conceived as the struggle, triumph, and inevitable exhaustion of high modernism in the United States, Western Europe, and Scandinavia. The reader of Twentieth-Century Architecture will encounter instead a more global and open approach that considers what was possible, desirable, and appropriate during a volatile era of unprecedented opportunities.
There are three parts: Confronting Modernity, 1900-1940; Modernist Hegemony, 1940-1965; and An Era of Pluralism, 1965-2000. Covering developments in the United States, Latin America, Europe, and Asia, Dennis Doordan discusses the form, function, materials, and technologies of domestic and recreational spaces, workplaces, and buildings that reflect the chosen image of the state, and he also provides some treatment of city planning.
Along the way, the reader is treated to a thorough discussion of the work of architects and designers such as Alvar Aalto, Pietro Belluschi, Paul Bonatz, Le Corbusier, Bertram Goodhue, Walter Gropius, Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas, Julia Morgan, Oscar Niemeyer, Marcello Piacentini, Raili and Reima Pietila, Alison and Peter Smithson, James Stirling, Mies van der Rohe, and Frank Lloyd Wright.
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. [296]-298) and index.
About the Author
Dennis P. Doordan is Associate Professor in the School of Architecture at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana. He is the author of Building Modern Italy: Italian Architecture, 1914-1936 (Princeton Architectural Press, 1988), as well as numerous articles. He is the editor of Design History: An Anthology (MIT Press, 1996) and coeditor of Design Issues, a leading international journal devoted to the history, theory, and criticism of design.
Table of Contents
I. CONFRONTING MODERNITY 1900—1940. 1. The Modern City.
Responses to the Modern City. The Emergence of the Modern Movement. Housing. Pieces of the City. Women in Architecture. Cultural Institutions. The International Style. Cinema Architecture. Rockefeller Center and the General Motors. 2. The House.
The Arts and Crafts Movement and the Prairie School. European Developments. Classicism. Modernism. American Developments. Industrialization and the Home. 3. The Architecture of Transportation and Industry.
Railroad Stations. Urban Mass Transit Systems. Automobile Service Stations. Factory Architecture. The German Experience. Bridges. 4. Architecture and Politics.
Scandinavia and the Netherlands. The “Architecture of Empire.” The Soviet Union. Fascist Italy. The Third Reich. The United States.
II. THE ERA OF MODERNIST HEGEMONY 1940—1965. 5. The Triumph of Modernism.
The Industrialization of Design. New Directions. Rebuilding. Reconfiguring Capitals. Reconceptualizing the City. Housing. Skyscrapers. Strategies of Display. 6. Trends in Postwar Architecture.
Domestic Architecture. Campus Architecture. Museum Architecture. Religious Architecture. “The Style for the Job.”
III. AN ERA OF PLURALISM 1965—2000. 7. Postmodernism, Deconstructivism, and Tradition.
Renewing Modernism from Within: Housing. Silence and Light: Louis Kahn. Postmodernism. Deconstructivism. The Return of Classicism. Challenge and Adaptation. Organic Form and Craft Building. 8. Reconfiguring the City.
London. Paris. Berlin. Frankfurt am Main. Barcelona. Traditional Architecture and the Reconstruction of the European City. The New Urbanism in the United States. 9. The Present as History.
Timeline.
Bibliography.
Index.