Marcel Breuer : 1902-1981
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From steel tubes to reinforced concrete: the magical Modernist In 1956, Time magazine called him one of the "form-givers of the 20th century": with his invention of steel-tube furniture,Marcel Breuer (1902-1981) has made his mark in the history of design at the tender age of 23. He started his architectural career as one of the Bauhaus's most influential architects with the 1932 Harnischmacher House. Even Breuer's earliest work was marked by the search for a symbiosis between local and global, big and small, smooth and rough. His sparse use of materials emphasized the balance among textures, colors, and shapes. In 1943, he conceived the "binuclear" house concept--the splitting of living and sleeping areas into separate wings--which he first applied to the Geller House I (1944-1946), and which would attain great popularity. After designing the UNESCO headquarters in Paris (1953-1958), reinforced concrete, with its formal plasticity und structural elasticity, continued to give monumental character to buildings such as the Abbey and Campus of St. John's University in Minnesota (1953-1961), the IBM Research Center in France (1960-1962), and the Whitney Museum of American Art (1963-1966) in New York City. With his keen sense of proportion, shape, and material, Breuer is one of the most important Modernists and is still very much central in the discussion of contemporary architecture. About the Series: Each book in TASCHEN's Basic Architecture Series features: an introduction to the life and work of the architect the major works in chronological order information about the clients, architectural preconditions as well as construction problems and resolutions a list of all the selected works and a map indicating the locations of the best and most famous buildings approximately 120 illustrations (photographs, sketches, drafts and plans)
Zaha Hadid
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The first woman to be awarded the distinguished Pritzker Architecture Prize, in 2004, Zaha Hadid is internationally known for projects that have literally "shifted the geometry of buildings." The Iraqi-born, London-based architect has collaborated with the Guggenheim on several projects leading up to this comprehensive retrospective, including the design for the museum's exhibition The Great Utopia in 1992. Each of Hadid's dynamic and innovative works builds on over 30 years of experimentation and research in the interrelated fields of urbanism, architecture and design. True to Hadid's interdisciplinary approach to architecture, all mediums will be covered here.
Mies Van der Rohe: Less Is More
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"Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969) was one of the founding fathers of modern architecture. The creator of the Barcelona Pavilion (1929), the Farnsworth House in Plano, Illinois (1945-1951) and the Seagram Building in New York (1954-1958), Mies was one of the founders of a new architectural style. Well known for his motto ""less is more, "" he sought a kind of refined purity in architectural expression that was not seen in the reduced vocabulary of other Bauhaus members. His goal was not simply building for those of modest income but building economically in terms of sustainability, both in a technical and aesthetical way; the use of industrial materials such as steel and glass were the foundation of this approach. Though the extreme reduction of form and material in his work garnered some criticism, over the years many have tried--mostly unsuccessfully--to copy his original and elegant style. This book explores more than 20 of his projects between 1906 and 1967, from his early work around Berlin to his most important American buildings."
Frank Lloyd Wright, Architect
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Published on the occasion of the exhibition ... organized by Terence Riley, Chief Curator, with Peter Reed, Assistant Curator, Department of Architecture and Design, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, in cooperation with The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, Scottsdale, Arizona, February 20-May 10, 1994"
A History of Western Architecture, 3rd Edition
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This highly acclaimed book, in both paperback and hardcover editions, is particularly valuable for its unique approach to architectural history. The author explores structures not as separate, neatly labeled museum pieces but as a vital, living continuity across the ages, covering every major milestone of Western architecture in probing detail.
The Atlas of American Architecture
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This comparative history of American architecture, social spaces, and engineered environments—organized by style, and then by chronology—is for the general reader. Within its heavily illustrated pages, Tom Martinson traces two millennia of the built environment of this endlessly fascinating, extraordinarily expansive, and utterly diverse nation. Pairing vibrant photography with a rich knowledge of the history of architecture in America—from the Hopi and Colonial years to neomodernism, Robert A. M. Stern, and Zaha Hadid—the book is a comprehensive overview of styles and developments, as well as telling the story of a country through its buildings.
Chinese Architecture
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A comprehensive and authoritative study of Chinese architecture from Neolithic times to the late-19th century. Six of China's greatest architectural historians have joined with a leading Western scholar to write this text, a collaborative history of Chinese architecture.
Architecture of Brazil
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Architecture of Brazil: 1900-1990 examines the processes that underpin modern Brazilian architecture under various influences and characterizes different understandings of modernity, evident in the chapter topics of this book. Accordingly, the author does not give overall preference to particular architects nor works, with the exception of a few specific works and architects, including Warchavchik, Niemeyer, Lucio Costa, and Vilanova Artigas.
The Ten Most Influential Buildings in History
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Even the most inventive and revolutionary architects of today owe debts to the past, often to the distant past when architecture really was being invented for the first time. Architects depend on their own imaginations for personal insights and originality but their ideas may be stimulated (consciously or subliminally) by particularly powerful buildings from history. The Ten Most Influential Buildings in History: Architecture's Archetypes identifies ten architectural archetypes that have been sources of inspiration for architects through the centuries. Each archetype is analysed through distinctive examples, following the methodology established by the author in his previous books. The variety of 'lines of enquiry' each archetype has provoked in latter-day architects are then explored by analysing their work to reveal ideas inspired by those earlier buildings. Archetypes have a timeless relevance. In adopting this approach, The Ten Most Influential Buildings in History is as pertinent to contemporary practice as it is to understanding buildings from antiquity, and offers insights into the bridges of influence that can operate between the two.
The Architecture of Art History
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What is the place of architecture in the history of art? Why has it been at times central to the discipline, and at other times seemingly so marginal? What is its place now? Many disciplines have a stake in the history of architecture - sociology, anthropology, human geography, to name a few. This book deals with perhaps the most influential tradition of all - art history - examining how the relation between the disciplines of art history and architectural history has waxed and waned over the last one hundred and fifty years. In this highly original study, Mark Crinson and Richard J. Williams point to a decline in the importance attributed to the role of architecture in art history over the last century - which has happened without crisis or self-reflection. The book explores the problem in relation to key art historical approaches, from formalism, to feminism, to the social history of art, and in key institutions from the Museum of Modern Art, to the journal October. Among the key thinkers explored are Banham, Baxandall, Giedion, Panofsky, Pevsner, Pollock, Riegl, Rowe, Steinberg, Wittkower and Wölfflin. The book will provoke debate on the historiography and present state of the discipline of art history, and it makes a powerful case for the reconsideration of architecture.
Researching Urban Space and the Built Environment
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Researching urban space and the built environment is an accessible guide for historians keen to explore the spatial dimensions of the past. Written in a clear and lively style, it equips readers with the tools to effectively plan, research and write innovative spatial histories. By outlining and summarizing the theories and methodologies particularly pertinent to spatial research, and by providing hands-on advice on locating evidence and archives, the book supports researchers in the development of their own original projects. Through engagement with a rich array of primary evidence and useful historiographical case-studies, the guide opens up a huge variety of research possibilities. This book is the ideal research companion for undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as independent researchers. It is especially tailored for students in history and related disciplines in the humanities encountering spatial themes and methodologies for the first time.
Architecture and Ritual in the Churches of Constantinople
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This book examines the interchange of architecture and ritual in the Middle and Late Byzantine churches of Constantinople (ninth to fifteenth centuries). It employs archaeological and archival data, hagiographic and historical sources, liturgical texts and commentaries, and monastic typika and testaments to integrate the architecture of the medieval churches of Constantinople with liturgical and extra-liturgical practices and their continuously evolving social and cultural context. The book argues against the approach that has dominated Byzantine studies: that of functional determinism, the view that architectural form always follows liturgical function. Instead, proceeding chapter by chapter through the spaces of the Byzantine church, it investigates how architecture responded to the exigencies of the rituals, and how church spaces eventually acquired new uses. The church building is described in the context of the culture and people whose needs it was continually adapted to serve. Rather than viewing churches as frozen in time (usually the time when the last brick was laid), this study argues that they were social constructs and so were never finished, but continually evolving.
Neoliberalism on the Ground : Architecture and Transformation from the 1960s to the Present
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Architecture and urbanism have contributed to one of the most sweeping transformations of our times. Over the past four decades, neoliberalism has been not only a dominant paradigm in politics but a process of bricks and mortar in everyday life. Rather than to ask what a neoliberal architecture looks like, or how architecture represents neoliberalism, this volume examines the multivalent role of architecture and urbanism in geographically variable yet interconnected processes of neoliberal transformation across scales--from China, Turkey, South Africa, Argentina, Mexico, the United States, Britain, Sweden, and Czechoslovakia. Analyzing how buildings and urban projects in different regions since the 1960s have served in the implementation of concrete policies such as privatization, fiscal reform, deregulation, state restructuring, and the expansion of free trade, contributors reveal neoliberalism as a process marked by historical contingency. Neoliberalism on the Ground fundamentally reframes accepted narratives of both neoliberalism and postmodernism by demonstrating how architecture has articulated changing relationships between state, society, and economy since the 1960s.
Second World Postmodernisms: : Architecture and Society Under Late Socialism
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If postmodernism is indeed 'the cultural logic of late capitalism', why did typical postmodernist themes like ornament, colour, history and identity find their application in the architecture of the socialist Second World? How do we explain the retreat into paper architecture and theoretical discussion in societies still nominally devoted to socialist modernization?Exploring the intersection of two areas of growing scholarly interest - postmodernism and the architecture of the former socialist world - this edited collection stakes out new ground in charting architecture's various transformations in the 1970s and 80s. Fourteen essays together explore the question of whether or not architectural postmodernism had a specific Second World variant.The collection demonstrates both the unique nature of Second World architectural phenomena and also assesses connections with western postmodernism. The case studies cover the vast geographical scope from Eastern Europe to China and Cuba. They address a wealth of aesthetic, discursive and practical phenomena, interpreting them in the broader socio-political context of the last decades of the Cold War. The result provides a greatly expanded map of recent architectural history, which redefines postmodernist architecture in a more theoretically comprehensive and global way.
Creating Place in Early Modern European Architecture
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The importance of place--as a unique spatial identity--has been recognized since antiquity. Ancient references to the 'genius loci', or spirit of place, evoked not only the location of a distinct atmosphere or environment, but also the protection of this location, and implicitly, its making and construction. This volume examines the concept of place as it relates to architectural production and building knowledge in early modern Europe (1400-1800). The places explored in the book's ten essays take various forms, from an individual dwelling to a cohesive urban development to an extensive political territory. Within the scope of each study, the authors draw on primary source documents and original research to demonstrate the distinctive features of a given architectural place, and how these are related to a geographic location, social circumstances, and the contributions of individual practitioners. The essays underscore the distinct techniques, practices and organizational structures by which physical places were made in the early modern period.