20th Century Architecture: The Structures that Shaped America

Glancey, Jonathan

ISBN 10: 0879519126 / ISBN 13: 9780879519124

Published by Overlook, Woodstock, 1998

About this Item

Navy cloth boards with silver stamped lettering, illustrated end papers. Glossy color-illustrated dust jacket with gray and blue lettering. 400 pp. Nearly 400 illustrations, mostly in color. "Twentieth-Century Architecture explores the roots of modern architecture, explaining how history and the rapidly changing social and political conditions of modern times have affected the built environment. What, for example, was the role of Nazi German, Soviet Russia and Fascist Italy in the story of the century's buildings? The book also discusses the innovations and inventions that have permeated modern buildings and structures and the way that the traditions of the past have imbued the modern craft of architecture."-Jacket. VG/VG- light corner/edge wear, and scuffing to dust jacket. ex-lib copy with call number on dj spine and barcode on dj back. Seller Inventory # 172116

Bibliographic Details

Title: 20th Century Architecture: The Structures ...

Publisher: Overlook, Woodstock

Publication Date: 1998

Binding: Hardcover

About this title

Synopsis:

Features every distinguished and ground-breaking structure of the twentieth century, from Sir Edwin Lutyens' Deanery Garden to Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Museum, arranged by style. Newbridge Architects' & Designers' Book Club Main.

Review:

Human life in the 20th century has involved a fight for living space. To live in architecturally interesting housing has often meant either being very rich, or conversely very poor. Unfortunately, in this respect, vast swathes of the world have fallen between the two, resulting in buildings at best undistinguished and at worst uninhabitable. Pushing aside this ignoble architectural rubble, Jonathan Glancey has constructed a pantheon to memorable structures, 370 in total, which have shaped an extreme century. He proves an inspired choice for the job. Stripping his text of the dehumanising jargon beloved of designers, Glancey has arranged his selections in eight sections: Arts and Crafts, Classicism, Organic, Modernism, Postmodernism, Robotic, Futures and Cities, and what a city they collectively make. Within each chapter superbly reproduced photographs are each accompanied by an informative and suitably fulsome or pithy paragraph from Glancey, who is fiercely critical of laziness, yet always quick to applaud honesty and innovative vision. Instructive mistakes are included, as are buildings that no longer exist and a few that never will, and such scope contributes to a diversely rewarding compendium geared to a British audience that has, it must be said, too little of its own to cheer.

The big guns are well represented--Horta, Rennie Mackintosh, Lloyd Wright, Behrens, Lutyens, Gaudi, Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, Rogers and Foster--as are landmark structures, such as the Chrysler Building, the Guggenheim Museums, Sydney Opera House and the "bowellist" Lloyd's Building in London. It has been a century dominated by the moral quest of Modernism (the core of the book and its largest contingent, defying Mies van der Rohe's dictum "less is more"), but if God is in the detail, then the marvels of this collection are the lesser-known buildings that sit comfortably beside their more famous counterparts, and give perspective to the ambitious "big picture". This is an inspiring and consistently enjoyable read, like the very best of its contents, and an invaluably erudite introduction to a towering subject. --David Vincent