The Architecture of Europe: The 19th and 20th Centuries - Hardcover

Yarwood, Doreen

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0929587650 ISBN 13: 9780929587653

Publisher: Ivan R. Dee Publisher, 1991

Synopsis

The richness and diversity of European architecture over the past two centuries is captured in this comprehensive survey with almost two hundred illustrations of building types in twenty-three countries, including Eastern Europe and Scandinavia. The book's breadth of geography and time give it a special place among treatments of the general subject. It illustrates how the nineteenth century, although primarily eclectic, produced a number of architectural successes--Haussmann's grandiose reshaping of Paris, Engel's classical Helsinki, the Gothic revivalism of the rebuilt Palace of Westminster. Doreen Yarwood shows that Art Nouveau was the first movement to break with this eclecticism, but that it nonetheless drew its inspiration from the past. She illustrates how the modern movement, developed in some countries between the wars, used concrete, steel, and glass for strength and simplicity. Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, Mies van der Rohe, and others used this approach to great effect; in the 1950s it became a mass movement. The 1970s brought calls for an architecture reunited with its environment, leading to the safety of classicism or light-hearted eclecticism. Ms. Yarwood's lucid text and generous illustrations provide a vivid and indispensable record.

About this title

About the Author

Doreen Yarwood has traveled widely over the past thirty years in addition to lecturing in schools, universities, and art colleges in England and elsewhere. She has written several important books on architectural history, including Encyclopaedia of Architecture, A Chronology of Western Architecture, and The English Home.

Edition details

• Publisher: Ivan R. Dee Publisher
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0929587650
• ISBN 13: 9780929587653
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 176