The Other Tradition of Modern Architecture: The Uncompleted Project - Softcover

Wilson, Colin St. John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1904772625 ISBN 13: 9781904772620

Publisher: Black Dog Publishing Ltd, 2007

Synopsis

This revised edition of an essential work by Colin St. John Wilson, architect of the British Library and one of the most eminent voices in architectural theory and practice of the last 50 years, is here made available to a new readership. As important now as it was when first published, Professor Wilson sets out to examine the underlying themes of Modern European architecture, assessing their impact, influence, and continuing development. Rather than positioning Modernism as an historical moment, now left in the past, St. John Wilson argues for a continuing tradition, an 'uncompleted project', sustained against the rigidifying orthodoxy, the white walls, functionalism and blank boxes of C.I.A.M., by a 'resistance movement' carried by the largely independent work of Alvar Aalto, Hans Scharoun, Frank Lloyd Wright and Sigurd Lewerentz. This 'movement', he argues, worked within context, negotiation and use, and as such, provides a valuable model for an approach to which contemporary architects should aspire.The book, then, is not merely an historical document but a rallying cry - not only to those practising in the field, but to a wider audience who have been alienated by the strictures of orthodox Modernism. Drawing upon philosophy, history, art and architectural theory, the work of these Modern masters is explored both in theory and by means of comparative analyses of specific buildings in a text that takes in an extraordinary range of references with erudition, insight and originality. Aesthetic theory, in the work of Adrian Stokes among others, and approaches to psychoanalysis in the work of Freud and Klein, are cited alongside a broad range of references, in a work that defines Wilson's own architectural criticism to date. This new edition is a precursor to a major volume on Colin St. John Wilson's work, which Black Dog Publishing is releasing in March 2007.

About this title

About the Author

Professor Sir Colin St John Wilson: * Studied architecture at Cambridge University and University College London * Joined the Architects' Department of London County Council in 1950, where his contemporaries included James Stirling, Alison and Peter Smithson, Alan Colquhoun and Peter Carter * Involved with the Independent Group that formed around the newly established Institute of Contemporary Arts in London * Taught in the USA with Visiting Professorships to Yale (1960 - 64, 1983 and 2000) and MIT (1970 - 72) * Head of the School at Cambridge (1975 - 89) and since then has been Professor Emeritus * A Trustee of the National Gallery and the Tate Gallery, and Chairman of the Arts Council's Architecture unit * Knighted in 1998 for services to architecture

From the Inside Flap

The Other Tradition of Modern Architecture: The Uncompleted Project is a re-edition of an essential work by Colin St John Wilson, architect of the British Library and one of the most eminent voices in architectural theory and practice of the last 50 years. Re-edited and re-designed to Wilson's specifications, and with a new introduction by architect and writer Ellis Woodman, this indispensable title is here made available to a new readership.

Edition details

• Publisher: Black Dog Publishing Ltd
• Publication date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1904772625
• ISBN 13: 9781904772620
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 208