The Postwar University: Utopianist Campus and College

Muthesius, Stefan

ISBN 10: 0300087179 / ISBN 13: 9780300087178

Published by Yale University Press, New Haven, USA, 2000

About this Item

First edition, first printing. vi, 340pp, with numerous black and white and the occasional colour illustration. Purple cloth-covered board with gilt titles on spine. 8vo. Cloth gently pushed at spine ends. Boards very slightly bowed. Internally neat, clean, bright and tight. In its original, shelf worn, dust wrapper, lightly rubbed and bumped all round edges.

Seller Inventory # 035322

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Postwar University: Utopianist Campus and College
• Publisher: Yale University Press, New Haven, USA
• Publication Date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0300087179
• ISBN 13: 9780300087178
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition.
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: Good
• Seller catalogs:
  • Architecture

About this title

Synopsis

A great expansion of universities in most of Western Europe and North America began in the late 1950s and continued to the early 1970s. In this comprehensive book, architectural historian Stefan Muthesius examines the post-war educational building boom and the rhetoric that surrounded it. He focuses on the period’s widely shared utopianist beliefs that good planning and distinguished architecture could bring forth not only academically mature but also socially adjusted citizens.

The book describes the diverse approaches to the creation of new campuses in the United States, England, Canada, West Germany, and France, as each country dealt with the agendas of its own educators, sociologists, politicians, campus planners, and architects. Muthesius explores the full range of responses to the utopian dreams, from the initial boundless enthusiasm for the new university as an ideal and total environment, to the rejection by rebellious students for whom utopian plans smacked of paternalism, to the public’s dislike of extravagant architecture and modernist buildings. As university planners today address the need (or lack of it) for new buildings, this book offers a timely reconsideration of architectural achievement in a period of intense institutionality.


Published for the Paul Mellon Center for Studies in British Art

About the Author

Stefan Muthesius teaches in the School of World Art Studies and Museology at the University of East Anglia. He is the author of many books and is coauthor with Miles Glendinning of Tower Block: Modern Public Housing in England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, published by Yale University Press.