When Buildings Speak: Architecture as Language in the Habsburg Empire and Its Aftermath, 1867-1933

Alofsin, Anthony

ISBN 10: 0226015068 / ISBN 13: 9780226015064

Published by University of Chicago Press, 2006

About this Item

Fine in a Fine jacket. 1st Printing. 326pp 4to.

Seller Inventory # 162018

Bibliographic Details

• Title: When Buildings Speak: Architecture as Language in the Habsburg Empire and Its Aftermath, 1867-1933
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication Date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0226015068
• ISBN 13: 9780226015064
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Fine
• Seller catalogs:
  • Architecture

About this title

Synopsis

In "When Buildings Speak", Anthony Alofsin explores the rich yet often overlooked architecture of the late Austro-Hungarian Empire and its successor states. He shows that several different styles emerged in this milieu during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Moreover, he contends that each of these styles communicates to us in a manner resembling language and its particular means of expression.Covering a wide range of buildings - from national theaters to crematoria, apartment buildings to warehouses, and sanatoria to postal savings banks - Alofsin proposes a new way of interpreting this language. He calls on viewers to read buildings in two ways: through their formal elements and through their political, social, and cultural contexts. By looking through Alofsin's eyes, readers can see how myriad nations sought to express their autonomy by tapping into the limitless possibilities of art and architectural styles. And such architecture can still speak very powerfully to us today about the contradictory issues affecting parts of the former Habsburg Empire.

About the Author

Anthony Alofsin is the Roland Gommel Roessner Centennial Professor of Architecture and professor of art and art history at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of Frank Lloyd Wright: The Lost Years, 1910-1922 and The Struggle for Modernism: Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and City Planning at Harvard. He is also the editor of Frank Lloyd Wright: Europe and Beyond.