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| 20th Century Architecture. A Reader's Guide | Buy a book...
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| Author(s): | M. Pawley |
| Publisher: | Architectural Press |
| ISBN: | 0 7506 4635 7 |
| Format: | hardback |
| 195pp | |
| Price: | £15.99 |
| Review Date: | 23 May 2000 |
| Review: | This is a general-purpose reader's guide to the 20th century literature on architecture. The literature of the first three-quarters of the century was overshadowed by Modernism - divided between the traditionalist/revivalism and Modernist/progressive schools of thought. During this time the struggle between these two ideologies was given added force by their role in four key historical events: the destruction of the old empires of Europe and the creation of new republics after World War I; the suppression of modern architecture in Germany and the Soviet Union during the 1930s; the overthrow of the forces of Fascism at the end of World War II and the consequent triumph of Modernism; and the economic shock to the western world of oil-price rises in the mid-1970s which, for the first time related environmental concerns to the process of designing buildings. The literature of this final quarter of the 19th century has continued to play lip service to this last factor. The author's choice of books takes in Modernism, but also includes the opposing views that surfaced during the 1930s and later, in the Royalist classical revival of the 1980s. |