The architecture of social reform: Housing, tradition, and German Modernism (Studies in Design and Material Culture) - Hardcover

Rousset, Isabel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1526159686 ISBN 13: 9781526159687

Publisher: Manchester University Press, 2022

Synopsis

The architecture of social reform explores the fascinating intellectual origins of modern architecture’s obsession with domesticity. Copiously illustrated, Rousset’s revealing analysis demonstrates how questions over aesthetics, style, urbanization, and technology that gripped the modernist imagination were deeply ingrained in a larger concern to reform society through housing. The increasing demand for new housing in Germany’s rapidly growing cities fostered critical exchanges between a heterogeneous group of actors, including architects, urban theorists, planners, and social scientists, who called for society to be freed from class antagonism through the provision of good, modest, traditionally-minded domestic design. Offering a compelling account of architecture’s ability to act socially, the book provocatively argues that architectural theory underwent its most critical epistemological transformation in relation to the dynamics of modern class politics long before the arrival of the avant-garde.

About this title

About the Author

Isabel Rousset teaches architectural history at Curtin University

From the Back Cover

The architecture of social reform is the first major study of how tradition has been contested in modern architectural culture. Examining German-language design theory from 1848 to 1918, it traces the diverse and fascinating efforts by architects and others to confront class antagonism through the provision of simple, traditionally influenced domestic design.

The book introduces readers to a host of modern architects, urbanists, and art critics – notably Gottfried Semper, Camillo Sitte, Werner Hegemann, Karl Scheffler, Hermann Muthesius, and Paul Mebes – who sought to reform housing along traditionalist lines, in everything from the living room to the city-region. It counters the narrative that tradition signified the last breath of an eclectic and defunct historicism, revealing instead how architects and design experts engaged with tradition in order to stake out a socially progressive position for themselves while learning from the past.

Based on extensive original research and richly illustrated, The architecture of social reform will appeal to readers interested in the continuing debates over the future of architecture, housing, and politics.

Edition details

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Publication date: 2022
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1526159686
• ISBN 13: 9781526159687
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 240