Architecture Today - [Started As a Series of Lectures Entitled Contemporary Issues in Architecture At King Faisal University . in 1980 [And] Given in Similar Format At Several Institutions over 37 Consecutive Terms Ever Since--P. 511]

Steele, James (1943-)

ISBN 10: 0714836176 / ISBN 13: 9780714836171

Published by London : Phaidon, 1997

About this Item

Seller Inventory # mon0002773729

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Architecture Today - [Started As a Series of Lectures Entitled Contemporary Issues in Architecture At King Faisal University . in 1980 [And] Given in Similar Format At Several Institutions over 37 Consecutive Terms Ever Since--P. 511]
• Publisher: London : Phaidon
• Publication Date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0714836176
• ISBN 13: 9780714836171
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: Very Good

About this title

Synopsis

Since the collapse of Modernism in the late 1960s, international architecture has fragmented, evolving in numerous different directions, each driven by its own ideologies and theories. "Architecture Today" provides a clear, comprehensive guide to these pluralistic styles and movements, offering incisive critiques of the world's most prominent architectural trends of the last 25 years. 500 photos, 350 in color.

Review

This lushly illustrated, 500-page compendium is indispensable for any student of architecture, and many professional architects should find it a handy, although heavy, reference guide. James Steele covers the world of contemporary architecture with style, insight, historical perspective, and--perhaps most helpful--a powerful sense of organization. In his capable hands, a vast amount of information falls neatly into place under sixteen chapter headings: The Modernist Legacy, European Rationalism, High Tech, Minimalism, The Classical Revival, Post-Modernism, Deconstructivism, Contemporary Vernacular, The New Expressionists, Ecological Architecture, The New Moderns, Populist Architecture, Megastructures, The Los Angeles Avant-Garde, Experimentation in Japan, and World Cities. The balanced text is multi-faceted. Steele can list the sources of Post-Modernist architecture (correcting the popular view that the movement was an attempt to do away with Modernism) or suggestively draw a correspondence between the roofscape of Gustav Peichl's Federal Art Gallery in Bonn and the use of nature in David Lynch's film Blue Velvet.

As with so many architecture books from Phaidon Press, the picture editors and book designers have carefully matched the photographs to the text, and have given precisely the right kind of caption information for each one. The back of the book includes brief architect's biographies, chapter notes, a lengthy bibliography, and a chronology from 1945 to 1997. This beautifully produced book is a one-volume course on postwar architecture and the social and political milieu in which it exists. --Peggy Moorman