Modernism and the Professional Architecture Journal: Reporting, Editing and Reconstructing in Post-war Europe

The production of this book stems from two of the editors’ longstanding research interests: the representation of architecture in print media, and the complex identity of the second phase of modernism in architecture given the role it played in postwar reconstruction in Europe.

While the history of postwar reconstruction has been increasingly well covered for most European countries, research investigating postwar architectural magazines and journals across Europe – their role in the discourse and production of the built environment and particularly their inter-relationship and differing conceptions of postwar architecture – is relatively undeveloped. Modernism and the Professional Architecture Journal sounds out this territory in a new collection of essays concerning the second phase of the reception and assimilation of modernism in architecture, as it was represented in professional architecture journals during the period of postwar reconstruction (1945–1968).

Professional architecture journals are often seen as conduits of established facts and knowledge. The role mainstream publications play, however, in establishing ‘movements’, ‘trends’ or ‘debates’ tends to be undervalued. In the context of the complex undertaking of postwar reconstruction, the shortage of resources, political uncertainty and the biographical complexities of individual architects, the chapters on key European architecture journals collected here reveal how modernist architecture, and its discourse, was perceived and disseminated in different European countries.

Torsten Schmiedeknecht teaches design, history and theory at the School of Architecture, University of Liverpool, UK. His research interests include the representation of architecture in print media; rationalism in architecture; and architectural competitions. He is the co-editor of The Rationalist Reader, Rationalist Traces, An Architect’s Guide to Fame and Fame and Architecture. He is currently working on an RIBA-funded project about the representation of (modern) architecture in children’s literature.

Andrew Peckham teaches architecture at the University of Westminster, UK. He has co-edited, with Hannah Lewi, a series of annual anthology issues of The Journal of Architecture (2016–2018) and is currently editing a book on teaching ‘studio’: The Intrinsic and Extrinsic City. His Architecture and its Imprint is due for publication in 2018.