Classical Styles In Modern Architecture

Classical Styles in Modern Architecture From the Colonnade to Disjunctured Space Thomas L. Doremus The rise of Post-modernism in late twentieth century architecture has kindled a new, intense debate about the viability of classical styles in the modern city, a debate fueled by the Preservation movement, with many arguments heard on both sides. Unfortunately, too often these arguments have been couched in dense, theoretical terms and illustrated with highly technical documentation. Now, in Classical Styles in Architecture, acclaimed architectural theorist Thomas L. Doremus has avoided jargon and arcane language to provide a clear examination of the ways in which modernism is different from classicism. At the same time he demonstrates how each can be accommodated in contemporary life. In brilliant, lucid prose, he shows that the development of modern architecture was a much more gradual process in the United States than it was in Europe, and expounds the theory that modernism is not a rejection but rather a democratization of classical architecture, with elements from each given equal value rather than subordinated in a hierarchical system. Within this inclusionary view, he writes, it is possible to adapt modernist tenets to the information age and develop a viable approach to future design. Lavishly illustrated and impeccably credentialed, this book includes: * Photographs that show and reference ordinary, everyday buildings and civic structures along with some of the more familiar monuments of architecture * A historical section that identifies the growth of democratic governments as one of the foundations of modernism. Focusing on the United States rather than on the socialist societies of Europe, it is thus more relevant to the contemporary political situation * Discussions of leading theorists such as Giedion, Pevsner, and Venturi, as well as of key buildings and architects drawn from the past one hundred years * Technological, cultural, and formal analyses of both classicism and modernism * A discursive rather than scholarly review of why buildings look the way they do Classical Styles in Modern Architecture is certain to expand the debate on the subject and possibly even provoke controversy. Given the impact that many post-modern projects have had on the fabric of most American cities, however, it is bound to be of interest to any reader concerned about the future of ture in the United States--in the ways our cities will look and, consequently, how we will live in them

"A historical survey -- from classical Greece through the Italian Renaissance and Scandinavian design up to the present-day traditional habitat"--Publisher's description.

In 1896, Otto Wagner's "Modern Architecture" shocked the European architectural community with its impassioned plea for an end to eclecticism and for a "modern" style suited to contemporary needs and ideals, utilizing the nascent constructional technologies and materials. Through the combined forces of his polemical, pedagogical, and professional efforts, this determined, newly appointed professor at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts emerged in the late 1890s - along with such contemporaries as Charles Rennie Mackintosh in Glasgow and Louis Sullivan in Chicago - as one of the leaders of the revolution soon to be identified as the "Modern Movement." Wagner's historic manifesto is now presented in a new English translation - the first in almost ninety years - based on the expanded 1902 text and noting emendations made to the 1896, 1898, and 1914 editions. In his introduction, Dr. Harry Mallgrave examines Wagner's tract against the backdrop of nineteenth-century theory, critically exploring the affinities of Wagner's revolutionary élan with the German eclectic debate of the 1840s, the materialistic tendencies of the 1870s and 1880s, and the emerging cultural ideology of modernity. Modern Architecture is one of those rare works in the literature of architecture that not only proclaimed the dawning of a new era, but also perspicaciously and cogently shaped the issues and the course of its development; it defined less the personal aspirations of one individual and more the collective hopes and dreams of a generation facing the sanguine promise of a new century

In the last twenty years, reception studies have significantly enhanced our understanding of the ways in which Classics has shaped modern Western culture, but very little attention has been directed toward the reception of classical architecture. Housing the New Romans: Architectual Reception and Classical Style in the Modern World addresses this gap by investigating ways in which appropriation and allusion facilitated the reception of Classical Greece and Rome through the requisition and redeployment of classicizing tropes to create neo-Antique sites of "dwelling" in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The volume, across nine essays, will cover both European and American iterations of place making, including Sir John Soanes' house in London, the Hôtel de Beauharnais in Paris, and the Getty Villa in California. By focusing on structures and places that are oriented towards private life-houses, hotels, clubs, tombs, and gardens-the volume directs the critical gaze towards diverse and complex sites of curatorial self-fashioning. The goal of the volume is to provide a multiplicity of interpretative frameworks (e.g. object-agency enchantment, hyperreality, memory-infrastructure) that may be applied to the study of architectural reception. This critical approach makes Housing the New Romans the first work of its kind in the emerging field of architectural and landscape reception studies and in the hitherto textually dominated field of classical reception.

"Classical Greek Architecture is a definitive account of classical architecture, its influences, and its significance for the structures of today from leading scholar Alexander Tzonis. The work contains a wealth of contemporary and vintage photographs from major archives that, together with numerous line drawings of the monuments and sites of Ancient Greece, provide a breath-taking introduction to visual thinking and architectural culture".--BOOKJACKET.