Making It Modern

This is the definitive volume on Craig Ellwood, a visionary architect, designer, and tastemaker often called the “California Mies van der Rohe.” Craig Ellwood, “the Cary Grant of architecture,” was one of the most visible faces of California mid-century modernism. He was known as much for his exquisitely designed, minimalist structures as he was for his exuberant lifestyle. This book celebrates and explores the glamour of Ellwood’s work, life, myth, and career. Through photographs, primarily of the iconic houses he designed in Southern California during the 1950s and ’60s, we see a life of refined decadence, expressed through gorgeous architecture, fast cars, beautiful women, Hollywood style, palm trees, swimming pools, and minimalist design—all in the context of the Southern California postwar building boom. This volume will appeal to design junkies, architecture buffs, students of modernism, and anyone interested in problem-solving and elegant solutions.

How much further should the affluent world push its material consumption? Does relative dematerialization lead to absolute decline in demand for materials? These and many other questions are discussed and answered in Making the Modern World: Materials and Dematerialization. Over the course of time, the modern world has become dependent on unprecedented flows of materials. Now even the most efficient production processes and the highest practical rates of recycling may not be enough to result in dematerialization rates that would be high enough to negate the rising demand for materials generated by continuing population growth and rising standards of living. This book explores the costs of this dependence and the potential for substantial dematerialization of modern economies. Making the Modern World: Materials and Dematerialization considers the principal materials used throughout history, from wood and stone, through to metals, alloys, plastics and silicon, describing their extraction and production as well as their dominant applications. The evolving productivities of material extraction, processing, synthesis, finishing and distribution, and the energy costs and environmental impact of rising material consumption are examined in detail. The book concludes with an outlook for the future, discussing the prospects for dematerialization and potential constrains on materials. This interdisciplinary text provides useful perspectives for readers with backgrounds including resource economics, environmental studies, energy analysis, mineral geology, industrial organization, manufacturing and material science.

From the aesthetics of postwar reconstruction to the functional objects that complemented 1950s West Coast Modern architecture and the expressive material forms of the 1960s and 70s, Modern in the Making will acknowledge the many dimensions that defined British Columbia's cultural identity in the postwar era. It is the first volume to trace the evolution of Modern ceramics, weaving and fiber art, furniture, fashion and jewelry design produced between 1945 and 1975 in the Vancouver Lower Mainland, Vancouver Island and the Okanagan.

Embracing design of every kind from every corner of the globe, this inspirational work looks at the defining notions of glamour, elements of home decoration, and homes where everything comes glamorously together. Includes a directory of the designers and resources.

Based on extensive research at eight universities - Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Johns Hopkins, Chicago, Stanford, Michigan, and California at Berkeley - Reuben examines the aims of university reformers in the context of nineteenth-century ideas about truth. She argues that these educators tried to apply new scientific standards to moral education, but that their modernization efforts ultimately failed.

In this original intellectual history, Anna di Robilant traces the history of one of the most influential legal, political, and intellectual projects of modernity: the appropriation of Roman property law by liberal nineteenth-century jurists to fit the purposes of modern Europe. Drawing from a wealth of primary sources, many of which have never been translated into English, di Robilant outlines how a broad network of European jurists reinvented the classical Roman concept of property to support the process of modernisation. By placing this intellectual project within its historical context, she shows how changing class relations, economic policies and developing ideologies converged to produce the basis of modern property law. Bringing these developments to the twentieth century, this book demonstrates how this largely fabricated version of Roman property law shaped and continues to shape debates concerning economic growth, sustainability, and democratic participation.

This book presents a bold, engaging and updated history of economics--the dramatic story of how the great economic thinkers built today's rigorous social science. Noted financial writer and economist Mark Skousen has revised this popular work, now in its third edition. This comprehensive, yet accessible introduction to the major economic philosophers of the past 225 years begins with Adam Smith and continues through the present day. The text examines the contributions made by each individual to our understanding of the role of the economist, the science of economics, and economic theory. Boxes in each chapter highlight little-known and entertaining facts about the economists' personal lives that had an influence on their work.

From airports crowded with refugees desperate to flee Partition violence to the mountainous battlefields of Kashmir, aircraft proved indispensable to newly independent India. The aeroplane played a small but significant role in India's transformation from a British colony to an independent republic. Through the prism of aviation, both civil and military, 'The Aeroplane and the Making of Modern India' charts India's journey from the Second World War to the nationalization of Indian airline companies in 1953. For independent India, the aeroplane represented not only a powerful means of projecting state power but also a symbol of what it meant to be modern. This was not lost on other contenders for sovereignty in South Asia. Both Pakistan and the Indian princes also invested extensively in aviation in the hopes of bolstering their power and legitimacy in South Asia. Drawing on numerous archives, untapped personal collections, and newspaper reports in India and the United Kingdom, Aashique Iqbal provides the first comprehensive history of the Indian state's engagement with aviation. Featuring a rich cast of characters including Indian maharajas, Polish pilots, American entrepreneurs, Australian adventurers, and British Air Force officers, this book tells the story of how the aeroplane helped make modern India.