Key Buildings Of The Twentieth Century Houses 1900 1944

Shares plans and descriptions of forty-eight modern homes, describes the background of each building, and looks at each one's most interesting features

Featuring over 100 of the most significant and influential houses of the twentieth century, For each of the houses included there are numerous, accurate scale plans showing each floor, together with elevations, sections and site plans where appropriate. All of these have been specially drawn for this book and are based on the most up-to-date information and sources.

It is obviously difficult nowadays to explain to a new generation what exactly modern architecture is about. The best way to understand the buildings is through their plans, which were seen by their designers as descriptions of a way of life. In fact the plan is the most accurate measure we have of changes in architectural though since the Beaux Arts. The first volume of 'Key Buildings of the 20th Century' covered developments in this way over the first stages of the period until l1945, seminal and classic modern houses that enabled the leading talents of the modern movement to establish exactly what changes in ideals and in practical life-style society would require to be realized in the excellence of their designs. With this second volume David Dunster has faced a far more strenuous and challenging task in selecting from around the world a further fifty-one house designs that he now feels reflect most accurately the richness and plurality of architecture that has developed since 1945. The plan is again seen to be the generator of the whole design and the diverse range of house designs that these leading architects of the second half of the century demonstrate confirms that the future of modern architecture in an increasingly complex century remains in good hands. The examples display a remarkable new breadth of regional diversity that readily fulfils the aspirations of the pioneers of modern design.

Makers of 20th-Century Modern Architecture is an indispensable reference book for the scholar, student, architect or layman interested in the architects who initiated, developed, or advanced modern architecture. The book is amply illustrated and features the most prominent and influential people in 20th-century modernist architecture including Wright, Eisenman, Mies van der Rohe and Kahn. It describes the milieu in which they practiced their art and directs readers to information on the life and creative activities of these founding architects and their disciples. The profiles of individual architects include critical analysis of their major buildings and projects. Each profile is completed by a comprehensive bibliography.

The first survey of the classic twentieth-century houses that defined American Midwestern modernism. Famed as the birthplace of that icon of twentieth-century architecture, the skyscraper, Chicago also cultivated a more humble but no less consequential form of modernism--the private residence. Modern in the Middle: Chicago Houses 1929-75 explores the substantial yet overlooked role that Chicago and its suburbs played in the development of the modern single-family house in the twentieth century. In a city often associated with the outsize reputations of Frank Lloyd Wright and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the examples discussed in this generously illustrated book expand and enrich the story of the region's built environment. Authors Susan Benjamin and Michelangelo Sabatino survey dozens of influential houses by architects whose contributions are ripe for reappraisal, such as Paul Schweikher, Harry Weese, Keck & Keck, and William Pereira. From the bold, early example of the "Battledeck House" by Henry Dubin (1930) to John Vinci and Lawrence Kenny's gem the Freeark House (1975), the generation-spanning residences discussed here reveal how these architects contended with climate and natural setting while negotiating the dominant influences of Wright and Mies. They also reveal how residential clients--typically middle-class professionals, progressive in their thinking--helped to trailblaze modern architecture in America. Though reflecting different approaches to site, space, structure, and materials, the examples in Modern in the Middle reveal an abundance of astonishing houses that have never been collected into one study--until now.

This book examines a period which is far more than a prelude to the age of steel and concrete. The first half-century culminated in the bold iron and glass of the Crystal Palace. There follows the creation of the modern styles of the era based on traditions of the past, and finally, in the 20th century, Art Nouveau and the modern architects in their generations - Perret, Wright, Gropius, Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe and others in many parts of the world.