Mark Crinson

Charlotte Ashby

Building/Object addresses the space in between the conventional objects of design and the conventional objects of architecture, probing and reassessing the differences between the disciplines of design history and architectural history Each of the 13 chapters in this book examine things which are neither object-like nor building-like, but somewhere in between – air conditioning; bookshelves; partition walls; table-monuments; TVs; convenience stores; cars – exposing particular political configurations and resonances that otherwise might be occluded. In doing so, they reveal that the definitions we make of objects in opposition to buildings, and of architecture in opposition to design, are not as fundamental as they seem. This book brings new aspects of the creative and experiential into our understanding of the human environment.

Shared and Contested Territories of Design and Architecture

Building/Object

Claire Zimmerman

The neo-avant-garde and postmodern movements have long been understood in terms of their re-working of modernism and a narrative emphasizing rupture and new beginnings. Compelling continuities between the two, especially in postwar Britain, suggest that a new account is needed. This collection of provocative essays discusses the work of architects and their associates, including Alice and Peter Smithson, Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, James Stirling, James Gowan, Eduardo Paolozzi, Leon Krier, Allan Greenberg, Reyner Banham, and Charles Jencks, and explores why the debate over postwar modernism was especially vocal in Britain. Essays by sixteen distinguished scholars examine such topics as Brutalism, pop architecture, 1950s London, the legacy of Mies van der Rohe, housing, civic architecture, Italian neo-realism, and changing alignments in theory and philosophy of the period. While the essays focus on Britain, they also look beyond to Brazil, New Zealand, and the United States, expanding the discussion to include new kinds of internationalization that developed rapidly in the postwar period and set the stage for architectural developments today.

Postwar Architecture in Britain and Beyond

Neo-avant-garde and Postmodern

Jules Lubbock

Architects are perhaps the most important people involved in shaping the built environment, so the ideas they receive in the course of their training are a major influence upon the buildings and cities of the future. Crinson and Lubbock present a bold new perspective on the evolution of the British architect from Wren to post-modernism and beyond, and provide the first general history of architectural education, making an important contribution to current debates. The Prince of Wales' views on modern architecture and the need for a change in the way architects are trained, has attracted enormous support from the public, resulting in architects and their training being under the spotlight more than ever. The drive to define and promote the architectural profession that began in the eighteenth century and reached its apogee in the 1960s has now begun to unravel. How has this happened? What relation does an architect's education have to the built environment? What lessons are there from the past? This book will be of interest to students, lecturers and all those interested in the debates around contemporary architecture.

Three Hundred Years of Architectural Education in Britain

Architecture--art Or Profession?

This multi-authored work considers the increasingly vital concept of urban memory, approaching the issue from different perspectives across art, culture, architecture and human consciousness, with studies on contemporary urban spaces worldwide.

History and Amnesia in the Modern City

Urban Memory

Richard J. Williams

The German tradition -- The architectural unconscious-Steinberg and Baxandall -- Modernism-institutional and phenomenal -- From image to environment-Reyner Banham's architecture -- The new art history -- October's architecture

A Historiography

The Architecture of Art History

The colonial architecture of the nineteenth century has much to tell us of the history of colonialism and cultural exchange. Yet, these buildings can be read in many ways. Do they stand as witnesses to the rapacity and self-delusion of empire? Are they monuments to a world of lost glory and forgotten convictions? Do they reveal battles won by indigenous cultures and styles? Or do they simply represent an architectural style made absurdly incongruous in relocation? Empire Building is a study of how and why Western architecture was exported to the Middle East and how Islamic and Byzantine architectural ideas and styles impacted on the West. The book explores how far racial theory and political and religious agendas guided British architects (and how such ideas were resisted when applied), and how Eastern ideas came to influence the West, through writers such as Ruskin and buildings such as the Crystal Palace. Beautifully written and lavishly illustrated, Empire Building takes the reader on an extraordinary postcolonial journey, backwards and forwards, into the heart and to the edge of empire.

Orientalism and Victorian Architecture

Empire Building

Much of modernist architecture was inspired by the emergence of internationalism: the ethics and politics of world peace, justice and unity through global collaboration. Mark Crinson here shows how the ideals represented by the Tower of Babel - built, so the story goes, by people united by one language - were effectively adapted by internationalist architecture, its styles and practices, in the modern period. Focusing particularly on the points of convergence between modernist and internationalist trends in the 1920s, and again in the immediate post-war years, he underlines how such architecture utilised the themes of a cooperative community of builders and a common language of forms.The 'International Style' was one manifestation of this new way of thinking, but Crinson shows how the aims of modernist architecture frequently engaged with the substance of an internationalist mindset in addition to sharing surface similarities. Bringing together the visionaries of internationalist projects - including Le Corbusier, Bruno Taut, Berthold Lubetkin, Walter Gropius and Mies van der Rohe - Crinson interweaves ideas of evolution, ecology, utopia, regionalism, socialism, free trade, and anti-colonialism to reveal the possibilities heralded by modernist architecture. Furthermore, he re-connects pivotal figures in architecture with a cast of polymath internationalists such as Patrick Geddes, Lewis Mumford, Julian Huxley, Rabindranath Tagore and H. G. Wells, to provide a richly detailed socio-cultural framework. This is a book crafted for students and scholars of architecture and art theory, as well as for those interested in the history of twentieth-century optimism about the world and its architecture.

Modern Architecture and Internationalism

Rebuilding Babel

This is the first overview of the career of Alison and Peter Smithson, the most controversial yet most widely-influential of post-war architectural practices. From their first youthful project, the school at Hunstanton, to their final works, they epitomised the idea of the avant-garde architect, and were strongly engaged with artists and critics and with groups and tendencies in Britain and beyond. 0Structured thematically and chronologically, the book gives a coherent and compact narrative of the Smithsons' work and ideas. As well as all of the major buildings - including the Economist complex, the Garden building at St Hilda's College, and the Robin Hood Gardens estate - the book also discusses unbuilt projects, including substantial work for the British embassy at Brasilia and the Kuwait mat-building. It culminates with the less well-known factory additions, museum and house for Axel Bruchhauser, a furniture manufacturer in Germany. Central to their work, Mark Crinson argues, was a concern with belonging, with how we identify ourselves with places in a context of change.0Lavishly illustrated with new colour images as well as original drawings and historic photography, this book is an essential read for architects, students and enthusiasts for modernism wanting to learn more about the Smithsons.

Mark Crinson

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