Programs and Manifestoes on 20th-Century Architecture Review

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(More customer reviews)This book is mandatory for the library of any architect or student of architecture. It is the point from which any discussion of Modern Architecture could begin. I am hard pressed to think of a notable architect Conrad has neglected to include in this handy little book. From these pages I have seen generated a good number of arguments and debates on the state of architecture today. This is a small price to pay for such a wide array of ideas, both good and bad.

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The present volume offers eloquent testimony that many of the masterbuilders of this century have held passionate convictions regarding the philosophicand social basis of their art. Nearly every important development in the modernarchitectural movement began with the proclamation of these convictions in the formof a program or manifesto. The most influential of these are collected here inchronological order from 1903 to 1963. Taken together, they constitute a subjectivehistory of modern architecture; compared with one another, their great diversity ofstyle reveals in many cases the basic differences of attitude and temperament thatproduced a corresponding divergence in architectural style. In point of view, thebook covers the aesthetic spectrum from right to left; from programs that rigidlygenerate designs down to the smallest detail to revolutionary manifestoes that callfor anarchy in building form and town plan. The documents, placed in context by theeditor, are also international in their range: among them are the seminal andprophetic statements of Henry van de Velde, Adolf Loos, and Bruno Taut from theearly years of the century; Frank Lloyd Wright's 1910 annunciation of OrganicArchitecture; Gropius's original program for the Bauhaus, founded in Weimar in 1919;"Towards a New Architecture, Guiding Principles" by Le Corbusier; the formulation byNaum Gabo and Antoine Pevsner of the basic principles of Constructivism; andarticles by R. Buckminster Fuller on universal architecture and the architect asworld planner. Other pronouncements, some in flamboyant style, including those ofErich Mendelsohn, Hannes Meyer, Theo van Doesburg, Oskar Schlemmer, Ludwig Mies vander Rohe, El Lissitzky, and Louis I. Kahn. There are also a number of collective orgroup statements, issued in the name of movements such as CIAM, De Stijl, ABC, theSituationists, and GEAM.Since the dramatic effectiveness of the manifesto form isusually heightened by brevity and conciseness, it has been possible to reproducemost of the documents in their entirety; only a few have been excerpted.

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