Rebuilding Babel : modern architecture and internationalism / Mark Crinson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Crinson, Mark, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Architecture, Modern--20th century.

Architecture, Modern.

Physical Description:

xiii, 306 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color) ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

London ; New York : I.B. Tauris & Co. Ltd, 2017.

Summary:

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.

Contents:

1 The Architectonic of Community 16

2 World Knowing - Otlet, Geddes, Neurath 54

3 Well-Ventilated Utopias - Le Corbusier, CIAM and European Modernism in the 1920s 93

4 Echo Chamber - The International Style and its Deviations 142

5 Outwards - Lewis Mumford, Regionalism and Internationalism 170

6 Another World - Post-War CIAM, India and the Marg Circle 197.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781784537128

1784537128

OCLC:

993073299