Product Description

How can the different strands of modern architecture in Britain be understood? For many British people, it remains an alien cultural import and minority taste, yet British architecture has never stood higher in world esteem than at the close of the twentieth century. In this book, Alan Powers shows how beneath today's achievements in architecture, past conflicts have not been resolved, as the country that invented industrial civilization has struggled to control its effect on cities and countryside. He examines developments and changes from 1900 to the present day in a series of thematic chapters, giving equal weight to technical, economic and moral aspects and demonstrating how architecture has responded to specific social needs and political pressures. Rather than giving a conventional account of stylistic tendencies, Powers listens to the arguments and conversations of the time in order to recapture the dominating issues of each decade, and locate the moments of transition in architecture and in the wider culture. Featuring more than 220 images, including both recent and historical photographs, "Britain" is an authoritative yet highly accessible account of twentieth-century British architecture. Giving due regard to the separate identities of England, Scotland and Wales, the book also adds a new and original dimension to the perennial problem of defining 'Britain' in the modern world.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #139662 in Books
• Published on: 2007-03-14
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

Review
'Discarding all the tired narratives of Britain's insular modernism as a faint echo of continental stylistic and technical bravura, Alan Powers gives us an erudite, spirited, sometimes irreverent - and ultimately sensitive - assessment of British architectural invention from the decline of Empire to the rise of Devolution. Architectural practice itself, and the changing economic and political policies that inflected its trajectories, are given prominence in dialogue with stylistic and intellectual trends. There is a lasting freshness to this account, and an ecumenical embrace of variety, that will make this lively text a standard for years to come.' - Barry Bergdoll, Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture & Design, Museum of Modern Art, New York 'This brilliant book dispels the myth that modernist architecture has always been a European and American phenomenon. In a book that is as much about a history of twentieth-century British society as it is about twentieth-century British architecture, Alan Powers explores an architectural language that developed in a number of styles unique to modern Britain.' - Kevin McCloud, designer, author and presenter of Channel 4's Grand Designs, The Stirling Prize and Demolition

Barry Bergdoll, Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design, Museum of Modern Art, New York
'An erudite, spirited, sometimes irreverent - and ultimately
sensitive - assessment of British architectural invention'

Barry Bergdoll, Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design, Museum of Modern Art, New York
'There is a lasting freshness to this account ... that will make
this lively text a standard for years to come'

Customer Reviews

The Threads of Modernism
This is an admirable text; full of insights as to the ideas and networks that underpinned the spread of modernism.